Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis could only get a fake AI ad featuring her likeness taken down when she went to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly.
The vast majority of people who are having their work and likeness purloined by AI and AI companies don’t have any kind of recourse when big tech takes what they’ve created. But occasionally, they pick on somebody who does have a little bit of clout, and so we come to Jamie Lee Curtis.
The Oscar-winning actor had, she revealed in an Instagram post, been trying to have removed a fake AI advert using her likeness. It was put up without her authorisation, and her attempts to go through Meta customer support to get it removed? Well, yeah. You can imagine.
Still, there’s power to having over six million followers on Instagram, and Curtis posted a message to Meta CEO and The Social Network star Mark Zuckerberg using his own service.
It read:
It’s come to this @zuck
Hi. We have never met. My name is Jamie Lee Curtis and I have gone through every proper channel to ask you and your team to take down this totally AI fake commercial for some bullshit that I didn’t authorize, agree to or endorse.
She added that:
I tried to DM you and slide on in, but you don’t follow me so I’ve had to take to the public instaverse to try to reach you.
If I have a brand, besides being an actor and author and advocate, it is that I am known for telling the truth and saying it like it is and for having integrity and this (MIS)use of my images (taken from an interview I did with @stephruhle during the fires) with new, fake words put in my mouth, diminishes my opportunities to actually speak my truth. I’ve been told that if I ask you directly, maybe you will encourage your team to police it and remove it. I long ago deleted Twitter, so this is the only way I can think of reaching you.
Thank you in advance,
JLC
Staggeringly, the only way she could address this and get any kind of impact was to go directly to the head of the company, and have enough followers that he couldn’t help but notice.
Within hours, the fake AI advert was taken down.
What the rest of us are supposed to do when Meta uses our work for its AI models remains unclear. But all power to Jamie Lee Curtis for calling this out, and hopefully more and more follow suit.
