Artists Against Copyright Infringement

NaNa page - The Graphic Artist Guild PROTECT ARTISTS’ RIGHTS Artists, your work fuels AI — and it’s being taken without your consent. The state of our industry is at a critical turning point regarding the use of AI. We remain dedicated t...

Join our No Artists No Art campaign on social media and by speaking up about the importance of protecting working creatives and the value we bring to society, culture, and the economy.

graphicartistsguild.org/NANA

Big tech throws huge money at AI influencers, but not everyone wants in Microsoft and Google are pouring money into creator deals worth up to $600,000 to market AI tools.

Reporting highlighted by CNBC notes that some influencers and creatives are turning down AI‑related sponsorships altogether, citing concerns about audience backlash, ethical questions around AI, or fears of being seen as “selling out” to a controversial technology.
finance.yahoo.com/news/big-tec...

He spent decades perfecting his voice. Now he says Google stole it. — The Washington Post NPR’s David Greene says he was “completely freaked out” when he heard an AI voice that sounded just like his own, and he’s suing over it.

“He is suing Google, alleging that it violated his rights by building a product that replicated his voice without payment or permission, giving users the power to make it say things Greene would never say.”

Google Says People Are Copying Its AI Without Its Permission, Much Like It Scraped Everybody's Data Without Asking to Create Its AI in the First Place Google accused "commercially motivated" actors of trying to clone its Gemini AI after indiscriminately scraping the web for its models.

The company, alongside many of its competitors in the AI space, has been indiscriminately scraping the internet for content, without compensating rightsholders, racking up many copyright infringement lawsuits along the way.

futurism.com/future-socie...

Adam Schiff And John Curtis Introduce Bill To Require Tech To Disclose Copyrighted Works Used In AI Training Models The legislation would require tech to disclose copyrighted works used in their models.

The Copyright Labeling & Ethical AI Reporting Act would require companies file a notice with the Register of Copyrights that detail the copyrighted works used to train datasets for an AI model. The notice would apply retroactively to models already available.

deadline.com/2026/02/sena...

The court, in reversing in part a district court’s grant of summary judgment, emphasized that a service provider could not “curate[d] its collection of images for display” and still preserve its safe harbor status

www.vitallaw.com/news/copyrig...

Your Voice Matters, It's Time to Take Action | Copyright Alliance Your Voice Matters, It's Time to Take Action. Email Congress today! Dear Creators and Friends of the Creative Community, Your voice matters now more than ever. Speak up today to ensure your creativity...

Send a letter to your Congressional Representatives to continue to encourage them to stand up for creators.

copyrightalliance.org/get-involved...

Photographer's 12-Year-Long Fight Over 'Blackbeard's Law' Might Be Over The case challenged a law shielding U.S. states from copyright claims.

North Carolina initially agreed in 2013 to stop the copyright violations & pay Allen $15,000 for unauthorized use. Then, in 2015, North Carolina passed “Blackbeard’s Law,” which allowed state agencies to freely use materials related to shipwrecks in their possession.

petapixel.com/2026/01/29/p...

COPYRIGHT—Sovereign immunity will have to wait another day.
Allen discovered that his work had been uploaded to an NC-operated YouTube channel and onto other social media platforms. Two years later, the State formally commandeered the footage for itself..

www.vitallaw.com/news/copyrig....

Publishers Seek to Join Class Action Against Google Two members of the Association of American Publishers, Cengage and Hachette Book Group, have asked a court to allow them to join an ongoing class action lawsuit first brought by illustrators and autho...

The original copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in 2023 by a group of illustrators and writers. Now Cengage & the trade publisher Hachette Book Group, are asking to enter the case to represent all publishers whose rights have also infringed by Google.

www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Judge advances digital publisher Ziff Davis’ ChatGPT copyright infringement claims ChatGPT maker OpenAI successfully won a stay of discovery concerning newer models of ChatGPT that post-date the versions already involved in the broad multi-district litigation underway in Manhattan f...

A U.S. District Judge refused to throw out three of the publisher’s copyright infringement claims which accused OpenAI of distributing copies of its copyrighted works with the copyright management information removed, in violation of the DMCA.

www.courthousenews.com/judge-advanc...

Proposed US Bill Reduces Fees and Barriers to Copyrighting Photos A new US Senate bill wants to make it less expensive for visual artists, which includes photographers, to protect their work.

A new bill that is being proposed wants to make it less expensive for visual artists to protect their work. Called the Visual Artists Copyright Reform Act of 2025 (VACRA), it wants to reduce fees associated with copyright protection.

petapixel.com/2025/12/17/p...

The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Reach Agreement to Bring Disney Characters to Sora | The Walt Disney Company Disney and OpenAI have reached an agreement for Disney to become the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform.

Disney & OpenAI are affirming a shared commitment to the responsible use of AI that protects user safety & the rights of creators. The companies will advance human-centered AI that respects the creative industries & expands what is possible for storytelling.

thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-opena...

AI companies are robbing everyone California AB-412 would force AI companies to be transparent about what data they’ve taken to build their models.

AI models are built out of content & data these companies take without getting permission, without offering compensation to all the humans whose writing & ideas & videos & voices & thoughts & labor & time & perspective go into making these products valuable.

journal.hitrecord.org/p/ai-compani...

Supreme Court weighs copyright fight between music industry and internet providers At issue is whether internet providers can be liable for their users' committing copyright violations using its services.

