The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected a request by Apple to exclude AI from discussions at their upcoming annual shareholder meetings after a labour union filed proposals that they be required to do so.

In similar notices issued on 3 January, the SEC sided with the proposals that were filed by the pension trust of the AFL-CIO labour union.

The proposal to Apple requested a report on its 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”.

It also stated the report should be made publicly available to the company’s shareholders on Apple’s website.

The AFL-CIO stated “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”.

One of the concerns over the use of generative AI chatbots is a lack of clarity about which intellectual property (IP) source code or open language is being used to gather information to develop the large language models, which has resulted in lawsuits against companies such as OpenAI.

Apple countered the proposal should be left off of shareholder ballots because they related to “ordinary business operations” and because the “proposal seeks to micromanage the Company”.

“In our view, the Proposal transcends ordinary business matters and does not seek to micromanage the Company,” the SEC stated in its notice to Apple.

Disney was also denied a similar request and will undergo AI review.