On Monday, a new $100 million super-PAC network, Leading the Future, was introduced to shape artificial intelligence policy in next year’s elections. The group says it will fight for sensible guardrails on AI while pushing back against efforts it believes could slow AI development.
But if Leading the Future is to live up to its name, it must avoid an easy trap: framing copyright protections as an obstacle to American AI competitiveness.
In courtrooms across the U.S., AI companies and creators are clashing over how copyrighted works are used to train AI models. Creators see their life’s work used without permission or compensation. Many technology companies are arguing that training from the works of others should count as “fair use,” noting that any obstacles to training could make American AI fall behind global rivals.
But this positioning, with Silicon Valley on one side, Hollywood and creators on the other, misses the point. Copyright should not be treated as a barrier to U.S. strength in AI. It is the foundation of that strength.
The creative economy is one of America’s most valuable exports. Hollywood movies dominate box offices from Seoul to São Paulo, American music and streaming platforms set global tastes, and U.S. publishing supplies the backbone of education worldwide.
The legal clarity underpinning these industries is exactly the kind of competitive edge China and other countries cannot easily replicate. Gutting those protections risks sacrificing what makes the U.S. distinct: an ecosystem where human creativity drives innovation.
China’s leading model, DeepSeek, was reportedly trained in part on stolen intellectual property from U.S. models and creators. If the U.S. abandons its own standards, we don’t “catch up” to China; we simply validate a global race to the bottom in which American creative capital becomes free raw material for anyone to scrape. In contrast, a rights-cleared AI stack would give American firms something uniquely exportable: legal certainty, ethical legitimacy, and a system in which creators actively want to participate. This could become a model for trade agreements and international norms, allowing the U.S. to lead not just technologically but diplomatically.
What is needed is, in effect, a Fourth Law of robotics. Isaac Asimov’s original three laws of robotics, imagined in the 1940s, were about keeping humans safe from physical harm. The modern challenge is different. When AI systems learn from human work, the danger is not that they will strike us down but that they will strip us of our rights. A Fourth Law would require that when machines draw on human creativity, they must do so symbiotically: in a way that benefits both the AI and the people who produced the source material. That means creators must have real consent and control, licensing frameworks must ensure fair compensation, companies must be transparent about what goes into their models, and the value generated by AI must be shared with those whose works made it possible.
Some policymakers argue that copyright enforcement is unrealistic in the age of AI, but that framing is wrong. Copyright doesn’t need to disappear; it needs to work at machine speed. Different tools can be deployed at different layers of the ecosystem: evolving robots.txt to separate the open web from commercial works, building AI licensing marketplaces for instant and scalable licensing, transparency mandates that keep companies honest, and safe harbors for AI companies that license properly. Together, these measures can make reciprocity real without stalling innovation.
The real opportunity is to show that supporting innovation and supporting creators are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are the same project. Bestselling authors and AI engineers should not be set up as enemies. Both are critical to America’s economy, and both deserve a framework that rewards their contributions. If Leading the Future fights for copyright clarity as much as it fights against overregulation, it can help ensure U.S. leadership in AI without hollowing out the rights of the very people AI is built upon.
The courts will soon decide whether copyright remains intact in the age of AI. The lawsuits now unfolding — New York Times v. OpenAI, Kadrey v. Meta, and others — show how high the stakes are.
Policymakers will hear claims that America must choose between copyright and competitiveness. The truth is the opposite: America competes best by protecting the rights that make it worth competing with. That is the message both technologists and creators should take to Washington.
Trip Adler is the co-founder and CEO of Created by Humans.
