I’m a Screenwriter. Is It All Right if I Use A.I.?; The Ethicist, The New York Times, October 4, 2025

 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethicist, The New York Times; I’m a Screenwriter. Is It All Right if I Use A.I.?;

"I write for television, both series and movies. Much of my work is historical or fact-based, and I have found that researching with ChatGPT makes Googling feel like driving to the library, combing the card catalog, ordering books and waiting weeks for them to arrive. This new tool has been a game changer. Then I began feeding ChatGPT my scripts and asking for feedback. The notes on consistency, clarity and narrative build were extremely helpful. Recently I went one step further: I asked it to write a couple of scenes. In seconds, they appeared — quick paced, emotional, funny, driven by a propulsive heartbeat, with dialogue that sounded like real people talking. With a few tweaks, I could drop them straight into a screenplay. So what ethical line would I be crossing? Would it be plagiarism? Theft? Misrepresentation? I wonder what you think. — Name Withheld"

Better Safe than Sorry? Tylenol, Pregnancy, and Ethics; The Hastings Center for Bioethics, October 2, 2025

Rita Dexter, Sophie Schott, Miranda R. Waggoner and Anne Lyerly, The Hastings Center for Bioethics; Better Safe than Sorry? Tylenol, Pregnancy, and Ethics

"Bioethicists have a big job to do in the current climate, where experts are dismissed and pseudoscience is weaponized to serve a political agenda."

‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: How George Came to See the World as Orwellian; The New York Times, October 2, 2025

 Manohla Dargis, The New York Times; ‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Review: How George Came to See the World as Orwellian

"“The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude,” George Orwell wrote in 1946, a year after the end of the World War II. That line appears early in “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5,” an essayistic documentary from Raoul Peck that surveys its title subject’s life and work, using them as a lens to explore authoritarian power in the past and the present. Densely packed, the movie is a whirlwind of ideas and images, by turns heady, enlivening, disturbing and near-exhausting. It’s a work of visceral urgency from Peck, who’s best known for his 2017 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” about James Baldwin.

Peck plucked that observation about art and politics from Orwell’s essential 1946 essay “Why I Write,” in which he lists “four great motives for writing” — especially for writing prose and, of course, aside from earning a living — including “political purpose.” Near the end of the essay, Orwell writes that he hopes to start a new book. What soon followed was “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the seismic novel that helped turn his name into an adjective. Anchored by Orwell’s writing — and Damian Lewis’s calm, intimate voice-over — Peck charts the writer’s life in tandem with world-shattering events, focusing on when he was working on “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” which was published in 1949. Months later, Orwell was dead."

How to live a good life in difficult times: Yuval Noah Harari, Rory Stewart and Maria Ressa in conversation; The Guardian, October 4, 2025

Interview by Alex Clark , The Guardian; How to live a good life in difficult times: Yuval Noah Harari, Rory Stewart and Maria Ressa in conversation

[Kip Currier: One of the most insightful, nuanced, enlightening pieces I've read amongst thousands this year. I've followed and admired the work and wisdom of Maria Ressa and Yuval Noah Harari but wasn't familiar with UK academic and politician Rory Stewart who makes interesting contributions to this joint interview. They all individually and collectively identify in clear-eyed fashion what's going on in the world today, what the stakes are, and what each of us can do to try to make some kind of positive difference.

I shared this article with others in my network and encourage you to do the same, so these beneficial, thought-provoking perspectives can be read by as many as possible.]

[Excerpt]

"What happens when an internationally bestselling historian, a Nobel peace prize-winning journalist and a former politician get together to discuss the state of the world, and where we’re heading? Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli medieval and military historian best known for his panoramic surveys of human history, including Sapiens, Homo Deus and, most recently, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. Maria Ressa, joint winner of the Nobel peace prize, is a Filipino and American journalist who co-founded the news website Rappler. And Rory Stewart is a British academic and former Conservative MP, writer and co-host of The Rest Is Politics podcast. Their conversation ranged over the rise of AI, the crisis in democracy and the prospect of a Trump-Putin wedding, but began by considering a question central to all of their work: how to live a good life in an increasingly fragmented and fragile world?...

