Business
Hollywood writers say AI is ripping off their work. They want studios to sue
When the Writers Guild of America approved a contract with major studios in 2023, ending a 148-day strike, the union became the first bargaining group to gain significant guardrails around artificial intelligence in Hollywood.
But as AI innovation continues to advance, writers say they need more protection from studios. Now, they’re urging entertainment companies to take legal action against AI firms that they allege are using writers’ work to train AI models without their permission.
John Rogers, a 58-year-old screenwriter in L.A., has spent years co-creating the world of TV drama series “Leverage.” After experimenting with ChatGPT, Rogers said he and the show’s creative team suspected that 77 episodes of the series — or five years’ worth of work — had been ripped off and used to fuel AI.
Rogers said that in 2023, after generative AI took off as a mainstream business, he asked ChatGPT to suggest an episode plot for “Leverage,” a modern day Robin Hood story about a former insurance investigator who works with a team of criminals that steals from unscrupulous rich people and compensates those they have hurt.
Without Rogers prompting the chatbot with character names, ChatGPT suggested a plot idea about taking down a corrupt CEO using characters from the show on its own, Rogers said.
Then he found out that scripts for “Leverage,” along with other shows Rogers was involved with, including 2007’s “Transformers” and the TNT series “The Librarians,” were included in a database that was used to train AI models. That data set had subtitles from OpenSubtitles.org, a website that provides subtitles to movies and TV shows in different languages, according to a November story from the Atlantic.
“I’m angry at the absolute arrogance of these companies,” Rogers said. “These companies have gotten hundreds of billions of dollars of value that would not exist if not for our work.”
The guild sent a letter in December to leaders at major studios, including Netflix, Amazon MGM Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery. When reached by The Times, those studios either declined or did not respond to a request for comment on the guild’s letter.
So far, no major studio has filed a lawsuit against any of the big AI companies, despite the writers’ complaints. There have been no publicly announced content licensing deals with AI companies, but some major studios have held discussions with AI firms about the technology, causing concerns among Hollywood talent that more of their jobs will be automated to save money.
“The studios own the copyrights to our material that’s being stolen, so they have grounds for legal action, and that’s why we wrote the letter,” Meredith Stiehm, president of the WGA West, said in an interview. “Frankly, they’ve been negligent. They have not protested the theft of this copyrighted material by the AI companies, and it’s a capitulation on their part to still be on the sidelines.”
The tensions come as the contract between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is set to expire in May 2026. Intellectual property rights and AI will surely be an important element in the upcoming negotiations, said David Smith, a professor of economics at the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.
“They’re highlighting that it’s going to be a central concern, a key issue that is going to determine how negotiations go,” Smith said regarding the WGA’s letter.
Many writers, including Rogers, Stiehm, “The Killing” creator Veena Sud and “Grey’s Anatomy” co-creator Shonda Rhimes, were listed in a database that the Atlantic created to show what subtitles were used to train AI models from companies, including Facebook owner Meta and Anthropic.
“I’m stunned, disgusted, horrified at what is essentially straight-up plagiarism,” Sud said in a statement. “These AI developers will keep stealing my and other writers’ words until a court finds it illegal, until the studios take action against this theft, and/or until policymakers require developers to negotiate and pay artists for use of our material. It’s a pretty basic concept: Pay the worker for their work.”
The tech industry has said that it should be able to train its AI models with content available online under the “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of material without permission from the copyright holder.
“We respect intellectual property rights and believe our use of information to train AI models is consistent with existing law,” Meta said in a statement.
Anthropic did not return a request for comment.
“We build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner protected by fair use and related principles, and supported by long-standing and widely accepted legal precedents,” OpenAI said in a statement. “We view this principle as fair to creators, necessary for innovators, and critical for US competitiveness.”
The problem is what constitutes “publicly available” and how that material becomes accessible to the AI models.
When a writer sells their work to a studio, the studio owns the copyright to that material. Lisa Callif, a partner with Los Angeles law firm Donaldson Callif Perez, said she believes that studios would have legal standing to sue the AI companies.
“The tricky part is whether or not the studios agree that the works have to be defended,” Callif said. “The studios have a vested interest in these AI platforms being developed and being useful to them.”
The current contract between the WGA and AMPTP contains language to ensure that there is a human writer behind every script. Writers must be notified if they are given research or intellectual property that uses AI, and a writer cannot be made to use AI in their work if they don’t want to, the contract says. But there is nothing in the agreement that addresses compensation when a writer’s work is used to train AI models.
“We didn’t get everything we wanted on training, and that’s why we so urge the studios to do something about this scraping of our material,” Stiehm said.
The AMPTP declined to comment for this story.
Some studios are working with AI companies as they look for ways to cut costs. For example, “Hunger Games” studio Lionsgate has a partnership with New York AI company Runway to create a new model for Lionsgate to help with behind-the-scenes processes such as storyboarding.
