Austin here. You may be familiar with the protests led by Pause AI and Stop AI — but did you know that there are many other such protests, worldwide? My colleague Rachel Shu compiled this overview of different protests against AI, and I was surprised by their breadth.
Personally, I’m skeptical that pausing AI would be good, and also don’t know whether these protests are effective for achieving that goal. But Manifund aims to be a neutral platform, supporting different viewpoints on how to do good, recognizing that we’re not always sure what is the right thing to do. In that spirit, I wanted to share this list of protests with you all. Enjoy!
Why I’m writing this
Like Cate, I (Rachel Shu) think it’s inevitable that public opposition to AI will continue to grow quickly over the next two years. In particular, I think there is a medium-sized-but-salient chance (33%?) of some flashpoint in the next two years during which millions of people worldwide will be angry enough to lend their voice to protests against increasingly powerful AI. Most likely this flashpoint will center around large-scale labor replacement, or possibly a mismanaged government surveillance initiative, rather than around existential risk.
When such flashpoints happen, they create political momentum that advocacy groups, labor unions, civil rights organizations, and other actors can mobilize to advance their agendas. The organizations best positioned to capitalize on this moment will be those with existing infrastructure, clear policy demands, and the resources to scale up quickly. Mapping out these potential actors, and the actions they’re taking, will prove essential for understanding and potentially influencing how such a movement develops and what it ultimately accomplishes.
What this series will cover
To build this awareness, I’m writing this as the first of a series of posts to track global protest movements against AI and AI companies, both those protests concerned with existential risk from AGI and also of more immediately pressing concerns.
The scope of this series is specifically mass advocacy: for example, demonstrations, strikes, phone banks, petitions, and the like; as opposed to higher-level/insider political work, which I don’t have any comparative advantage in explaining. The series will cover both actions specifically protesting AI and also actions against AI organizations for reasons that aren’t centrally about AI. Each post will also devote some to explaining the context and history of specific issues or players. Hopefully this roundup will be useful to policymakers, journalists, historians, and protest organizations themselves.
I’ll analyze of some recent actions and the organizations behind them, and at the bottom will list upcoming actions and meetings I know of for anyone interested in getting involved!
Recent demonstrations (since June 1, 2025)
July 15, Pittsburgh, USA: Indivisible, Sunrise Movement, ACT UP — “Stop the Summit”
Hundreds of people attended a series of demonstrations which took place against the Pittsburgh Energy and Innovation Summit at CMU, in which President Trump gave a speech, jointly organized by various advocacy groups. Riot police were deployed to disperse the protests. The summit was organized around the creation of AI datacenters in Pennsylvania, and in response the protests featured speeches discussing datacenter environmental impacts and the perceived prioritization of the international AI arms race over local concerns. From the signage, it seems the protests were also a fairly generalized anti-Trump, anti-corporate affair, rather than specifically about investment in AI.
July 14, Seattle, USA: Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) — “Purge Palantir”
Jewish Voice for Peace Seattle staged a demonstration against Palantir’s Seattle headquarters, and about 120 people attended. Other JVP chapters and sympathetic organizations staged concurrent protests at Palantir locations around the US, including Denver, New York, and Palo Alto, each of which drew dozens. JVP is an organization of Jewish-Americans who oppose Israeli actions in Palestine and support a ceasefire.
Palantir Technologies provides surveillance services to federal, military, and police organizations, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Given that these two organizations have been the targets of recent large demonstrations in the US, it’s unsurprising that Palantir is also under fire for supporting them.
Previously six protestors were arrested at Palantir’s NYC offices on June 26 during a protest organized by climate justice group Planet Over Profit and immigrant rights group Mijente.
July 13, Mexico City, Mexico: Mexican Association of Commercial Announcements (AMELOC) — “Creative industry workers united for the urgent regulation of artificial intelligence”
Dozens of media professionals attended voice actor protests in Mexico City for the regulation of AI voice cloning. The inciting event was the unauthorized and unattributed use of a deceased voice actor’s voice by the National Electoral Institute, a Mexican public agency.
According to this Instagram post from the organizer, there are proposed regulations on the table in the Legislative Assembly of Mexico City (a federal district) which they are agitating in favor of. These would require consent, attribution, and royalties for the use of voice likenesses.
Previously in 2023, SAG-AFTRA and the WGA led 6-month strikes in the USA during which one of the major themes was AI use in media. SAG-AFTRA subsequently led a second strike of voice actors on the issue of AI use in video games.