YNH I think that more people need to realise that we have to do the hard work ourselves. There is a tendency to assume that we can rely on reality to do the job for us. That if there are people who talk nonsense, who support illogical policies, who ignore the facts, sooner or later, reality will wreak vengeance on them. And this is not the way that history works.

So if you want the truth, and you want reality to win, each of us has to do some of the hard work ourselves: choose one thing and focus on that and hope that other people will also do their share. That way we avoid the extremes of despair."

Colleges weigh whether to sign onto Trump plan or forgo federal benefits; The Washington Post, October 3, 2025

Susan Svrluga

, 

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel

 and 

Emily Davies

, The Washington Post; Colleges weigh whether to sign onto Trump plan or forgo federal benefits

"The Trump administration this week offered a select group of universities the opportunity to score priority access for federal funding, prompting an enthusiastic and swift response from a university leader in Texas, who called it “an honor.”

But the other schools that received the 10-page proposal Wednesday night were largely silent Thursday, as they considered the wide-ranging conservative terms that some experts warned would trample on free-speech rights and threaten finances and academic freedom at top universities.

The Washington Post first reported this week that the White House intended to launch a campaign to bring colleges into compliance with Trump’s ideological priorities by offering a competitive advantage to those that sign on...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) threatened Thursday to yank billions of dollars’ worth of funding from any school in the state that signed onto the agreement, writing on social media that the state would not “BANKROLL SCHOOLS THAT SELL OUT THEIR STUDENTS, PROFESSORS, RESEARCHERS, AND SURRENDER ACADEMIC FREEDOM.”...

White House officials signaled last week that they intended to launch a campaign to bring colleges into compliance with Trump’s ideological priorities."

Sam Altman says Sora will add ‘granular,’ opt-in copyright controls; TechCrunch, October 4, 2025

 Anthony Ha , TechCrunch; Sam Altman says Sora will add ‘granular,’ opt-in copyright controls

"OpenAI may be reversing course on how it approaches copyright and intellectual property in its new video app Sora.

Prior to Sora’s launch this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI had been telling Hollywood studios and agencies that they needed to explicitly opt out if they didn’t want their IP to be included in Sora-generated videos.

Despite being invite-only, the app quickly climbed to the top of the App Store charts. Sora’s most distinctive feature may be its “cameos,” where users can upload their biometric data to see their digital likeness featured in AI-generated videos.

At the same time, users also seem to delight in flouting copyright laws by creating videos with popular, studio-owned characters. In some cases, those characters might even criticize the company’s approach to copyright, for example in videos where Pikachu and SpongeBob interact with deepfakes of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

In a blog post published Friday, Altman said the company is already planning two changes to Sora, first by giving copyright holders “more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls.”"

Weber State cracks down on censorship conference; KSL.com, October 2, 2025

Par Kermani, KSL.com ; Weber State cracks down on censorship conference

• Weber State University canceled its Unity Conference due to diversity initiative shifts.
• The 2024 Utah law requires eliminating diversity programs at public institutions.
• The Wildcat Collective, which operates outside of official university programming, organized an uncensored version of the conference for Friday."

Historian uses AI to help identify Nazi in notorious Holocaust murder image; The Guardian, October 2, 2025

Deborah Cole , The Guardian; Historian uses AI to help identify Nazi in notorious Holocaust murder image

"It is one of the most chilling images of the Holocaust: a bespectacled Nazi soldier trains a pistol at the head of a resigned man kneeling in a suit before a pit full of corpses. German troops encircle the scene.

The picture taken in today’s Ukraine was long known, mistakenly, as The Last Jew in Vinnitsa, and was for decades shrouded in mystery.

The US-based German historian Jürgen Matthäus has for years painstakingly assembled the puzzle pieces and, with the help of artificial intelligence, is confident he has identified the killer."