The coalition argues Cox was sent numerous notices of specific IP addresses repeatedly violating music copyrights and that Cox's failure to terminate those IP addresses from internet access means that Cox should face the music.

www.npr.org/2025/12/01/n...

New licensing deal highlights the growing trend of media giants embracing AI The AI entertainment landscape is starting to shift, with deals springing up between formerly adversarial AI companies and entertainment corporations, especially in the music space.

The AI entertainment landscape is starting to shift, with deals springing up between formerly adversarial AI companies and entertainment corporations, especially in the music space.

www.npr.org/2025/11/07/n...

"Copying protectable expression to create a competing substitute isn’t innovation: it’s theft," Thomson Reuters argues in papers filed Wednesday with the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

www.mediapost.com/publications...

Warner Music settles copyright lawsuit with Udio, signs deal for AI music platform | TechCrunch The subscription service will allow users to make remixes, covers, and new songs using the voices of artists and compositions of songwriters who choose to participate.

WMG said that the “next-generation music creation, listening, and discovery platform” will be powered by generative AI models trained on licensed and authorized music.

techcrunch.com/2025/11/19/w...

Creator Spotlight: Storm Chaser & Photographer Dan Robinson This week, we're pleased to introduce you to former professional storm chaser and photographer, Dan Robinson. Dan has been in the industry for over 33 years, where he has seen "190 tornadoes and cover...

The platforms not only made searching for infringing copies impossible, but they often stalled or simply stopped responding to DMCA takedowns. Stolen videos would stay up for months, getting tens of millions of views while my YouTube originals faltered.

copyrightalliance.org/storm-chaser...

Court Rules AI News Summaries May Infringe Copyright News publishers just cleared a key hurdle against Cohere in a copyright fight over AI-generated "substitutive summaries" of their reporting.

Judge Colleen McMahon held that “substitutive summaries”—non-verbatim outputs that mirror the expressive structure and journalistic storytelling choices of the originals—may plausibly infringe copyright. That was enough to let the claims move forward.

copyrightlately.com/court-rules-...

Photographer Loses Lawsuit After Museum’s Use of His Image Is Ruled Fair Use The judge agreed with the photographer's argument but ruled it was fair use.

Zlozower claimed the museum neither licensed the photo nor provided credit or a source when exhibiting the image of the band in the exhibit about guitars.

petapixel.com/2025/11/13/p...

Avast! Fayetteville Man Continues Lawsuit Against State Over Footage of Blackbeard’s Ship After 12 years, Rick Allen of Fayetteville is still fighting NC officials in court over photos and videos he made of Blackbeard's pirate ship

Videographer Rick Allen says North Carolina illegally copied his work without permission or payment. More than a decade later, he’s still trying to get paid.

www.cityviewnc.com/stories/avas...

The court found that both the memorisation in the language models and the reproduction of the song lyrics in the chatbot's outputs constitute infringements of copyright exploitation rights, according to a statement on the ruling.

www.reuters.com/world/german...

Rockwell Family Denounces DHS Posts The family of Norman Rockwell has called upon federal agencies to stop using the artist’s work in content promoting anti-immigration policies.

The family of the American artist Norman Rockwell has called upon federal agencies to stop using the artist’s work in content promoting the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies.

rehs.com/eng/2025/11/...

Why AI Opt-Out Systems Don’t Work | Copyright Alliance Throughout the history of the United States, our copyright system has always been an opt-in system. That means if someone wants to use a copyrighted work, they have to get permission from the copyrigh...

There’s a reason that copyright law has never embraced an opt-out system and that’s because opt-out systems do not work. There are many legal, technical, operational, and policy problems and inefficiencies with an opt-out system.
copyrightalliance.org/why-opt-out-...

OpenAI in Danger After Authors Suing It Gain Access to Its Internal Slack Messages Authors and publishers, who are suing OpenAI, secured access to internal Slack messages and emails discussing the deletion of pirated books.

According to the publication, the communications could demonstrate willful infringement, potentially leading to enhanced damages of up to $150,000 per work, a massive increase from just $750.

futurism.com/artificial-i...

AI’s Free Ride on Creative Labor Is Undermining the Marketplace – DC Journal - InsideSources There’s a principle that keeps a free market free: You can’t take what isn’t yours and sell it as your own. Yet, that is precisely what some of the most

There’s a principle that keeps a free market free: You can’t take what isn’t yours and sell it as your own. Yet, that is precisely what some of the most prominent players in artificial intelligence are doing.

dcjournal.com/ais-free-rid...

Musicians’ heirs hit out at AI deepfakes as 'digital grave robbing’ The debates about how AI technology should be regulated continue, with the latest views coming from a group of organisations and heirs.

“These AI-generated synthetic imitations involuntarily resurrect iconic music performers, sports figures and actors without consent, context, or compensation—reducing cultural heritage to algorithmic spectacle and gratuitous ridicule,” it blasts.

musically.com/2025/10/28/m...

The question isn't whether AI will transform our world—it already is. The question is whether we'll learn from our mistakes. Or having not learned, we are destined to repeat them.

www.digitalcitizensalliance.org/news/press-r...

Anthropic Settlement Signals AI Innovation Can Thrive Within Existing Copyright Framework The $1.5 billion settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic, recently granted preliminary approval, is the largest copyright settlement in American legal history. That's impressive, but more important, it shows...

[Anthropic] markets itself as providing ethical AI, yet it trained its models using books stolen from piracy websites. When challenged in court, it agreed to pay $1.5 billion and destroy the pirated materials without admitting wrongdoing.

ipwatchdog.com/2025/10/15/a...