Scarlett Johansson Joins More Than 800 Creatives In The “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” Campaign Against AI Companies, But Why Won’t Hollywood Just Sue AI Companies Into Oblivion?
Scarlett Johansson has joined Cate Blanchett, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and hundreds more actors, writers, and musicians in her latest campaign against AI. Johansson’s war with AI companies began in 2023 when she launched legal action against Lisa AI for recreating her voice and images and using them to promote their app without her consent. She then took on OpenAI in 2024 for illegally creating a likeness of her voice.
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Johansson is, therefore, largely justified in joining one of Hollywood’s biggest ever campaigns against AI companies. However, she is far from the only celebrity whose voice and likeness have been illegally used by AI companies. This has led to a pressing question: why isn’t Hollywood doing more to crack down on rogue AI companies?
The “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” campaign’s website says, “Artists, writers, and creators of all kinds are banding together with a simple message: Stealing our work is not innovation. It’s not progress. It’s theft – plain and simple.” They claim that big tech companies need to do the right thing and give artists and other creators legal deals and partnerships.
The campaign has a wide reach, but it has been surprisingly coy about mentioning the names of the AI companies involved. The other lingering question is this – why don’t all the aggrieved creators just launch a class-action lawsuit against them all?
The most obvious conflict is that most Hollywood studios and filmmakers are already in bed with AI companies – a relationship kept out of the public eye by NDAs. Some of the actors, writers, musicians, and other Hollywood stars backing the campaign are working with the studios and companies that have deals with the same AI firms they accuse. At the Zurich Film Festival in 2025, Dream Lab LA CEO Verena Puhm confirmed that all the big studios in Hollywood are working on AI projects, albeit in secret.
At the summit, it was also revealed that Hollywood talent agents were looking to sign controversial AI actress Tilly Norwood. While the human cost of AI is a grave concern for many in the industry, the technology’s potential is just too big to ignore. As seen in films like The Brutalist, where AI by the Ukrainian company Respeecher was used to refine Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’s Hungarian accents to a native level and the de-aging of Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 5, it is obvious that AI is an invaluable tool.
Generative AI could be especially useful in jumping expensive hoops in filmmaking and video game development. Most studios and game developers are, therefore, exploring the potential of reducing their costs via AI. However, to train their models, AI companies have to use existing content, and while some argue that information readily available on the internet is protected under fair use laws, actors, musicians, and other creators consider it stealing.
Despite extensive condemnation of the tech by artists, Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuits remain the only significant legal action by a Hollywood star against AI companies. Other big names like Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, and Taylor Swift have publicly threatened to take legal action, but nothing has materialized so far.
It is, therefore, one thing to publicly complain about AI companies, but winning a legal battle against them is a long and tedious process that even the most powerful figures in entertainment clearly avoid. The legal system and existing copyright laws were clearly unprepared for AI, which explains the dismissal of many cases, such as author Sarah Silverman’s class-action lawsuit against OpenAI.
The biggest legal win for individual creators in legal battles against AI companies so far came in September 2025 when the AI firm Anthropic settled a lawsuit brought by writers for $1.5 billion. Some legal battles are still in the pipeline, including a class-action lawsuit filed against the California-based AI startup Lovo by voice-over artists Paul Skye Lehrman and his partner Linnea Sage. However, individuals generally have had very little success in court against AI companies.
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Big corporations, on the other hand, have had immense legal success in containing AI companies. Disney’s December 2025 cease-and-desist letter against Google is the biggest win of its kind so far, as it has led the tech giant’s AI tools to stop reproducing characters under Disney’s IP. They and Universal Pictures also emerged on top of another legal battle, this time against Midjourney.
Warner Music also won a lawsuit against the AI company Suno, giving artists more control over how their images and voices are used in AI. Despite these victories, big entertainment corporations have proved they are more interested in bringing AI assets under their control rather than protecting individual artists from AI companies.
Investment trends are another clear indicator that Hollywood is embracing AI faster than some of the celebrities are willing to admit. Disney led the way once again with a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI’s Sora platform in late 2025.
The deal will not only allow user-generated AI videos on Sora to feature the likenesses of Marvel, Pixar, Disney, and Star Wars characters, but also allow Disney to use more OpenAI tools, including generative AI. It clearly puts creatives like Scarlett Johansson, who have deals with Disney, at a crossroads because they just can’t avoid interacting with the same AI companies they are accusing.
VC funding for AI startups in Hollywood has also skyrocketed, with the biggest round coming at the Saudi Investment Forum, where Luma AI, which owns LA-based AI company Dream Lab LA, raised a whopping $900 million.
Luma AI was the subject of controversy in 2024 when it was accused of plagiarizing Disney’s IP and recreating Disney characters in its videos. Despite these accusations, the company still works with some of the most popular names in Hollywood, including Dream Lab CEO Verena Puhm, who is a writer and producer, and its creative director Jon Finger, a filmmaker and the director of the hit 2013 film Seedlings.
As expected, celebrities also speak with their money, and so far, Hollywood stars have become some of the strongest backers of AI startups. The biggest Hollywood stars investing in AI include Sylvester Stallone, who backed the AI analytics firm for Film and TV, LargoAI; Jared Leto, who invested in the generative AI company Captions; and Ashton Kutcher, whose venture capital firm Sound Ventures invests in multiple AI companies, including OpenAI.
To survive, artists have to get ahead of the game and force AI companies to approach them for deals before they can use or recreate their work, voice, or images. Big contracts between some of Hollywood’s best and AI companies are already on the rise, indicating widespread acceptance. Oscar-winning actors Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey have publicly lent their voices to Eleven Labs in one of the biggest deals of its kind in Hollywood history.
The creative industry is more likely to embrace the technology if AI companies become a paying market for them, which is why deals like this one are so important. However, the technology remains a divisive issue with one half of Hollywood embracing it as the key to the future and the other half demonizing it for stealing and trivializing talent.
The threat of AI rendering some careers obsolete in Hollywood is also very real. This is more of a global concern, but Hollywood will have to learn to live with AI just like they did VFX and other technological advancements that came before.
With Hollywood’s biggest corporations looking to rein in AI rather than avoid it and not necessarily looking after artists, to protect privileged information, including one’s voice, image, or creative work, is now the responsibility of the individual creators rather than the collective, which is why campaigns like this one have been largely futile.
Mathew McCounaghey led the way for Hollywood stars in January 2016 when he trademarked his image and voice, protecting them from unauthorized use by AI companies. The “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” campaign members, like Scarlett Johansson, could clearly borrow from McCaughney’s lead. Unfortunately, the blanket reining in of AI they want seems futile, though, as the future of the industry is now tied to the technology.
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