Music Artists Coalition File Brief in NYT v. OpenAI, Microsoft

A Hollywood-backed nonprofit, alongside the Music Artists Coalition and other groups, filed an amicus brief in the New York Times’ case against OpenAI and Microsoft.

Cate Blanchett’s nonprofit The Human Consent Foundation (HCF), striving to protect individuals’ name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights from unauthorized AI scraping, has filed an amicus brief in the New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alongside a coalition of artist advocacy groups.

The 31-page brief, filed in the Southern District of New York on Friday, argues that the tech companies’ position that it was impossible to effectively clear the rights for its use of such content runs counter to the active and proven infrastructure designed for that very purpose.

“Defendants have argued that licensing creative works for AI training is cost-prohibitive,” the brief reads. “Defendants also claim there is no settled means of valuing training data. The facts demonstrate otherwise. The creative industries already have in place a proven infrastructure and workflows to clear rights for dispersed work at scale and cost-effectively.”

The group was joined by CAA, the Music Artists Coalition, the National Association of Voice Actors, Writer Inc., and the Creative Coalition on AI. The brief also features an appendix with a host of Hollywood names supporting the cause, including Madonna, Olivia Wilde, Dan Levy, Ron Howard, Anne Hathaway, and Emma Thompson.

According to HCF co-founder and CEO Nikki Hexum, the filing was intended to show the court “how the creative industry actually works and acknowledge the solutions that have been built and are continuing to develop for this new digital era.”

“Our goal is to ensure that as the market for AI data licensing grows, the humans who create the value in that market are protected and have a meaningful choice,” said Hexum. “We are not starting from scratch. There is already a functioning market and infrastructure for licensing creative work. We just need to ensure that new AI technology respects those boundaries and choices, including the choice not to participate.”

“I’ve been working in film and theater for over 30 years, and in that time, the principle has never changed,” Blanchett said in the brief. “If someone wants to use my face, my voice, or my image, they ask me first. There is a contract. There is a conversation. This isn’t a new idea or a complicated legal framework; it is simply how we treat each other in this industry. Consent isn’t a barrier to creativity; it is the foundation of it.”

Founded as RSL Media in May by Hexum and Blanchett, the Human Consent Foundation launched a registry in June where individuals could log what permissions they gave AI models to scrape their likenesses. Other celebrities to sign their names to the brief include Bette Midler, Helen Mirren, Julia Roberts, Robert De Niro, Rosario Dawson, Scarlett Johansson, Vince Gilligan, and the Stan Lee Foundation.

On the other side of the debate, briefs from several groups, including the U.S. government, support the tech giant’s position that AI scraping is protected by the fair use doctrine—an argument that tech companies have broadly clung to since lawsuits over such conduct in the AI era began.