YouTube Bends the Knee; The Atlantic, October 1, 2025

Charlie Warzel , The Atlantic; YouTube Bends the Knee

"This is just the latest example of major tech companies bowing to Trump."

Harvard Professors May Be Eligible for Payments in $1.5 Billion AI Copyright Settlement; The Harvard Crimson, October 1, 2025

 Victoria D. Rengel, The Harvard Crimson;  Harvard Professors May Be Eligible for Payments in $1.5 Billion AI Copyright Settlement

"Following mediation, the plaintiffs and defendants filed a motion for the preliminary approval of a settlement on Sept. 5, which included an agreement from Anthropic that it will destroy its pirated databases and pay $1.5 billion in damages to a group of authors and publishers.

On Sept. 25, a California federal judge granted preliminary approval for a settlement, the largest in the history of copyright cases in the U.S.

Each member of the class will receive a payment of approximately $3,000 per pirated work.

Authors whose works are in the databases are not notified separately, but instead must submit their contact information to receive a formal notice of the class action — meaning a number of authors, including many Harvard professors, may be unaware that their works were pirated by Anthropic.

Lynch said Anthropic’s nonconsensual use of her work undermines the purpose behind why she, and other scholars, write and publish their work.

“All of us at Harvard publish, but we thought when we were publishing that we are doing that — to communicate to other human beings,” she said. “Not to be fed into this mill.”"

Dogs and drones: how scientists are saving Washington’s endangered orcas; The Guardian, October 2, 2025

 The Guardian; Dogs and drones: how scientists are saving Washington’s endangered orcas

"Dressed in a bright orange lifejacket – and sometimes goggles – Eba perches atop Giles’s research boat, scanning the wind. When she catches a whiff of orca faeces, she raises her nose, sometimes whimpering or wagging her tail to point Giles in the right direction. Orca-detecting dogs have become an unlikely ally in the fight to save the whales.

“We wanted to use Eba because it allows us to stay really far away from the whales and not stress them out,” says Giles, a member of the marine conservation organisation SeaDoc Society.

Through the study of whale faeces, researchers can uncover a wealth of biological insights from a single sample, including diet, hormone levels, exposure to toxins, pregnancy, gut microbiome composition and the amount of microplastics in their system, as well as the presence of parasites, bacteria and fungi...

Out on the boat with Giles are James Sheppard, a scientist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and Charlie Welch, an SDZWA volunteer and head of Proper Voltage, a company focused on sustainable battery technology. Together, they have spent a decade developing conservation drones that can capture samples of the cloud-like plumes of breath from orcas’ blowholes with mounts holding petri dishes.

Sheppard says: “We need to get data that is robust and as close to real-time as possible, so that we can find out if there’s a real problem. Then the animal-care staff can go in and stage an intervention if it’s needed.”"

Director of Eisenhower Library in Kansas ousted after refusing to give Trump administration a sword; KCUR, October 2, 2025

  Zane Irwin, KCUR ; Director of Eisenhower Library in Kansas ousted after refusing to give Trump administration a sword

[Kip Currier: Do we want Presidents making gifts of the archival, museum, and library artifacts that belong collectively to the American people?

Do the benefits of the gifting of a sword from the Eisenhower Presidential Library to the King of England outweigh the downsides of giving away an artifact from an historic collection and site?]

[Excerpt]

"The former director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas, said on Thursday that he was told to “resign or be fired” from his post after refusing to give the Trump administration a historic sword.

Todd Arrington’s resignation came shortly after Arrington refused to relinquish one of President Eisenhower’s swords from the museum’s collection. President Trump’s administration wanted to give one of the artifacts as a gift to King Charles III on Trump’s most recent state visit to the United Kingdom.

Arrington said his direct superior informed him on Monday evening that he would be asked to resign. The supervisor, who Arrington declined to name, said he was passing down orders from unknown higher-ups."

