Musicians from iconic bands such as ABBA, Radiohead, and The Cure have united with actors and authors in a collective effort to resist the utilization of their creative works in the development of artificial intelligence technologies. Over the course of the campaign, thousands of artists endorsed a protest letter that was made public on Tuesday, emphasizing the increasing concern surrounding AI systems that generate synthetic images, music, and text by training on extensive collections of human-created content.

The petition argues that “the unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.” This sentiment reflects the worry among artists and creators about the potential financial and artistic repercussions stemming from the exploitation of their original content without consent.

Notable figures among the signatories include Björn Ulvaeus from ABBA, Robert Smith of The Cure, and Thom Yorke along with his fellow Radiohead members. The letter also features a diverse group of writers, such as Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, and actors including Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, and Rosario Dawson.

Bestselling author James Patterson added his name to Tuesday’s letter and had previously supported another open letter last year initiated by the Authors Guild. That organization subsequently filed a lawsuit against companies utilizing AI, a case which is currently ongoing in a federal court in New York. This movement highlights the mounting tension between the creative industries and the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, as artists advocate for better protections for their creative outputs.