Is Hollywood’s top lobbying group stepping off the sidelines? In a strongly worded statement from the normally measured Motion Picture Association, CEO Charles Rivkin called on OpenAI to take steps to protect intellectual property in its latest product, Sora 2, an invite-only app that allows users to place themselves in hyperrealistic clips trained on major studios’ IP.
“Since Sora 2’s release, videos that infringe our members’ films, shows, and characters have proliferated on OpenAI’s service and across social media,” Rivkin stated. “While OpenAI clarified it will ‘soon’ offer rightsholders more control over character generation, they must acknowledge it remains their responsibility – not rightsholders’ – to prevent infringement on the Sora 2 service. OpenAI needs to take immediate and decisive action to address this issue. Well-established copyright law safeguards the rights of creators and applies here.”
The MPA, which reps Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Amazon MGM Studios, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery, has in recent years taken strong stances on piracy and shutting down illegal websites that stream movies and TV shows.
While it has issued two-sentence statements in support of Disney, Universal and Warners lawsuits against AI company Midjourney over outputs infringing on studios’ popular characters (think: prompts creating Darth Vader or Shrek memes), the lobbying group has been relatively quiet on the major impacts of artificial intelligence tools on the entertainment industry.
More to come.