Hollywood's Counterattack: How Scarlett Johansson and Cate Blanchett Lead an Era-Defining Copyright War

When Scarlett Johansson's voice was cloned to promote products, and when Cate Blanchett's on-screen image was deconstructed and reassembled by algorithms, this was no longer a plot from sci-fi films like *Her* or *Blue Jasmine*, but a reality currently faced by Hollywood and the global creative industry. In early 2025, an anti-AI movement initiated by over 700 top artists, writers, and creators pushed the long-simmering conflict between tech giants and the creative community into open confrontation. Led by Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, this Artists' Voice movement makes a core accusation that is straightforward and sharp: tech companies' unauthorized, large-scale use of copyrighted works to train AI is not innovation, but blatant theft.

This movement is far from a simple celebrity endorsement. It marks a new phase in the creative industry's battle for survival rights in the digital age, intertwined with complex struggles involving law, economics, ethics, and culture. From the studios in Los Angeles to Capitol Hill in Washington, from the server farms in Silicon Valley to the screens of global audiences, the outcome of this conflict will redefine what constitutes creation, what ownership means, and the value of human creativity in an algorithm-driven future.

A long-brewing "perfect storm."

The tension between the creative industry and AI technology did not arise overnight. Over the past few years, the explosive growth of generative AI—such as breakthroughs in the image field by DALL-E and Midjourney, and the emergence of ChatGPT and Sora in text and video—has been fueled by the vast ocean of text, image, audio, and video data on the internet. Among this data, a significant amount of high-quality, copyrighted content from films, music, literature, and art has been scraped without permission or compensation, serving as nourishment for training AI models.

Observations indicate that this has created a structural contradiction. On one hand, AI companies argue that their actions constitute fair use, a necessary process for driving technological progress and innovation, even likening this learning from existing works to how human artists draw inspiration. On the other hand, creators see the digital deconstruction of their lifelong efforts—their style, voice, image, and even unique creative expressions—transformed into lines of code and weight parameters, which are then used to generate new content that may compete with them and dilute their market value.

Scarlett Johansson's personal experience serves as a microcosm of this conflict. In 2023, she took legal action against an AI application that used her name and likeness without authorization in advertisements. In 2024, she publicly condemned OpenAI for synthesizing a voice for its voice assistant, Sky, that was too similar to her voice in the film "Her," drawing widespread attention. By 2025, she once again called for stronger government regulation due to the dissemination of AI-generated political messages featuring her image. These incidents are not isolated cases but individual experiences within a systemic pattern of infringement. Cate Blanchett and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in 2024, joined nearly 400 Hollywood creatives in signing an open letter, urging the government to resist pressure from AI companies and not to weaken copyright protections.

Therefore, this joint action involving over 700 people represents a collective surge formed by the convergence of countless individual grievances. The wording in their joint statement—"theft, nothing more"—discards the ambiguity of technical jargon and returns to the fundamental ethical and legal language of property rights, aiming to reclaim the power to define this debate in public perception and the court of public opinion.

Dual Crisis of Economic Foundation and Cultural Sovereignty

The reason this movement can mobilize such a broad range of forces lies fundamentally in the fact that AI's unauthorized use of data touches upon two lifelines of the creative industry: economic viability and cultural sovereignty.

From an economic perspective, the creative ecosystem in the United States is far more than just the glamour of celebrities. The statement clearly points out that this system supports millions of jobs, drives economic growth, and projects cultural influence globally. It is a vast industrial chain covering film, television, music, publishing, theater, and visual arts, forming an interdependent employment network that ranges from top-tier stars to behind-the-scenes screenwriters, composers, costume designers, and independent artists. The free-riding behavior of AI directly threatens the sustainability of this network.

Analysis reveals that its threat mechanism operates on multiple levels. The most immediate is the erosion of copyright revenue. If AI can infinitely generate music, text, or images of similar styles, the market value of licensing original works will inevitably decline. At a deeper level, it impacts the future of professions. When algorithms can imitate or even combine the styles of top creators at an extremely low cost, the growth path for newcomers and the survival space for mid-level creators will be significantly compressed. Ultimately, this may undermine the economic foundation that attracts and nurtures talent for the entire industry.

From the perspective of cultural sovereignty, the issue becomes even more subtle and profound. Creative works are not merely commodities; they are carriers of personal identity, cultural expression, and social narratives. When an individual's voice, appearance, or artistic style is arbitrarily captured, replicated, and reconstructed by AI, it infringes not only on property rights but also on personal rights and the autonomy of expression. Characters portrayed by actors like Cate Blanchett are extensions of their artistic personas; the worlds crafted by writers are externalizations of their unique worldviews. The learning process of AI strips away the living connection between these creations and their creators, reducing them to mere data points.

