Why Hollywood Is Threatened By AI Technology

Hollywood is currently witnessing an event that has not occurred since 1960—actors and writers are on strike at the same time. SAG-AFTRA—the union representing about 160,000 actors, journalists, and other media professionals—announced on July 13, 2023, that they will begin their strike. In doing so, they join the Writer’s Guild of America, who have been on the picket lines since May 1, 2023. This puts the entire industry at a standstill. 

Apart from seeking better pay, benefits, and working conditions, one of the issues raised by the actors union involves the generative artificial intelligence tools and the threat they pose to the livelihood of creatives. 

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Over the past couple of years, AI has proved to be incredibly useful in the movie and television industry. The new Indiana Jones movie, for instance, will show 81-year-old Harrison Ford as both his young and present self, thanks to AI. There are even talks of James Dean being resurrected for a new film with the use of face-cloning technology. 

During their July 13 press conference, SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland spoke of a proposal that sounded straight out of a dystopian episode of the science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. Crabtree-Ireland said: 

“This ‘groundbreaking’ AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day’s pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation. So if you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.” 

This proposal reportedly came from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the entity that represents the giants of the studio and streaming industry, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, and Warner Bros Discovery—more or less, the entirety of Hollywood. 

While AI definitely extends the boundaries of the entertainment industry, there is a cause for concern regarding the lack of ethical safeguards surrounding this relatively new piece of technology. What union members are asking, essentially, is an assurance that their jobs will not be jeopardized by the deployment of AI. 

As Crabtree-Ireland explained, “We're not anti-AI. It is okay for performers' likeness, image, voice to be digitally modeled and captured, provided they know exactly what it's going to be used for and that there are appropriate safeguards in place to make sure that that data is not made available beyond its intended use.”

In a statement, AMPTP responded to SAG's rejection of their proposal: “The Union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.”