Hollywood's Actors Go on Strike, With AI at the Center of the Fight

The actors' union joined the writers on the picket line after talks with the studios collapsed. Among the disputes: a studio proposal to scan background performers once and use their digital likeness forever, for a day's pay.

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing about 160,000 actors, went on strike at midnight after its contract with the major studios expired without a deal. The writers have been on strike since May. It is the first time both have walked out at once since 1960, and it shuts down most film and television production in the United States.

Pay and streaming residuals are the biggest issues, as they were for the writers. But artificial intelligence is the one that has people on the picket lines angriest, and the union's account of the studios' final offer is the reason. According to the union's chief negotiator, the studios proposed that background actors — the people who fill out a crowd scene — could be scanned once, paid for one day of work, and then have their digital likeness used by the studio in any project, forever, without further consent or pay. The studios say the proposal was mischaracterized and that it included protections. The union's president, Fran Drescher, called the industry's position "shameful" and said its executives "plead poverty" while the technology threatens to replace the people it depends on.

The writers' strike has the same argument in a different form: whether studios can use programs like ChatGPT to write scripts and hire writers only to fix them. The technology to do either — write a passable script, or put a scanned actor into a new scene — is not really there yet. Both unions are striking over the contract that will be in force when it is.

It is the first major labor action anywhere in which the future use of AI is a central demand. It will not be the last.