{"id":901103,"date":"2026-10-31T13:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T13:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/901103\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T13:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T13:42:14","slug":"cate-blanchett-backed-group-of-stars-files-brief-in-nyt-openai-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/901103\/","title":{"rendered":"Cate Blanchett-Backed Group of Stars Files Brief in NYT-OpenAI Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Human Consent Foundation<\/a>, the Cate Blanchett-backed nonprofit trying to protect the likenesses of individuals from unauthorized scraping by AI models, and a legion of Hollywood companies have filed an amicus brief in the New York Times<\/a>\u2018 lawsuit against OpenAI<\/a> and Microsoft, claiming the tech companies\u2019 position that it could not reasonably clear the rights for content \u201cmischaracterizations\u201d\u00a0in light of an active licensing market. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe group\u2019s 31-page brief was filed in the Southern District of New York late Friday, and 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 featured an appendix with a suite of Hollywood stars supportive of the cause, including Anne Hathaway, Emma Thompson, Dan Levy, Ron Howard, Madonna, Olivia Wilde and more.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendants have argued that licensing creative works for AI training is cost-prohibitive,\u201d\u00a0the brief read. \u201cDefendants 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 works at scale and cost-effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement, HCF co-founder and CEO Nikki Hexum said the filing was intended to show the court \u201chow the creative industry actually works and acknowledge the solutions that have been built and are continuing to develop for this new digital era.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur 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,\u201d\u00a0Hexum added. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Human Consent Foundation was founded<\/a> as RSL Media in May by Hexum and Blanchett, launching<\/a> a registry in June where people could log what permissions they gave AI models to scrape their likenesses. The HCF is also backed by Steven Soderbergh, and he and Blanchett offered statements in the brief declaring that the principle of permission should not change in the AI era.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been working in film and theater for over 30 years, and in that time, the principle has never changed,\u201d\u00a0Blanchett said in the brief. \u201cIf 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\u2019t a new idea or a complicated legal framework, it is simply how we treat each other in this industry. Consent isn\u2019t a barrier to creativity, it is the foundation of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOther celebrity signatories include Ariana DeBose, Bette Midler, Christian Vesper, Christine Vachon, Helen Mirren, Dave Eggers, Francesca Amfitheatrof, Greg Berlanti, Julia Roberts, Melody Walker, Nina Gregory, Paul Feig, Ram Bergman, Rian Johnson, Richard Louderback, Robert De Niro, Rosario Dawson, Scarlett Johansson, Vince Gilligan and the Stan Lee Foundation.<\/p>\n

\n\tAn OpenAI spokesperson pointed Variety to a blog post published<\/a> on Friday featuring briefs from several groups \u2014\u00a0including the U.S. government, as of last month \u2014\u00a0in support of the tech giant\u2019s position that its scraping was protected by the \u201cfair use\u201d doctrine, which gives people the right to use copyrighted work without the rights holder\u2019s permission in select cases.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cExperts and leaders across a wide range of fields have recognized that fair use is a win-win that benefits everyone, and have shared their perspectives with the Court in filing briefs in support of fair use,\u201d\u00a0the post read.<\/p>\n

\n\tMicrosoft did not respond to an immediate request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe amicus brief came a day after SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America and the American Federation of Musicians filed their own brief against OpenAI and Microsoft, urging the court that the tech companies\u2019 claim that their actions constituted fair use \u201cwould render moot the terms the unions and the industry agreed to at the bargaining table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt would harm not just the copyright owners, but the people who create the work,\u201d\u00a0their Thursday brief read.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe New York Times filed its lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, one of the startup\u2019s chief backers, in December 2023, alleging the ChatGPT founder violated the publisher\u2019s copyright by scraping thousands of news articles without permission. The Times filed for summary judgment in the case last month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Human Consent Foundation, the Cate Blanchett-backed nonprofit trying to protect the likenesses of individuals from unauthorized scraping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,377378,1283,21286],"class_list":["post-901103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-human-consent-foundation","tag-openai","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}