The movement's declaration emphasizes the respect and protection of this valuable asset, which refers to both economic and cultural value. The creative industry is regarded as the core engine of America's global soft power, with its exported stories, values, and aesthetics influencing the world. If the source of its content production—the rights and motivation of creators—dries up due to the misuse of AI, this cultural influence will also struggle to sustain itself. Therefore, this struggle is also a contest over who will control the narrative dominance in the future: creators who carry human experience and emotion, or algorithmic black boxes driven by efficiency and scale?

Legal Labyrinths and the Quest for a Path to "Coexistence"

The core crux of the current conflict lies in the significant gray area that has emerged within the existing legal framework when addressing the novel phenomenon of AI data training. Copyright law aims to protect expression, not ideas. However, AI models often extract abstract features—such as style, patterns, and structure—that fall somewhere between the two from vast quantities of works. This presents unprecedented challenges for applying the fair use doctrine. Technology companies typically argue that their actions constitute transformative use (for the new purpose of training AI) and have a limited or even beneficial impact on the market for the original works (e.g., empowering creators through AI tools). Conversely, the creator camp contends that the large-scale, commercial copying of entire works for training directly harms the potential licensing market for those works and cannot be considered fair use.

The brilliance of this movement lies in the fact that it does not stop at accusations but proactively proposes a constructive framework: Ethical Collaboration and Licensing. The statement specifically points out: some AI companies obtain the content and materials they desire in a responsible and ethical manner through licensing agreements and partnerships. This suggests a viable alternative path. The movement advocates that technology companies should establish formal content partnerships with copyright holders and acquire training data through fair licensing agreements.

This means that the development of AI and the protection of creators' rights are not a zero-sum game. In fact, a clear and fair licensing market could benefit both parties. For creators, this ensures their labor is compensated and brings the use of their works under controllable scope. For AI companies, while it may increase upfront costs, it allows access to high-quality, clearly sourced data, significantly reduces legal risks, and helps establish a more sustainable business model and a more positive industry image. Some companies have already begun exploring this path, entering into data licensing agreements with image agencies, news organizations, or specific artists.

However, the path to coexistence is fraught with thorns. The key issue lies in how the authorization mechanism is designed. Is it a collective license for massive amounts of works? Or is item-by-item negotiation required? How are licensing fees determined? How is the use of data tracked and audited? All of these require complex and difficult negotiations among various industry stakeholders. The immense influence of this movement, led by top artists, lies in its ability to elevate these issues to the top of policymakers' and the public's agenda, applying pressure to establish new industry standards and legal interpretations.

Global Ripples and the Crossroads of the Future

The movement that took place in the United States is sending ripples across the globe. Reports from Japanese media indicate that the international creative community is closely watching this issue, as the borderless nature of AI means that legal precedents and legislation in any region could have global implications. The European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act has already attempted to impose certain transparency requirements on general-purpose AI models, including disclosing the copyright overview of training data. Countries like the United Kingdom and Japan are also actively exploring how copyright law can adapt to AI.

The appeal of Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, and others has transformed what might have been a professional debate confined within the industry into a global public event. This has forced tech giants to fight on three fronts: in courtrooms, legislative bodies, and the court of public opinion. The public's empathy for the violation of celebrities' personal rights can easily translate into understanding and support for the broader community of creators.

We are standing at a crossroads that defines the future of the creative ecosystem. One possibility is that, under strong industry pressure and public opinion, laws and policies lean toward strengthening copyright protection, promoting the formation of an AI data acquisition model dominated by licensing. This will reshape the cost structure of the AI industry but may give rise to a development path that places greater emphasis on data quality and compliance. Another possibility is that the existing model of "scrape first, dispute later" continues due to its developmental inertia, forcing creators to rely more on technical means (such as anti-crawling measures, digital watermarks) or seek entirely new business models, potentially leading to a dramatic restructuring of the creative industry landscape.

Regardless, the movement initiated by over 700 artists has sent a signal that cannot be ignored: the reckless sprint of technology cannot come at the cost of trampling on the fundamental rights of creators. True innovation should inherently include respect for and integration with existing values and order. AI possesses immense potential to reshape human creativity, but the unleashing of this potential must be built upon a foundation of fair dialogue and cooperation with the very source of human creativity—the creators themselves. When figures like Scarlett Johansson no longer merely portray the future on screen but collectively step onto the stage of the real world to speak up for the future of all creators, this dialogue about the soul of AI truly begins to touch the core. Its outcome will not only determine how the next great film or song is born but will also define, in the age of algorithms, what constitutes human dignity and the value of creation.