WME Urges “Ethical & Responsible” AI In NYT Copyright Battle With Sam Altman

In the true sense of American capitalism and Hollywood dealmaking put together, WME doesn’t have a problem with AI, but the Ari Emanuel chaired agency wants the right kind of AI for its clients and creators.

“WME’s position is therefore not that AI use of creative materials should be stopped, but that it should be licensed,” the Bev Hills-based agency declared in an amicus brief filed on October 30 in the consolidated copyright infringement battle between OpenAI and the New York Times, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a collection of Florida and Arkansas papers, The Intercept, and other outlets.

The nearly three-year old action accuses Sam Altman and gang of seeking to have a “free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment.”

Not expecting anyone to reinvent the wheel, WME’s filing stresses context as well as content.

“In line with its prior statements to the U.S. Copyright Office in 2023, WME advocates that all uses of AI must be ethical and responsible, and any use of AI that affects talents’ and creators’ rights must come with proper compensation and authorization,” the document from WME Group’s legal chief Courtney Braun and outside firm Jayaram PLLC states. “WME seeks to preserve the legal framework that lets creators decide whether, and on what terms, their protected work is used to develop or train AI systems.”

The first major Tinseltown agency to step into this particular fray, WME joins a lawsuit that is already peppered with cameos of sorts by the likes of Game of Thrones overlord George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, Sarah Silverman, Bosch creator Michael Connelly, Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult and more. In fact, WME’s submission comes just after SAG-AFTRA, the American Federation of Music and the Writers Guild of America East and West filed their own joint brief on October 29 slamming OpenAI for “appropriating the work of middle- and working-class people to develop their technology.”

Amidst the Hamlet of it all over whether OpenAI will have an IPO soon and the worries in the global economy of how over-heated Artificial Intelligence has become, Donald Trump’s DOJ essentially vouched for Altman’s methods with a filing of its own back in September. “The United States has a strong interest in this Court rejecting any argument that training LLMs on copyrighted texts violates copyright law,” the Justice Department document asserted.

The agency that represented Trump through his Apprentice years disagrees.

“Compensating artists for AI use of their copyrighted material is not a litigation-driven theory; it reflects an economic reality already taking shape,” WME’s brief of last week outlines.

“Between mid-2023 and mid-2024 alone, rights holders and AI companies publicly announced more than two dozen licensing deals or partnerships, with at least twenty-eight involving payment for access to data to train AI models, including News Corp’s reported five-year, $250 million agreement with OpenAI, Reddit’s $60 million deal with Google, and Shutterstock’s reported $25 million to $50 million deals with each of Apple, Amazon, and Google,” the 18-page brief notes. “And that market has grown as AI developers continue to actively shop for licenses to film and television libraries.”

AKA – Sam, my man, don’t be a putz. Let’s roll some calls and make a deal.