UK Actors Union Threatens Court Action To BBC, ITV, Disney & Pact If Members Rights Are Breached Over AI

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: The UK actors union has threatened to go to the “courts if necessary” if members’ rights continue to be breached in the training of AI models.

In an open letter to bosses at the BBC, Disney, ITV and producer trade body Pact, Equity pulled no punches in delineating what it expects from both past and future use of British actors’ rights in the development of the thorny and invasive tech.

Ramping up the stakes, Equity concluded the letter by saying: “Where performers’ rights are breached, Equity will robustly defend members, including via the courts if necessary.” Liam Budd, Equity’s Recorded Media Industrial Official, described what the union believes has been taking place as “industrial scale theft of our members’ data.” As set out in the letter, which Deadline has seen in advance of publication, Equity’s issue surrounds AI developers’ demand for access to rights-protected content that can be used to “train” AI models. “Content owners are capitalising on this demand by entering into licensing deals with AI companies – granting them rights to use the content for AI training purposes and thereby exploiting the content in new ways that have not been contemplated until now,” the letter said. “An urgent conversation is therefore needed to ensure that any such new exploitation of rights-protected content in the context of AI is carried out with full respect and recognition of performers’ property rights and applicable data protection laws.” The union has had “productive conversations with companies who engage our members for the express purpose of creating content to train foundational AI models,” it said, and urged that conversation to expand to broadcasters, streamers, indies and video game platforms.