© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: AI (Synthetic Intelligence) letters are positioned on laptop motherboard on this illustration taken June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photograph
By Ross Kerber
(Reuters) – Apple (NASDAQ:) and Disney can’t keep away from shareholder votes about their use of synthetic intelligence put ahead by a labor group, the highest U.S. securities regulator has dominated.
In notices dated Jan. 3, the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee rejected requests by the iPhone maker and by the leisure big to exclude from their upcoming annual conferences requires experiences on their use of AI.
Companies have embraced the brand new know-how for its promised efficiencies. However the pattern has prompted fears it will substitute many artistic {and professional} staff or unfairly draw on their work, points in current Hollywood labor disputes and a current New York Occasions lawsuit.
The same shareholder proposals had been filed by a pension belief of the AFL-CIO, the most important American labor union federation, which additionally has AI measures pending at 4 different know-how corporations.
At Apple, the group requested for a report on the corporate’s use of AI “in its enterprise operations and disclose any moral tips that the corporate has adopted concerning the corporate’s use of AI know-how.” In an identical request, it additionally requested Disney to report on its board’s function overseeing AI utilization.
In its supporting assertion at Apple the AFL-CIO wrote that “AI techniques shouldn’t be skilled on copyrighted works, or the voices, likenesses and performances {of professional} performers, with out transparency, consent and compensation to creators and rights holders.”
Brandon Rees, deputy director of the AFL-CIO’s workplace of funding, stated the SEC’s selections might pave the best way for agreements with Apple and Disney that might solely carry them into line with the AI disclosures of different corporations like Microsoft (NASDAQ:).
Apple and Disney, in distinction, “have not even begun to grapple with these moral points” round AI, Rees stated.
Apple and Disney didn’t instantly responded to requests for remark.
Each corporations had argued the proposals may very well be left off their ballots as a result of they associated to “unusual enterprise operations,” akin to the corporate’s selection of applied sciences.
The SEC disagreed. “In our view, the Proposal transcends unusual enterprise issues and doesn’t search to micromanage the Firm,” the company wrote in separate letters.