Joseph Gordon-Levitt Argues 'Your Digital Self Should Belong To You' At UN Internet Forum
Addressing this week's UN Internet Governance Forum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt said he wanted to focus on one basic principle.
'Your digital self should belong to you. That the data that humans produce — or writings and our voices and the connections that the make, our ideas — should belong to us. And that any economic value that's generated from this data should be shared with the humans that produce it,' he said in a short speech.
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A little shot of hope and optimism today from the United Nations. I got to speak about AI at their annual Internet Governance Forum (my first time at a UN thing 🤩) and it really does feel good to see so many people from so many places around the world convening in good faith to… pic.twitter.com/qqae5SLeDk
— Joseph Gordon-Levitt (@hitRECordJoe) June 26, 2025
Of course, that very concept is being mulled right now in Hollywood and being litigated between content producers and tech giants. Just yesterday, a federal judge ruled that Meta's unauthorized use of copyrighted works from Sarah Silverman and other authors to train generative AI models is a 'fair use,' but warned that the practice may in many circumstances be illegal.
The actual impacts of AI, said Gordon-Levitt in a fireside chat at the UN Forum, could be very broad.
'I think that the impact could mean that creativity as we know it sort of goes away, to be really honest. I hate to put it in grave terms. That's a worst-case scenario, but I think it's on the table. I don't think it has to happen that way. I think if we all figure out how to steer the ship, so to speak, the technology could be a wonderful thing for creativity, and we're sort of at that crossroads right now.'
Watch the actor's fireside chat at the event below.
AI and its impacts are familiar terrain for Gordon-Levitt. Late last year, Deadline broke the news that he was set to direct an untitled AI thriller for T-Street Productions, the production company of Rian Johnson & Ram Bergman, with Anne Hathaway set to star. And for more than a decade, the actor has run a company in the digital space; HitRecord is an online collaborative media platform he founded with his brother Dan.
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