AI

Generative AI kindles further Hollywood unrest, protests

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July 14, 2023

Hollywood union SAG-AFTRA, which includes actors and performers, has cited generative AI as a major factor in recently launched strikes, according to a report in The Verge.

"This 'groundbreaking' AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day's pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation," Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, said in the report. "So if you think that's a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again."

"If we don't stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble, we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines," Fran Drescher, president at SAG-AFTRA and former lead actor in the show The Nanny, added in the report.

Representatives for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have denied the allegations.

"The claim made today by SAG-AFTRA leadership that the digital replicas of background actors may be used in perpetuity with no consent or compensation is false," Scott Rowe, spokesperson for AMPTP, said in a statement quoted in the report. "In fact, the current AMPTP proposal only permits a company to use the digital replica of a background actor in the motion picture for which the background actor is employed. Any other use requires the background actor's consent and bargaining for the use, subject to a minimum payment."