Hollywood actors secure safeguards around AI use on screen
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[November 10, 2023]
By Dawn Chmielewski and Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Movie studios must obtain permission from actors
to use their images in material generated by artificial intelligence
(AI), and pay performers whenever their digital doubles appear on
screen, under the labor agreement that ended a 118-day strike.
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.
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Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, National Executive Director and Chief
Negotiator of SAG-AFTRA, pumps a fist during the international
premiere of The Boy and the Heron at the Toronto International Film
Festival (TIFF) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada September 7, 2023.
REUTERS/Carlos Osorio/File Photo
"We have finally, with the changes
that have been achieved over the last few days, reached a place
where we can feel confident that our members do have guardrails,"
Crabtree-Ireland said.
"Those guardrails are set up in such a way that even as the
technology develops, that those protections will develop along with
it," he added.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the
group that negotiated for Walt Disney, Warner Bros Discovery,
Netflix and other major studios, said the contract offered
"extensive consent and compensation protections in the use of
artificial intelligence."
Technology executives who do business in Hollywood say studios have
been waiting for the industry to establish ground rules around the
use of AI before they fully explore new uses.
"They are being ultra cautious," said Scott Mann, co-CEO and founder
of Flawless, a company that uses AI for film dubbing and editing.
"But they're recognizing that there is massive benefit and, from a
revolutionary point of view, this can be incredibly powerful to the
industry."
Film and television writers also won protections around AI use after
a five-month-long strike by the Writers Guild of America this year.
Among them, studios must disclose to a writer if any materials were
generated by AI.
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles;
Editing by Mary Milliken and Bill Berkrot)
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