Mozilla Foundation Brings Hollywood's AI and IP Reckoning Into the Open

Los Angeles marks the latest, and most legally charged, stop in Mozilla Foundation's global Imaginative Intelligences series.

LOS ANGELES, April 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The rules governing AI and creative ownership are being written right now in courtrooms, contract negotiations, and corporate boardrooms, and most of the artists whose work is on the line aren't in the room. Mozilla Foundation intends to change that.

The global nonprofit is convening artists, filmmakers, legal scholars, and entertainment lawyers in Los Angeles on April 24 for Copyforward — a symposium co-presented with USC Gould School of Law's Center for Sports, Entertainment, Media & Technology (SEMT) and USC's AI for Media & Storytelling (AIMS), held as part of Flux Festival at Blum Gallery. The event reflects Mozilla Foundation's bet that the future of AI and creativity will be decided in the rooms where communities of artists, legal thinkers, and technologists sit down together and put forward defiantly optimistic alternatives to the status quo.

Mozilla Foundation doesn't arrive empty-handed. Copyforward builds directly on Mozilla Foundation's Imaginative Intelligences work in Los Angeles. In early 2025, they worked with the Berggruen Institute to bring together 91 participants — musicians, filmmakers, gig workers, executives, academics, and creative technologists — across five assemblies held at the Bradbury Building and the historic Hearst Estate. What emerged was Hollywood's 8 Rules for AI: a framework of design principles, developed by the creative community itself, centered on process over output, transparency, lineage and credit, and designing for the whole creative ecosystem — not just the platforms that profit from it. Copyforward puts that framework into direct conversation with the legal minds now shaping how IP law adapts to AI.

Ziyaad Bhorat, Vice President, Imagination & Strategic Growth, Mozilla Foundation, says, "Intellectual property frameworks are the hidden architecture of creative economies. They determine who participates, who benefits, and whose work becomes someone else's asset. Most artists never see that layer until it's already decided. AI has forced it into the open, and compressed what would have taken decades of legislative drift into a few years of litigation. Copyforward and Flux Festival are bets that putting artists, lawyers, and technologists in the same room now, before the rules calcify, is one of the few interventions that actually matters."

"Mozilla has been in the intellectual property business since before most AI companies existed," says Nabiha Syed, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation. "The Mozilla Public License was an act of imagination as much as a legal document — a declaration that open, consent-forward terms could become the norm if enough people decided they should. That's what we're doing in Hollywood. We're building the movement, and it's one that puts people first."

Flux Festival takes place April 24–25 at Blum Gallery in Los Angeles. Day One, Copyforward, brings together legal experts — including USC Gould School of Law Professor Doug Emhoff, studio lawyers, and guild representatives — with artists, filmmakers, and scholars to examine how AI is reshaping creative authorship, IP, and copyright. Day Two opens to the public with performances, screenings, and sensory exhibits from a lineup that includes Andrew Thomas Huang, Tender Claws, Samantha Gorman, and artist-director duo mots, recently featured in the Los Angeles Times, among more than 25 artists experimenting at the frontier of moving image and sound. Full program at https://flux.net/.

Los Angeles is one stop in a growing global series. Mumbai focuses on the origin of thought, and an exploration of AI, imagination, and the future of storytelling in one of the world's most vital creative economies. Details can be found here.

About Mozilla Foundation's Imaginative Intelligences
Imaginative Intelligences is a Mozilla Foundation series of artist-led assemblies in major cultural centers, co-created with local communities, partners, and cultural institutions. The series backs artist and worker agency, consent-forward norms, and local-first methods that travel. The Los Angeles edition, developed with the Berggruen Institute, produced Hollywood's 8 Rules for AI — a community-authored framework for technology that strengthens, rather than erodes, human creativity.

About Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla Foundation is a global nonprofit dedicated to ensuring the internet remains open, inclusive, and equitable. Founded in 2003, it supports people-first technology through funding, advocacy, education, and research. Rooted in the open-source movement and guided by the Mozilla Manifesto, Mozilla Foundation focuses on critical issue areas like ethical data practices, healthy digital ecosystems and shifting digital power toward individuals and communities. Its work connects technologists, researchers, policymakers, and activists to reimagine and rebuild systems to serve the public good. With over two decades of global impact, Mozilla Foundation continues to lead the movement for a better technology future—powered by people, open by design and fueled by imagination. Learn more at mozillafoundation.org.

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