Cate Blanchett, Cyndi Lauper, and 800+ creatives launch “Stealing Isn't Innovation” to protest unauthorized AI training, backed by RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and others
The VergeMia Sato
Context & Ripple Effects
The campaign extends a widening cross-industry organizing effort: the Creators Coalition on AI had already brought writers, actors, and technologists together around standards for training and use.
It also follows artists’ earlier public challenge to AI developers’ use of creative work and music-industry warnings about unauthorized training. RIAA and SAG-AFTRA backing gives this message institutional reach across recorded music and performer representation.
First-order effects
The campaign gives participating creatives and supporting trade groups a shared public vehicle to oppose unauthorized AI training, concentrating attention on consent and rights-holder control.
RIAA, SAG-AFTRA, and allied organizations become visible advocates for the campaign’s position, tying individual creator objections to organized industry representation.
Second-order effects
AI companies using or seeking creative datasets face more coordinated pressure to explain training sources and engage rights holders rather than treating objections as isolated artist campaigns.
The alignment of music and performer groups may strengthen parallel demands for training and use standards across creative sectors, building on the cross-disciplinary creator coalition.
Third-order effects
If such coalitions persist, access to creative material may increasingly be governed through collective rights negotiations and auditable provenance expectations rather than informal assumptions about web-scale availability.
The dispute is part of a broader contest over whether generative-AI commercialization requires permission-based content markets; campaigns alone do not determine the eventual legal or commercial model.
The trend: Creative-rights groups are consolidating across media sectors to push AI training toward consent, accountability, and negotiated access to protected work.
Don't let AI Viceroy @DavidSacks tell you changing the law to legalize taking artists' work without consent is innovation. It's a subsidy for theft. @human_artistry [image]
The @Human_Artistry Campaign, in partnership with the @NYTimes and other media partners, has launched “Stealing Isn't Innovation,” promoting the message that #AI systems should not be trained on unlicensed materials. Learn more here! https://www.stealingisntinnovation.com/
Today, the @human_artistry launched their 'Stealing Isn't Innovation' initiative in partnership with the New York Times and other media organizations. Over 700 artists, writers, and creators of all kinds are banding together with a unified message: We need real innovation - not …
Stealing creative work is not innovation. We can have advanced, rapidly developing AI while ensuring that publishers' and creators' rights are respected. https://stealingisntinnovation.com/ [image]
“Artists, writers, and creators of all kinds are banding together with a simple message: Stealing our work is not innovation. It's not progress. It's theft - plain and simple.” @human_artistry https://www.stealingisntinnovation.com/
We're not anti-tech, we're anti-theft. If the future of “innovation” depends on stealing creators' work without asking or paying, that's not progress - it's stealing, and we shouldn't accept it. #StealingIsntInnovation [image]
Jessica Jung is among the signees in the “Stealing Isn't Innovation” campaign from the Human Artistry Campaign @human_artistry More than 700 celebrity supporters are behind it including Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, Chaka Kahn, Jennifer Aniston, Ryan Tedder and Tayla Parx […