Hollywood actors secure safeguards around AI use on screen
Actors secured these new safeguards as part of a deal announced late on Wednesday, according to Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief negotiator for the SAG-AFTRA actors union.
Under the three-year contract, actors «have this right of consent, and the right to fair compensation anytime some sort of digital replica or replacement of them is used,» Crabtree-Ireland told Reuters.
The proposed agreement sets a minimum compensation level for AI uses, Crabtree-Ireland said. Actors also are free to negotiate higher payments.
Full details of the new contract will released after SAG-AFTRA's national board votes on the proposal on Friday, the union said. Then, the deal will go to union members for ratification.
Film and television performers have viewed AI as an existential threat, fearing they would be replaced by digital versions of their own likenesses or «metahumans» created by AI.
Background and voice actors, in particular, worried they would lose work to synthetic performers.
Crabtree-Ireland said the proposed contract also included safeguards around the use of generative AI to create synthetic actors.
«There are important protections of consent and compensation around those types of uses as well,» he said, though he did not provide details.
AI technology already has been used to erase age lines or substitute pieces of dialogue, raising concern that a studio might put words in an actor's mouth that they did not approve.
The issue emerged as a major sticking point for SAG-AFTRA, the union representing about 160,000 actors, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other performers, and was one of the last topics to be resolved, Crabtree-Ireland said.