Tech giants like Amazon (which operates the Prime Video streaming service and MGM Studios) and YouTube parent company Google have invested billions of dollars in Anthropic. YouTube last year unveiled a feature for its video creators to help them brainstorm ideas.
Companies want to use artificial intelligence but are also wary about upsetting Hollywood talent.
OpenAI has been in exploratory talks with studios about how they could use its text-to-video tool Sora, according to an OpenAI partnerships lead who wanted to speak anonymously because the discussions are ongoing. Sora has been used to make music videos, commercials and short films. The discussions have not involved licensing whole libraries of content, this person said.
OpenAI has met with Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney, according to several other people familiar with the matter who declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Suing the AI giants would be expensive and time consuming. Countries around the world have different rules for copyright holders, making the legal landscape challenging.
Nonetheless, AI companies are facing several copyright lawsuits from publishers such as the New York Times and music giants, including Universal Music Group.
The results of the pending cases will help guide other entertainment companies’ next moves, experts said.
“It has massive implications in the industry,” said media lawyer Kailin Che at entertainment law firm Feig/Finkel. “I think everyone’s gonna wait and see what happens there.”
On Tuesday, a judge ruled in favor of Thomson Reuters in its lawsuit against AI startup Ross Intelligence, which it accused of reproducing work from its research firm Westlaw, according to reports. The judge rejected Ross’ possible defenses, including on “fair use.”
John Lopez, a 44-year-old writer who has worked on drama series “The Terminal List” and “Strange Angel,” said he’s worried that up and coming writers will have a harder time breaking in, adding that the technology also devalues the work and artistry of screenwriting.
“This was blood, sweat and tears and work and love, and it was transformed into just value for them,” Rogers said.
The iPic dine-in movie theater chain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and intends to pursue a sale of its assets, citing the difficult post-pandemic theatrical market.
The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company has 13 locations across the U.S., including in Pasadena and Westwood, according to a Feb. 25 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Florida, West Palm Beach division.
As part of the bankruptcy process, the Pasadena and Westwood theaters will be permanently closed, according to WARN Act notices filed with the state of California’s Employment Development Department.
The company came to its conclusion after “exploring a range of possible alternatives,” iPic Chief Executive Patrick Quinn said in a statement.
“We are committed to continuing our business operations with minimal impact throughout the process and will endeavor to serve our customers with the high standard of care they have come to expect from us,” he said.
The company will keep its current management to maintain day-to-day operations while it goes through the bankruptcy process, iPic said in the statement. The last day of employment for workers in its Pasadena and Westwood locations is April 28, according to a state WARN Act notice. The chain has 1,300 full- and part-time employees, with 193 workers in California.
The theatrical business, including the exhibition industry, still has not recovered from the pandemic’s effect on consumer behavior. Last year, overall box office revenue in the U.S. and Canada totaled about $8.8 billion, up just 1.6% compared with 2024. Even more troubling is that industry revenue in 2025 was down 22.1% compared with pre-pandemic 2019’s totals.
IPic noted those trends in its bankruptcy filing, describing the changes in consumer behavior as “lasting” and blaming the rise of streaming for “fundamentally” altering the movie theater business.
“These industry shifts have directly reduced box office revenues and related ancillary revenues, including food and beverage sales,” the company stated in its bankruptcy filing.
IPic also attributed its decision to rising rents and labor costs.
The company estimated it owed about $141,000 in taxes and about $2.7 million in total unsecured claims. The company’s assets were valued at about $155.3 million, the majority of which coming from theater equipment and furniture. Its liabilities totaled $113.9 million.
The chain had previously filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019.
In an expansion of its business of processing pharmaceuticals in Earth’s orbit, Varda Space Industries is renting a large El Segundo plant where toy manufacturer Mattel used to design Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls.
The plant in El Segundo’s aerospace corridor will be an extension of Varda Space Industries’ headquarters in a much smaller building on nearby Aviation Boulevard.
Varda will occupy a 205,443-square-foot industrial and office campus at 2031 E. Mariposa Ave., which will give it additional capacity to manufacture spacecraft at scale, the company said.
Originally built in the 1940s as an aircraft facility, the complex has a history as part of aerospace and defense industries that have long shaped the South Bay and is near a host of major defense and space contractors. It is also close to Los Angeles Air Force Base, headquarters to the Space Systems Command.
Workers test AstroForge’s Odin asteroid probe, which was lost in space after launch this year.
(Varda Space Industries)
Varda is one of a new generation of aerospace startups that have flourished in Southern California and the South Bay over the last several years, particularly in El Segundo, often with ties to SpaceX.
Elon Musk’s company, founded in 2002 in El Segundo, has revolutionized the industry with reusable rockets that have radically lowered the cost of lifting payloads into space. Though it has moved its headquarters to Texas, SpaceX retains large-scale operations in Hawthorne.
