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October 24, 2023

Dear Secretary Raimondo and Secretary Blinken,

On behalf of the Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO (DPE), I write in strong support of the language in Principle 11 of the G7’s International Draft Guiding Principles for Organizations Developing Advanced AI Systems. I urge the United States government and the G7 to continue supporting explicit language on respecting material protected by intellectual property rights, including copyright-protected content, and ensuring transparency of data sets,  as part of promoting safe, secure, and trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology worldwide. 

AI is an issue that directly affects the members of DPE’s 12 affiliate unions in the arts, entertainment, and media industries. These unions’ members work as actors, stagehands, craftspeople, choreographers, dancers, directors, directorial team members, editors, musicians, stunt performers, instrumentalists, writers, singers, stage managers, recording artists, broadcasters, audio engineers, cinematographers, and in many other creative professions. They help power a sector of the economy that regularly generates four percent of the United States’ gross domestic product (GDP), creates a positive trade balance, and employs more than five million people. 

Union creative professionals depend on strong copyright protections and an effective copyright enforcement system for their economic security. While not typically the copyright holder, many of these middle-class workers earn collectively bargained pay and contributions to their health insurance and pension plans from the sales and licensing of the content they help create. In 2021, for instance, creative professionals represented by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), Directors Guild of America (DGA), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) received over $2.8 billion in residuals. In addition, union creative professionals’ future work opportunities depend on legitimate sales and licensing.

Absent worldwide safeguards to ensure consent and compensation for the use of copyrighted works and individual  intellectual property rights, and appropriate transparency of training sets, AI will be used as a sophisticated, deceptive tool for content theft, unauthorized digital replication of individual’s voices and likenesses, and cultural misappropriation. Developers will be incentivized to train their AI technologies on the creative works and the creative talents that the members of DPE’s affiliate unions develop, design, and bring to life. 

AI abuse threatens the economic livelihoods of union creative professionals. These individuals will lose out on the aforementioned collectively bargained royalties, residuals, and contributions to their health care and retirement funds that come from exploitation of the creative works they helped make.  They will be faced with job displacement and job replacement. Ingested stolen content will train AI technologies that circumvent labor contracts, minimize or eliminate the need for human workers, and, in worse case scenarios, replace a creative professional with a digital double of that professional or a replication of their work. In effect, union creative professionals will be unwitting contributors to their own economic demise. 

The potential for abuse and the catastrophic ramifications from it are why the stakes have never been higher for the everyday, middle-class Americans who are members of DPE’s affiliate unions in the arts, entertainment, and media industries. For this reason, I strongly support the language in Principle 11 of the G7’s International Draft Guiding Principles for Organizations Developing Advanced AI Systems and urge the United States government and the G7 to continue supporting explicit language on respecting copyright and ensuring transparency.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or Michael Wasser, DPE’s Assistant to the President/Legislative Director, at mwasser@dpeaflcio.org

Sincerely, 

Jennifer Dorning, President