Amoako Boafo, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and Actor Julianne Moore Among 13,000 Signers of Open Letter Protesting Unlicensed Use of Works to Train AI

A open letter against the mining of artistic works for training artificial intelligence (AI) tools has garnered the public support of artists Joel Shapiro, Gregory Edwards, Amoako Boafo, Joanna Pousette-Dart, Tishan Hsu, as well as photographer and painter Lynn Goldsmith.

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted,” said the petition, which was released on October 22.

The artists join more than 13,000 creative professionals and dozens of organizations from various creative industries in several countries, including Björn Ulvaeus of Swedish supergroup ABBA, Nobel-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and actors Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, and Sean Astin.

The executives and organizations include Mary Engel, Founder and Executive Director, American Photography Archives Group; Isabelle Doran, CEO, The Association of Photographers; David Trust, CEO, Professional Photographers of America; and Christian Zimmermann, CEO of the Design and Artists Copyright Society.

Leonora Carrington’s son Harold Gabriel Weisz Carrington, art historian Susie Hodge, art advisor Susan Blackman and Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design professor of philosophy and aesthetics Daniel M. Feige were also signatories of the letter.

Earlier this year in April, more than 200 musicians, composers, songwriters and other artists signed an open letter penned by the Artists Rights Alliance demanding the responsible use of AI in music. “We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”

And last July, more than 15,000 writers—including Jennifer Egan, Michael Pollan, Min Jin Lee, and Margaret Atwood—endorsed an open letter from the Authors Guild to prominent AI companies urging them to obtain consent, credit, and fairly compensate authors before incorporating copyrighted work into datasets used to train generative AI technologies.