California vows to ‘instantly’ cut funding to universities that cave to Trump ‘compact’; The Guardian, October 2, 2025

Lois Beckett, The Guardian ; California vows to ‘instantly’ cut funding to universities that cave to Trump ‘compact’

"Any California universities that sign the Trump administration’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” will “instantly” lose their state funding, California governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

The Trump administration on Wednesday offered nine prominent universities, including the University of Southern California, the chance to sign a “compact” that asks the universities to close academic departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas”, limit the proportion of international undergraduate students to 15% , accept the administration’s definition of gender and ban the consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, in exchange for “substantial and meaningful federal grants”.

Newsom’s office described the offer as “nothing short of a hostile takeover of America’s universities”.

“It would impose strict government-mandated definitions of academic terms, erase diversity, and rip control away from campus leaders to install government-mandated conservative ideology in its place,” the governor’s office said in a statement. “It even dictates how schools must spend their own endowments. Any institution that resists could be hit with crushing fines or stripped of federal research funding.”

“If any California University signs this radical agreement, they’ll lose billions in state funding – including Cal Grants – instantly. California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom,” Newsom said in the statement. Cal Grants is the state’s $2.8bn student financial aid program."

First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury; The New York Times, October 3, 2025

 Mark Landler , The New York Times; First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury

"The Church of England announced on Friday that Sarah Mullally, the bishop of London, will become the 106th archbishop of Canterbury, making her the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide and the first woman to lead a church whose roots date back more than 1,400 years.

Bishop Mullally will succeed Justin Welby, who resigned from the post last November after the publication of a report that said he had failed to pursue a proper investigation into claims of widespread abuse of boys and young men decades ago at Christian summer camps.

A former cancer nurse who served as the chief nursing officer for England, Bishop Mullally, 63, is a vocal exponent of the rights of women in the Church of England. She has served as the first female bishop of London since 2018."

Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference; The New York Times, October 2, 2025

 Michael C. Bender , The New York Times; Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference

[Kip Currier: Be clear-eyed that this "compact" is an unprecedented assault on the independence and academic freedom of American colleges and universities.  It is transparent transactionalism, instantiating a mob-style "protection money" framework in order for universities to secure and retain federal research monies. 

It is also another step in the authoritarian playbook.

The notion that higher education institutions -- whose missions are to advance knowledge, the arts, science, and the common good -- would be incentivized to pledge contractual support to a political administration is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our Founding Fathers and the 1st Amendment of our U.S. Constitution.]

[Excerpt]

"The White House on Wednesday sent letters to nine of the nation’s top public and private universities, urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump’s political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds.

The letters came attached to a 10-page “compact” that serves as a sort of priority statement for the administration’s educational goals — the most comprehensive accounting to date of what Mr. Trump aims to achieve from an unparalleled, monthslong pressure campaign on academia.

The compact would require colleges to freeze tuition for five years, cap the enrollment of international students and commit to strict definitions of gender. Among other steps, universities would also be required to change their governance structures to prohibit anything that would “punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”"

Jane Goodall, primatologist and friend to chimpanzees, dies at 91; The Washington Post, October 1, 2025

Emma Brown, The Washington Post ; Jane Goodall, primatologist and friend to chimpanzees, dies at 91: She used her global fame to draw attention to the plight of dwindling chimpanzee populations and, more broadly, to the perils of environmental destruction.

"Dr. Goodall, whose research prompted a transformation in the ways scientists study social behavior across species, has died at 91."

Pentagon plans widespread random polygraphs, NDAs to stanch leaks; The Washington Post, October 1, 2025

 

Alex Horton

, 

Tara Copp

 and 

Ellen Nakashima

, The Washington Post; Pentagon plans widespread random polygraphs, NDAs to stanch leaks

"The Pentagon plans to impose strict nondisclosure agreements andrandom polygraph testing for scores of people in its headquarters, including many top officials, according to two people familiar with the proposal and documents obtained by The Washington Post, escalating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on leakers and internal dissent.