Varda co-founder and Chief Executive Will Bruey is a former SpaceX avionics engineer, and the company’s spacecraft are launched on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Varda makes automated labs that look like cylindrical desktop speakers, which it sends into orbit in capsules and satellite platforms it also builds. There, in microgravity, the miniature labs grow molecular crystals that are purer than those produced in Earth’s gravity for use in pharmaceuticals.
It has contracts with drug companies and also the military, which tests technology at hypersonic speeds as the capsules return to Earth.
Its fifth capsule was launched in November and returned to Earth in late January; its next mission is set in the coming weeks. Varda has more than 10 missions scheduled on Falcon 9s through 2028.
For the last several decades, the Mariposa Avenue property served as the research and development center for Mattel Toys. El Segundo has also long been a center for the toy industry as companies like to set up shop in the shadow of Mattel.
The Mattel facility “has always been an exceptional property with a legacy tied to aerospace innovation, and leasing to Varda Space Industries feels like a natural continuation of that story,” said Michael Woods, a partner at GPI Cos., which owns the property.
“We are proud to support a company that is genuinely pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and are excited to watch Varda grow and thrive here in El Segundo,” Woods said.
As one of the country’s most active hubs of aerospace and defense innovation, El Segundo has seen its industrial property vacancy fall to 3.4% on demand from space companies, government contractors and technology startups, real estate brokerage CBRE said.
Successful startups often have to leave the neighborhood when they want to expand, real estate broker Bob Haley of CBRE said. The 9-acre Mattel facility was big enough to keep Varda in the city.
Last year, Varda subleased about 55,000 square feet of lab space from alternative protein company Beyond Meat at 888 Douglas St. in El Segundo, which it started moving into in June.
Varda will get the keys to its new building in December and spend four to eight months building production and assembly facilities as it ramps up operations. By the end of next year, it expects to have constructed 10 more spacecraft.
In the future, Varda could consolidate offices there, given its size. Currently, though, the plan is to retain all properties, creating a campus of three buildings within a mile of one another that are served by the company’s transportation services, Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Barr said.
“We already have Varda-branded shuttles running up and down Aviation Boulevard,” he said.
Ships near the Strait of Hormuz before and after attacks began
Every day, around 80 oil and gas tankers typically pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway off Iran’s southern coast that carries a fifth of the world’s oil and a significant amount of natural gas.
On Monday, just two oil and gas tankers appear to have crossed the strait, according to a New York Times analysis of shipping activity from Kpler, an industry data firm. Since then, one tanker passed through.
“It’s a de facto closure,” said Dan Pickering, chief investment officer of Pickering Energy Partners, a Houston financial services firm. “You’ve got a significant number of vessels on either side of the strait but no one is willing to go through.”
Tankers have been staying away from Hormuz since the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that began on Saturday. A prolonged conflict could ripple broadly across the global economy, threatening the energy supplies of countries halfway around the world and stoking inflation.
International oil prices have climbed 12 percent since the fighting began, trading Tuesday around $81 a barrel, and natural gas prices have surged in Europe and in Asia.
A senior Iranian military official threatened on Monday to “set on fire” any ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz. Vessels in the region have already come under attack. Several oil and gas facilities have also been struck or affected by nearby shelling, though the damage did not initially appear to be catastrophic.
Where ships and energy facilities have been damaged
A fire broke out Tuesday at a major energy hub in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, from the falling debris of a downed drone, the authorities said. On Monday, Qatar halted production of liquefied natural gas, or fuel that has been cooled so that it can be transported on ships, after attacks on its facilities.
The sharp reduction in tanker traffic is reducing the supply of oil and gas to world markets, pushing up prices for both commodities. And the longer that ships stay away from the Strait of Hormuz, the less oil and gas get out to the world, which could raise prices even more.
Shipping companies have paused their tankers to protect their crew and cargo, and because insurance companies are charging significantly more to cover vessels in the conflict area.
On Tuesday, President Trump said that “if necessary,” the U.S. Navy would begin escorting tankers through the strait. He also said a U.S. government agency would begin offering “political risk insurance” to shipping lines in the area.
In addition to tankers, other large vessels regularly go through the strait, including car carriers and container ships. In normal conditions, nearly 160 make the trip each day.
Some ships in the region turn off the devices that broadcast their positions, while others transmit false locations — making it hard to give a full picture of the traffic in the strait.
The Shiva is a small oil tanker that has repeatedly faked its location, according to TankerTrackers.com, which tracks global oil shipments. It is suspected of carrying sanctioned Iranian oil, according to Kpler. The Shiva was one of the two tankers that crossed the strait on Monday.
The oil and gas that typically move through the strait come from big producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and United Arab Emirates, and are exported around the world.
Where tankers moving through the Strait have traveled
In 2024, more than 80 percent of the oil and gas transported through the Strait of Hormuz went to Asia. China, India, Japan and South Korea were the top importers, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Countries have energy stockpiles that could last them into the coming months, but a continued shutdown of the strait could damage their economies.
Several big disruptions have roiled supply chains in recent years, but the tanker standstill in the Strait of Hormuz could have an outsize impact.
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