Opinion: How AI systems are scooping up Hollywood writers and actors' work

Members and supporters of SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America in a flash mob on the picket line at Fox Studios on Aug. 11. They warn that the writers’ room may soon become a single writer’s desk — with one writer being hired to polish up a first draft produced by a ChatGPT or other large language systems. Despite LAION’s recommendation that the dataset “should only be used for academic research purposes,” it appears to have been used by some of the largest for-profit generative AI companies for image generation applications. I am, however, charged with protecting competition, and I believe that some of the strikers’ claims raise competition concerns that must be taken seriously — and have implications far beyond entertainment. The Supreme Court would in 1948 dryly explain that this mandate was left broad on purpose as there “is no limit to human inventiveness” such that “a definition that fitted practices known to lead towards an unlawful restraint of trade today would not fit tomorrow’s new inventions.” Later cases make clear that the FTC Act may prevent a powerful market participant from forcing a weaker one to act against its interests, particularly when it significantly reduced competition.