News: Actor strike targets AI

LOS ANGELES, July 14, 2023, Hollywood actors have joined film and TV writers on strike in a bitter dispute with studios over pay, streaming rights, and use of artificial intelligence. Writers have been on strike since May.

Actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are demanding increases in base rates of pay and residual payments from streaming TV services, plus assurances that their work will not be replaced by artificial intelligence.

The action is probably the first to target AI as a primary reason for a trade dispute. Actors and writers share concerns that AI is increasingly being seen as a tool to dispense with creative services. It is also feared that the technology could be used to use actors’ images without compensation while having the potential to generate TV scripts.

Fran Drescher, former star of "The Nanny" TV show and the president of SAG-AFTRA, called the studios' responses to actors' concerns "insulting and disrespectful."

"I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us," Drescher said. "I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things, how they plead poverty that they're losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions to their CEOs. It is disgusting." (Quoted by: Reuters).

TV production trade group, The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Netflix and Disney, among others, expressed disappointment at the action. The group said it had offered the highest percentage increases in minimum pay levels in 35 years, along with pension and healthcare contribution caps, and a 76% increase in foreign residuals paid from big-budget streaming shows, among other benefits.

The group also said that studios had offered "a groundbreaking AI proposal” to protects actors' digital likenesses. The group also fears economic damage at a time when the industry is under increasing pressures over falling subscriptions.

In London, Thursday 13, the cast of new movie Oppenheimer walked out of the UK premiere in Leicester Square in support of Hollywood actors. Stars of Christopher Nolan’s war biopic leaving the event included Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt. Nolan has committed to not writing any more screenplays until the strike has been ended.

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