SAG-AFTRA Begins Negotiations, A.I. Worries Hollywood Actors

The union wants to create guardrails for the use of artificial intelligence in future television and film productions.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) begin contract talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and one of the main topics is the impact of Artificial Intelligence on film and TV content productions.

A recent series of viral deep fake trailers feature the faces of Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, and Timothee Chalamet, and portray them as Wes Anderson-style versions of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings characters. This brought back more concerns that actors could be replaced in film and television shows without proper
permissions or payment.

“Certain unauthorized A.I. uses may effectively devalue some of our members’ performances, but the concerns go far beyond that,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, told CNBC in an emailed statement. “Our members have the right to know what projects they are working in, what dialogue they are saying, what causes their character is advocating for, what actions their body will be tasked with doing,” he said. “Our members are human beings, not puppets, and it is a violation to use A.I. technology to make them do or say something without their informed consent.” If the parties fail to come to an agreement on this issue as well as others, it’s worth remembering that SAG-AFTRA members already voted for a strike with an overwhelming 98% of yeses.

Both the Writers Guild of America (on strike since May) and SAG-AFTRA seek protections against A.I. use in their negotiations and compensation for streamed content. “Our members want to ensure a human-centered approach to implementing A.I. in our industry, where the A.I. serves humans, not vice versa.”

Source: CNBC