All military service members, civilian employees and contract workers within the office of the defense secretary and the Joint Staff, estimated to be more than 5,000 personnel, would be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement that “prohibits the release of non-public information without approval or through a defined process,” according to a draft memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg...

More recently, the Pentagon has issued a requirement that reporters covering the military sign an agreement not to solicit or gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, the penalty for which could be press credential revocation. Reporters have until later this month to agree to those terms."

Lawmakers Across the Country This Year Blocked Ethics Reforms Meant to Increase Public Trust; ProPublica, October 1, 2025

Gabriel Sandoval, ProPublica, with additional reporting by Nick Reynolds and Anna Wilder, The Post and Courier; Yasmeen Khan, The Maine Monitor; Lauren Dake, Oregon Public Broadcasting; Marjorie Childress, New Mexico In Depth; Louis Hansen, Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO; Mary Steurer and Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor; Kate McGee, The Texas Tribune; Alyse Pfeil, The Advocate | The Times-Picayune; and Shauna Sowersby, The Seattle Times , ProPublica; Lawmakers Across the Country This Year Blocked Ethics Reforms Meant to Increase Public Trust

"At a time when the bounds of government ethics are being stretched in Washington, D.C., hundreds of ethics-related bills were introduced this year in state legislatures, according to the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures’ ethics legislation database. While legislation strengthening ethics oversight did pass in some places, a ProPublica analysis found lawmakers across multiple states targeted or thwarted reforms designed to keep the public and elected officials accountable to the people they serve.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers tried to push through bills to tighten gift limits, toughen conflict-of-interest provisions or expand financial disclosure reporting requirements. Time and again, the bills were derailed.

With the help of local newsrooms, many of which have been part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, we reviewed a range of legislation that sought to weaken or stymie ethics regulations in 2025. We also spoke to experts for an overview of trends nationwide. Their take: The threats to ethics standards and their enforcement have been growing.

“Donald Trump has been ushering a new cultural standard, in which ethics is no longer significant,” said Craig Holman, a veteran government ethics specialist with the progressive watchdog nonprofit Public Citizen. He pointed to Trump’s private dinner with top buyers of his cryptocurrency and the administration’s tariff deal with Vietnam after it greenlit the Trump Organization’s $1.5 billion golf resort complex; and he said in an email it was “most revealing” that the White House “for the first time in over 16 years has no ethics policy. Trump 2.0 simply repealed Biden’s ethics Executive Order and replaced it with nothing.”

Government website blames shutdown on "radical left." Ethics group calls it a "blatant violation."; CBS News, October 1, 2025

Faris Tanyos, CBS News ; Government website blames shutdown on "radical left." Ethics group calls it a "blatant violation."

"Ahead of Wednesday's government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Tuesday posted a banner in large type on its homepage blaming the shutdown on the "Radical Left," an allegation that an ethics group said was a "blatant violation" of the Hatch Act. 

"The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands," the message read. "The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people."

A complaint filed Tuesday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel by the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen alleged that the banner on HUD's website was a "blatant violation" of the Hatch Act, describing it as "highly partisan" and seeking to "idolize the Trump administration … without attributing any blame for the lack of compromise causing the shutdown."   

The Hatch Act is a federal law passed in 1939 that "limits certain political activities of federal employees as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs," according to the Office of Special Counsel.  

Its purpose, among other things, is to "ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion," the office explains."

The Rainmaker: What 20 Years In Supreme Court Practice Have Taught Me; Above The Law, September 30, 2025

 Neal Katyal  , Above The Law; The Rainmaker: What 20 Years In Supreme Court Practice Have Taught Me

"The Improv Principle

Ed. note: The Rainmaker is a new Above the Law series highlighting attorneys who have built distinguished practices by excelling not only in the courtroom and at the negotiating table, but also in business development, mentorship, and leadership. Each installment will feature candid reflections on what it takes to succeed as a rainmaker in today’s legal industry. Our first featured rainmaker is Neal Katyal...

