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John,
#AIDayofAction is here! Along with our friends at United Musicians and Allied Workers, the Freelancers’ Union, and more, we are so excited to get this day started and hope you will join us by taking action for the rights of working artists not to be replaced with AI.
Take Action
“Small art and love and beauty/ Their drudging spirits knew/ Yes, it is bread we fight for/ But we fight for roses too…” – Judy Collins, “Bread & Roses”
Music and workers’ rights have long gone hand-in-hand. The world may look very different today than it did when Judy Collins sang those words in 1976, but the fight is remarkably similar. Even back then, large corporations grew rich off the work of the creative community while passing along very little of the profits to the creators themselves. Today, those large corporations have a new tool in the form of AI that they believe can make creators obsolete, thereby demolishing our livelihoods.
We creators have always inspired one another. “Bread and roses” was originally a line from a speech given by women’s suffrage activist Helen Todd in 1911. Later that year, James Oppenheim took the phrase and turned it into a poem. Decades later in 1974, folk artist Mimi Fariña set the poem to music and asked her longtime friend Judy Collins to sing it.1 And now the world has a new technology in the form of artificial intelligence that allows creators to be inspired by and borrow from each others’ ideas.
AI has opened up a world of possibilities and has the potential to help individual humans make more money, work less, and compete with corporations. But the flip side is that those huge corporations see the potential to use AI to replace human creators completely. Their resistance to agree to not replace human creators with AI was a huge factor in the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) strike this year. And guess what? The writers won.2
By agreeing to the terms of the WGA, studios capitulated that human creators have worth beyond what technology alone offers. So how do we capitalize on this moment and extend similar protections to all creative industries? We believe that the best course of action is to get corporations right where it hurts: in the copyrights.
JOIN US
Today, on #AIDayofAction, we want to flood Congress with one single demand: to block large corporations from getting copyrights for works that include significant AI-enabled elements. This will help ensure that corporations must continue to hire human artists and creators if they want to hold copyrights on movies, music, books, etc. It also goes a long way to ensure that AI tools are more beneficial to individual creators, and not to the corporations that exploit them.
Are you on board? If so, there is so much you can do to help! On our page you can email your representatives to let them know you value human creators over corporate profits. You can call Congress to send an even more powerful message. (You can even call at night and leave a voicemail if you’re intimidated by phones!) You can spread the word on social media to let others know about our campaign. The important part is that you do it TODAY.
Take Action
We are so hopeful that by getting in early on the AI regulation conversation, independent artists and creators will be included. Help us bring attention to this very important subject and ensure that the world can continue to enjoy the art, music, books, and movies that only humans can make for many years to come.
In solidarity,
Lia at ❤️ Fight
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