The future of generative artificial intelligence in Hollywood, and how it can be used to replace labor, has become a crucial sticking point for actors going on strike.
in a Press conference On Thursday, Fran Drescher, president of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (better known as SAG-AFTRA), declared that “artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to the creative professions, and all actors and performers deserve contractual language. that protects them from having their identity and talent exploited without consent and payment.”
“If we don’t stand our ground right now, we’re all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in danger of being replaced by machines,” Drescher said.
SAG-AFTRA joined the Writer’s Guild of America, which represents Hollywood screenwriters, and has been on strike for more than two months, demanding a contract that explicitly requires AI regulations to protect writers and the works they create.
“AI cannot write or rewrite literary material; may not be used as source material; and [works covered by union contracts] it cannot be used to train the AI,” the WGA demands issued on Tuesday said. May 1.
Artificial intelligence tools that mimic humans have become much more effective in recent years for creating images and text, and more common. Technology that replicates people’s faces and voices is more and more prominent in hollywood Chatbots like ChatGPT, which can convincingly reproduce human handwriting, have grown in popularity since late last year. But they also have clear shortcomings: bots often get basic data wrong and are shunted when asked to write creative work.
The actors’ concerns highlight a broader anxiety among artists and people in many other creative professions. Many fear that without strict regulation, their work will be replicated and remixed by artificial intelligence tools, and that such a transformation will lessen their control over their work and harm their ability to earn a living.
The trade association representing Hollywood studios, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, did not respond to requests for comment. But a group statement obtained before the deadline it said it had offered actors an “innovative artificial intelligence proposition that protects the digital images of performers, including requiring the consent of the performer for the creation and use of digital replicas or digital alterations of a performance.”
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, told the news conference that the studios’ proposal for AI rules exploited actors without speaking roles.
“They proposed that our background artists should be able to be scanned, get paid in a day, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and they should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project. they want, without consent and without compensation,” she said.
The Director’s Guild of America, which unlike the other two Hollywood unions has announced a tentative agreement with studios, successfully added some AI protections in his contract. “The functions performed by the members of the DGA must be assigned to a person and [generative artificial intelligence] does not constitute a person.” says.
Justine Bateman, a member of all three unions, graduated from UCLA with a computer science degree and has been advising SAG on artificial intelligence for negotiations. She said it was fortuitous timing that those union contracts, which are for three-year terms, expired shortly after generative AI companies made their products widely available.
“The unions were able to include it in the negotiations because we could see how it was going to be used. Can you imagine if we had done our negotiations, and it was just another round, and then the day after all these deals were closed, they released access to the public? she said.
Other artists have tried alternate ways to counter the AI. Earlier this week, comedian Sarah Silverman and two authors filed copyright infringement lawsuits against two of the most prominent generative AI companies: OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and Facebook parent company Meta.
The lawsuit alleges that both companies effectively abridged the plaintiffs’ books, which could only have been done by reading and reproducing them for free without the permission of their authors. Meta declined to comment. OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Alex Winter, a filmmaker who has directed several documentaries on the dangers of emerging technologies and is also a member of all three guilds, said unions should take an extreme position on AI rights, given the unknown surrounding the technology.
“I think we really need to think about proposing these things from a labor standpoint in terms of very aggressive lawsuits,” he said. “We are not interested in them implementing these technologies with our work at all.”
“My concern is that if we give them a bit of room at the door, they’re going to throw it open. Because you just don’t know how these technologies work,” Winter said.
