Leaders of the striking actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, criticized the Hollywood studios Thursday for offering an AI proposal that would allow studios to replace background actors with their digital replicas in perpetuity in return for a single day’s pay, outlining the growing concerns about the use of AI tools by studios to replace human performers and creatives.
Actor, Fran Drescher (L) and president of the SAG-AFTRA Union and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA ... [+]
After the actors began their strike Thursday, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) which represents major Hollywood studios and streaming platforms issued a statement saying its offer to actors included a “groundbreaking AI proposal.”
The studios’ trade group said the proposal would protect “performers’ digital likenesses” and would require consent from actors for “the creation and use of digital replicas or for digital alterations of a performance.”
Commenting on the proposal SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said the studios' proposal offers one day’s pay to background actors who chose to get their likeness scanned.
The studios would then “own that scan, their image, their likeness, and be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation,” Crabtree-Ireland added.
Similar concerns about the use of AI had been raised by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) when it began its strike in May. The guild’s proposal called for the regulation of AI use, including a ban on AI writing or rewriting “literary material,” use of AI to generate source material for writers and preventing the training of AI tools on material written by the guild’s writers. The AMPTP rejected this proposal and instead offered to hold annual meetings “to discuss advancements in technology.”