July 8, Geneva, Switzerland: Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) — “End UN Partnership with Genocide-Enabling Tech in ‘AI for Good’ Conference”
The AI for Good summit is organized by several dozen UN and sponsored by many major tech companies, many of which have partnerships with the Israeli military or civilian government. Israel controls one of the most technologically advanced militaries, and deploys AI tools for mass surveillance and surgical precision strikes in Gaza. Around 100 activists gathered at Geneva's Broken Chair monument for this protest. Anadolu Agency quotes an activist as saying “The UN is delegitimizing itself with this conference, with hosting big tech at an AI for Good conference during an AI-powered genocide.”
July 7, San Francisco, USA: Sunrise Movement Bay Area — “Billionaire Bailout Bill vs The People #bullytherich”
A small gathering of Sunrise Movement members protested outside of Sam Altman’s house, in particular against Sam Altman’s support of the Big Beautiful Bill. Sunrise Movement is nominally a climate change focused organization, but it runs campaigns in support of a wider base of left-coded causes, such as racial and economic justice. Minor themes of this particular action included protesting AI datacenter energy use and AI job replacement.
Another Sunrise Movement chapter also featured in the Pittsburgh protests linked above.
July 2, USA: No Azure for Apartheid — “When a child dies in Gaza, we get paid for aiming the air strike”
No Azure for Apartheid claims that Microsoft, especially through its Azure division and partnership with OpenAI, has deep investment in Israel; it seems that much of the Israeli military relies on Azure as a platform. No Azure for Apartheid, founded in October 2024, has staged a string of in-person and online protests against the sale of AI weaponry to Israel and broadly attempting to get Microsoft to divest from Israel. Microsoft workers taking part in these actions are more or less signing up to get fired.
June 30, London, UK: Pause AI —”AI companies are less regulated than sandwich shops”
Pause AI led a protest against Google DeepMind for releasing Gemini 2.5 Pro without honoring previous commitments on how they would go about risk assessment for newly released AI models. The organization’s name might be misleading to some; they are not specifically in favor of an AI moratorium like the widely-known 2023 petition of a similar name, but rather support members who take a broader range of positions from increased regulation to full cessation of AI development. About 60 people took part in this protest.
Pause AI has previously led protests against other frontier AI labs.
June 12, Annecy, France: Belgian association gathering authors and creators of animation (ABRACA) — “GenAI Seeks Not To Support Artists, But To Destroy Them”
Annecy is host to the world’s premier animation festival, taking place this year June 8 - June 14. Animators are increasingly under pressure due to advances in AI generated videos, and animation unions have been nearly unanimously in opposition to the widespread deployment of genAI in the entertainment industry. This protest was led by ABRACA (Animation workers union of Belgium) and supported by over 20 other European media and entertainment industry labor unions.
May 22-July 1, USA: Grassroots advocacy against AI state regulation moratorium clause
A federal moratorium on state AI laws was proposed by Ted Cruz, but ultimately removed from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act before it was signed into law. The Senate removed the provision in a 99-1 vote, enabling states to continue regulating AI. This has been covered better elsewhere, and in my understanding was mostly a higher-level policy push rather than a grassroots effort, so I’ll just point at some advocacy groups that helped with the push by phone banking: Pause AI, and Encode Justice, among others.
Upcoming demonstrations and actions
A protest being listed here doesn’t constitute an endorsement. Contact the author if you want to be listed.
July 25, San Francisco: Stop AI — “Close OpenAI!”
Self-description:
“OpenAI is threatening our jobs, our lives, and our loved ones' lives. JOIN THE FIGHT! […] We demand that the US government shut down OpenAI, close any other company building AGI, and permanently ban the development of AGI.”
Upcoming publicly advertised meetings and other events
San Francisco, CA, US:
Stop AI: Bar meeting every Wednesday 6-8 pm at Kiitos Sports Bar in San Francisco.
Berkeley, CA, US:
Stop AI: Bar meeting every Sunday 6-8 pm at Raleigh's Pub in Berkeley.
Bay Area, CA, US:
Sunrise Movement: Monthly virtual hub meetings.
If you’d like to help with this effort, please comment, reach out in a private message, or message me on signal: @wearsshoes.77. I’m looking both for tips about upcoming or ongoing actions, and also advice on how to shape this series going forward! I’m planning to publish this at a monthly cadence initially, faster when start to things pick up.
Thanks to Rachel Weinberg, Caithrin Rintoul, Ross Rheingans-Yoo, Gavriel Kleinwaks, Venki Kumar and others for assistance.
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