Like the WGA before it, one of the main reasons SAG-AFTRA went on strike was a series of disagreements about artificial intelligence technology. But, according to some SAG members, the key to reaching an agreement on this issue is simple: “real consent.”
As a sign of how seriously SAG-AFTRA takes the matter, lead negotiator in studio talks Duncan Crabtree-Ireland joined a San Diego Comic-Con panel on Saturday to explain it alongside fellow SAG members and members of the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA) Zeke Alton, Tim Friedlander, Ashly Burch and Cissy Jones.
“There’s active consent versus passive consent,” Alton, whose work includes the “Call of Duty” and “Diablo” video game franchises, said. “We want active consent.”
“Passive consent is when a company will bury in their terms of agreement, or page 27 of a 30-page contract, something [important],” Jones explained. “We want to make sure that it’s something you actually read, and say ‘Oh they want to turn my voice into a digital voice. I agree or I do not agree.’ That is active consent, tacit consent.”
In the press conference announcing the SAG-AFTRA strike, Crabtree-Ireland said that AI-related issues were a particular sticking point during negotiations with the studios. He also revealed that among the proposals from studios that caused them to strike was a demand to be allowed to use AI to capture the likenesses of background actors (extras), pay those actors for a single day’s work, and then use their likenesses however they wish in perpetuity.
Studios dispute this; in a statement rebutting SAG-AFTRA’s characterization of their disagrements, released a week after the strike began, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents studios, said their final proposal before the strike contained provisions to address guild concerns about AI.
The AMPTP statement didn’t clarify what differences remained between their position and the actors guild’s. Meanwhile SAG-AFTRA has consistently maintained that studios wouldn’t back down on proposals like the one regarding background actors that, the guild says, if implemented would effectively eliminate background acting as a job.
And during the panel, the discussion again and again returned to the assertion that voice actors face the same risk. To explain those fears, Crabtree-Ireland invoked Disney, one of the major studios that the unions have been negotiating with, pointing out that the entire plot of “The Little Mermaid” involves someone who quite literally has their voice stolen from them.
(Naturally, in keeping within strike rules, Crabtree-Ireland didn’t mention Disney or “The Little Mermaid” by name. He instead told a tongue-in-cheek story about “one of the companies we’re on strike against,” that made a movie about a “sea witch” and a “small mermaid.”)
In reality, the panelists admitted that AI is effectively inevitable at this point, so the most important thing is to be entirely on top of it.
“As much as AI is scary — we’re all worried as humans — I think we also have to be realistic and figure out a way to work with what is available,” Jones said. “And to help shape the way that it becomes usable.”
For all of TheWrap’s strike coverage, click here. And for all our San Diego Comic-Con coverage, go here.
