R. Lance Hill sued MGM and parent company Amazon Studios on Tuesday for copyright infringement for the 2024 remake of “Road House” starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Hill claims that despite filing a petition with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2021, Amazon ignored his ability to regain rights to the screenplay once the production company United Artist’s claim expired in November 2023.
Amazon allegedly moved forward with production during the SAG-AFTRA strike in an attempt to finish the film before the copyright expired. According to the lawsuit, they simulated actors’ voices with AI to do so.
Gabe Kahn is a journalism professor at the University of Southern California, and taught USC Annenberg’s first course on AI. His findings? The entertainment industry is vulnerable.
He alluded to many examples of AI already performing on par with the job a human can do, and studios have motivation to opt away from real editors, designers, and actors.
The LA Times reported that someone close to the studio said the reboot only used AI in the early stages of production, and no AI or nonunion actors made it into the final cut. But even then, the usage of AI allowed Amazon to side-step the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Kahn: AI doesn’t go on strike, and AI doesn’t have schedules that need to be coordinated... there’s definitely some marketing challenges, but what you’re going to see is an effort to really drive down costs in the historically, incredibly expensive movie production process.
Ultimately Kahn said the usage of AI in entertainment isn’t so cut and dry.
Kahn: It doesn’t mean that there’s a black and white AI is evil humans are good kind of dichotomy, that would be, you know, too simple.
Kahn said the issue is that courts are not equipped with precedents to address cases involving generative AI, but though it is difficult to regulate, there needs to be standards.
Kahn: What I think we need to first establish are sort of, what are our values, and our ethical lines that we don’t want to be crossed in this, and then demand that big tech, Hollywood, whomever, respect those.
Hill’s lawsuit hopes to block distribution of the film, but it is unclear whether it will prove Amazon did use AI, or what will happen if they did.