Artists & Creators Must Have Transparency NOW! - Sign this to send a letter to the following legislators
Senator Tom Umberg, Chair - CA Senate Judiciary Committee; CA Senate Pro Tempore Mike McGuire; CA Senate Judiciary Committee Members; CA Senate Appropriations Committee Members; CA State Senators
Every single day we don’t have transparency, the value of copyright loses ground and the harms inflicted to creative industries grow.
California has always been on the forefront of policies that can lead the way for America, and AB-412, The AI Copyright Transparency Act offers us the opportunity to lead by example as it empowers artists and creators to exercise their rights as copyright owners.
Thousands of people across a multitude of creative industries have found the entirety of their works, both personal and professional, used to train GenAI datasets without anyone having acquired consent, or having offered them any kind of credit or compensation. This is unacceptable!
Vast quantities of data are routinely and indiscriminately scraped from across the internet to train GenAI models. These works serve as the “data fuel” for these models, and yet there is no requirement for GenAI developers to provide the lawful owners of these materials with any way to know if their specific copyrighted materials are contained within a dataset or not. This is theft!
Federal law provides copyright holders with a variety of exclusive rights over their works, including the right to reproduce, distribute and display copyrighted materials. Copyrights give artists the ability to make money from their creative efforts (whose ripple effects are felt throughout the larger economy), and they increase economic incentives for investment in creative output.
GenAI developers are ignoring copyright statutes and they must not be rewarded for flouting copyright law.
AB-412 will increase transparency with respect to the use of copyrighted materials to train GenAI models by requiring GenAI developers to provide copyright owners with information about how their materials have been used.
AB-412 is literally the least the California Legislature can do to prevent GenAI developers from profiting off the copyrighted materials of uncredited and uncompensated artists and creators.
Tell your legislators:
We have the right to know how, where and when our works are used - we need the AI Copyright Transparency Act!
Sponsored by
To:
Senator Tom Umberg, Chair - CA Senate Judiciary Committee; CA Senate Pro Tempore Mike McGuire; CA Senate Judiciary Committee Members; CA Senate Appropriations Committee Members; CA State Senators
From:
[Your Name]
RE: SUPPORT AB-412 - THE AI COPYRIGHT TRANSPARENCY ACT
Dear Senator Umberg, Chair - Senate Judiciary Committee; Senate Judiciary Committee Members; Senate Appropriations Committee Members; Senate Pro Tempore McGuire; and my Senator:
I support the millions of artists and creators who contribute to the creative economies of the world.
Let’s Be Clear: Artists & Creators Must Have Transparency NOW!
In CA alone 14.9% of our State's $3.4 trillion-dollar economy (in 2021) came directly from the creative sectors [1], and in the United States 7.8% of our GDP (which translates to $1.8 trillion) comes directly from copyright-intensive industries [2].
I am pleased to support AB-412, which increases transparency around the use of copyrighted materials to train generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) by requiring GenAI developers to provide copyright owners with information about how their materials have been used.
GenAI developers frequently use copyrighted materials to train new models without crediting or compensating the lawful owners of those materials. Federal law provides copyright holders with a variety of exclusive rights over their works, including the right to reproduce, distribute, and display copyrighted materials. In order for a copyright owner to exercise these rights, they must first know how and where their materials are being used. At present, copyright owners have no way of knowing whether their copyrighted materials have been used to train a given GenAI model.
This bill requires a developer of a GenAI model to, upon receiving a request from a copyright owner, provide the owner with a list of copyrighted materials held by the owner that were used to train the model. The bill additionally requires developers to create an online mechanism permitting copyright owners to submit such a request. Lastly, the bill authorizes a copyright owner to bring a civil action against a developer who fails to respond to a duly submitted request.
AB-412 supports artists and creators by increasing transparency around the use of copyrighted materials to train GenAI. For these reasons I ask for your “aye” vote on AB-412 by Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan, and I urge you to do everything you can to make sure this bill becomes law.
We have the right to know how, where and when our works are used - we need the AI Copyright Transparency Act - NOW!
___________________________________________________________________
[1] - Otis College Report on the Creative Economy, 2023
https://www.caartsadvocates.org/research/otis-report-23
[2] - Unlocking Creativity: The Socioeconomic Benefits of Copyright, June 2025
https://www.uschamber.com/intellectual-property/unlocking-creativity-copyright-report