One of the many stumbling blocks at the heart of the battle between SAG-AFTRA and WGA for a new contract is the role of artificial intelligence as it continues to develop. For Marvel star Clark Gregg, keeping the role limited feels like he’s “fighting to keep the acting art form alive.”
Speaking to TheWrap on the first day of the SAG’s strike at the WGA, Greg said “AI is the scariest” issue for him. The reason is that there is no way to know exactly what the AI will be or how it will be used.
“When you’re shooting, say, a genre film, perhaps a superhero world, to retain your similarity and basics, there’s a thorough, full-body scan,” says Greg of Amazon Studios in Los Angeles. Explained near the picket line. Angeles. “And at some point they will probably be able to replicate you. It requires your permission, your consent, and your involvement.”
He continued: “You know, we are not just information that is put into a computer. That is not the purpose of humanity. increase.”
You can watch the full conversation between TheWrap and Gregg in the video below.
Greg wasn’t the only Pickett Line actor to have concerns about AI. Another SAG member, Christopher Clawson, who also holds a master’s degree in innovation and technology from the University of San Diego, hopes the union will “come up with very specific language to protect performers.”
“The thing that scares me is that studios know better than unions about what these features are,” Clawson said. “Because they’re the ones who sell this stuff, right? They’re deep-pocketed people, and they’ve seen what this technology can do. They’re not ready for primetime right now. Maybe, but within the next two, three, four years, there will be such top-notch productions that you won’t even need actors to act.”
The AI threat has also been a major pain point for background actors. Part of AMPTP’s proposal included the permanent use of actors’ performances for AI recreation. Instead, the actors were to be given a day’s wages.
“It’s not positive thinking. It’s putting people out of work,” SAG member Sue Burch, who was protesting the Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery strike in New York, told TheWrap. Birch is no stranger to protesting unfair working conditions. As a child, she protested alongside her father, a public school teacher in New York City, and participated in her SAG and her AFTRA commercial strikes in 2000.
Birch criticized AMPTP, arguing it doesn’t know how to pay performers for “new media,” including streamers’ work. “That deal has been going on for over a decade. Nothing new,” Birch said. “We get told all the time, ‘We don’t know how the market will behave, so we don’t know how to price it.’” , we’re like, ‘We’re not playing that’. “
Under this proposal, for example, images of background actors can be used in crowd scenes, even if the actors were not part of the project.
“Let me be clear, under the terms of the current contract, we don’t agree that they have such a right. But they said, ‘It’s not in the contract, so we can. They are,” SAG member and two-term chairman Richard Masser told TheWrap during NBCUniversal’s strike in New York. “They claim they can because it’s not production. The digital information they have absolute right to use is just crazy.”
SAG member Max Goldbaum, a working actor who participated in the Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery strikes, sees the AI problem as much more than just a threat to Hollywood. To him, this is part of a global threat to everyone from writers to Walmart employees. He also considers it a compelling reason to enact a universal basic income.
“We are going to end up in a society where everything is automated and people are out of work,” Goldbaum said. “Without universal income, many people would die.”
Kayla Cobb contributed to this report.
See all of TheWrap’s Hollywood strike coverage here.