For years, I’ve been studying improv comedy, and it’s transformed how I think about legal practice. The cardinal rule of improv is “yes, and”—you accept what your scene partners offer and build on it. You don’t say “no” or shut down their contribution. You make your partners look good, and in turn they make you look good.

This sounds soft. It’s not. It’s the hardest discipline I know.

In a meeting, when an associate offers an idea that seems off-base, the instinct is to correct them, to show why you’re the experienced lead counsel. The improv instinct is different: find what’s valuable in their contribution and build on it. “Yes, and we could take that framework and apply it to the jurisdictional question.” Suddenly, the associate isn’t embarrassed—they’re energized. They’ve contributed something real. They’ll work twice as hard for you, and next time, their idea might be the one that wins the case. 

This isn’t artificial, it’s definitely not about giving false praise.  A smart associate, after all, will see through that in a second.  It’s rather about trying to find the diamond in the rough, the insight that the associate has and that can be built upon. I kind of stumbled upon that idea when I did my first case, challenging Guantanamo. At my side were a dozen law students – and they would all have various writing assignments and my duty was to sort through all their insights and build a coherent product out of it. Many were off-the-wall, to be sure, but many were brilliant, too. It just took work to find those flashes of brilliance and to build upon them. That kind of “bottom-up” strategy is one I have taken to heart – so much so that today I routinely take advice on crafting arguments from my Researcher at Milbank. My Researcher is someone who has graduated from college and yet has not attended law school.

This isn’t just about associates or your internal team, it’s just as much about clients. When a client pushes back on your strategy, you could dig in and explain why you’re right. Or you could listen—really listen—to what’s driving their concern. Usually, they’re telling you something important about their business reality, their risk tolerance, or their board dynamics. “Yes, and given that constraint, what if we structured the argument this way?” Now you’re not just their lawyer; you’re their partner.

Why Clients Return

Twenty-three years ago when I wrote that piece, I thought clients hired you for your legal brilliance. They don’t. They hire you because you make their problems smaller, not bigger.

I’ve represented the same clients through multiple Supreme Court cases, not because I won every time (I haven’t), but because they trust that I’ll listen to what they actually need. Sometimes what they need is an aggressive cert petition. Sometimes what they need is someone to tell them that the case isn’t worth the institutional risk of taking to the Court. The clients who keep coming back are the ones who know you’ll give them the second answer when it’s true, even though it costs you a major case and significant fees.

This requires a specific kind of humility: the humility to know that the client understands their business better than you do, and that your legal judgment is in service of their goals, not the other way around. Supreme Court lawyers can struggle with this because we’re trained to think about doctrinal purity and legal architecture. But clients don’t care about your elegant theory of administrative law. They care about whether they can build the project, launch the product, or avoid the devastating liability.

The best piece of advice I ever received came from Eric Holder, who mentored me at the Justice Department in my first stint there, right after my clerkships. He watched me fail to persuade senior officials of a position that I was absolutely certain was right. Afterward, he pulled me aside. “Your analysis was perfect,” he said. “But you didn’t listen to their concerns. You tried to convince them you were right instead of understanding why they were worried. Next time, start by understanding their perspective.”

That lesson echoes through every client relationship, every oral argument, every brief. Start by understanding their perspective."

Disney Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Character.ai For Copyright Infringement As Studios Move To Protect IP; Deadline, September 30, 2025

 Jill Goldsmith, Deadline; Disney Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Character.ai For Copyright Infringement As Studios Move To Protect IP

"Walt Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Character.AI, a “personalized superintelligence platform” that the media giant says is ripping off copyrighted characters without authorization.

The AI startup offers users the ability to create customizable, personalized AI companions that can be totally original but in some cases are inspired by existing characters, including, it seems, Disney icons from Spider-Man and Darth Vader to Moana and Elsa.

The letter is the latest legal salvo by Hollywood as studios begin to step up against AI. Disney has also sued AI company Midjourney for allegedly improper use and distribution of AI-generated characters from Disney films. Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures this month sued Chinese AI firm MiniMax for copyright infringement."