Eighteen entertainment industry insiders have come together to form the Creators Coalition on AI (CCAI) as Hollywood continues to grapple with the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential threats to the industry.
What is the CCAI?
The coalition, founded by Oscar winners like Everything Everywhere All at Once director Daniel Kwan and producer Jonathan Wang, is an “agnostic convening organisation, born from the necessity for a central hub for cross-industry discussions about how AI is impacting the industry” according to the announcement made on Tuesday.
The CCAI aims to upgrade the industry’s systems and institutions by convening an industry-wide AI advisory committee to establish shared standards, definitions and best practices, including ethical and artistic protections for if and when AI is used.
The organisation is guided by four core pillars which include: 1) Transparency, consent and compensation for content and data; 2) Job protection and transition plans; 3) Guardrails against misuse and deepfakes; and 4) Safeguarding humanity in the creative process.
The effort is the first of its kind and backed by the signatures of more than 500 individuals including filmmakers, showrunners, writers and creative professionals from all over the entertainment industry.
Some big names on the list include Willow Smith, Kristen Stewart, Cate Blanchett and Dakota Johnson, amongst others.
Protecting the entertainment industry
Founders of the organisation emphasised that the move is not a dividing line between the tech and entertainment industries nor a line between labour and corporations.
“Instead, we are drawing a line between those who want to do this fast and those who want to do this right,” the announcement read.
“This is not a full rejection of AI. The technology is here. This is a commitment to responsible, human-centered innovation.
“We believe humanity is creative enough to design a system that allows for the tech and creative industries to coordinate, collaborate and flourish, but that will not happen by default.
“We must come together to redirect the current path and build a better system.”
This move comes shortly after many developments in the entertainment industry in relation to AI.
For example, Disney announced a groundbreaking decision last week to license over 200 of its iconic characters to OpenAI’s Sora, allowing users to generate videos with its characters on the platform.
“The biggest fear here is we can’t let the tech industry set the terms for our industry again because last time that happened, we had a streaming war and that became a bubble that popped,” said Kwan to The Hollywood Reporter.
“It ended up devaluing our stories, ruining our theatrical business model and destroying a lot of longstanding precedents and norms for talent contracts. The town invested billions of dollars, and in the end we all lost.
“Knowing that AI technology could be far more consequential, we knew that we had to step up and be the ones to help lead this conversation.”
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