Apple, Disney can’t avoid shareholders votes about their use of AI

Reuters reports that Apple and Disney can’t avoid shareholder votes about their use of artificial intelligence (AI) put forward by a labor group, the top U.S. securities regulator has ruled.

In notices dated Jan. 3, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rejected requests by the two companies to exclude from their upcoming annual meetings calls for reports on their use of AI. The similar shareholder proposals were filed by a pension trust of the AFL-CIO, the largest American labor union federation, which also has AI measures pending at four other technology companies.

At Apple, the group asked for a report on the company’s use of AI “in its business operations and disclose any ethical guidelines that the company has adopted regarding the company’s use of AI technology,” according to Reuters. In a similar request, it also asked Disney to report on its board’s role overseeing AI usage.

In its supporting statement at Apple the AFL-CIO wrote that “AI systems should not be trained on copyrighted works, or the voices, likenesses and performances of professional performers, without transparency, consent and compensation to creators and rights holders.”

Apple is purportedly all in on AI. For example, as noted by MacRumors, according to developer sources speaking to the operator of tech news aggregator account “yeux1122” on Naver, Apple has recently made progress with integrating generative AI into ‌Siri‌.