In the streets of New York City and Los Angeles, members of SAG AFTRA, the US-American actor union, and WAG, the corresponding writer union, are on strike. Where tourists came to see the large studios that produce their favorite shows, these days they see picketers demonstrating for fair wages and deals to ensure that the people producing the entertainment we all love get fairly compensated.
But these strikes go deeper than just sinking wages to match the rate of inflation while incomes of juggernaut companies climb.
We’re also on the edge of a major technological shift that will forever change the way not only entertainment of all kinds is made but also affects almost every other job: the emergence of AI.
What is it that the Actors and Writers want?
In short, they want what almost every worker in the world wants: to pay their bills with the money they make in their jobs.
With the emergence and the rise of streaming, residuals get lower. The cost-of-living rises every day as inflation slowly devalues our money.
Some contracts don’t even include residuals for various forms of entertainment that weren’t invented at the time of signing.
Sean Gunn, actor in Gilmore Girls and Guardians of the Galaxy, told Deadline that while Gilmore Girls is a huge hit on Netflix, due to his contract, he receives no residuals from the work he did. Netflix keeps making money from Gilmore Girls, though.
While the common myth seems to be that millionaires are striking, the reality looks very different:
The top billing actors often make their own deals. They’re at a point where they don’t have to rely on the union agreed deals. Their support for the strike is mainly in support of thousands of other actors who are not at their level of fame, actors like background talent and Stand-Ins.
These, for example, perform a lot of the supporting duties for a principal actor: They read lines off screen, double for them. If, for example, a single actor portrays a set of twin, the stand-in is used to give the actor a partner to play off on. These stand-ins receive a minimal payment – around 200 a day – as one off payment. They neither receive credit, no do they receive any residuals and in the emerging age of AI, their jobs are at risk.
The age of AI
AI is a major disagreement between the studios and WGA and SAG. With the way the usage of AI is mostly unregulated at the moment, Studios see their chance to craft contracts that allow them to scan a background actor, pay them for one day and then used the scanned data forever. Imagine your favorite actor in all his movies and he or she never even made them or even consented to his likeness to be used for them.
It’s easy to see how the usage of this practice would, in the long run, destroy the profession as an actor entirely. No new Brad Pitt can come up, when at the entry level background talent is scanned and forever used with AI for the cheap fee of a little over 200 Dollar.
Some actors have even gone back now and found a clause in their contracts, allowing precisely that already.
The actors aren’t the only ones under threat from AI: Without regulations, studios would be able to and allowed to use AI to fully replace writers. All it would need it a person with a vision and a prompt engineer to coax said vision out of an AI.
At the time of writing there are already several AI able to create spectacular written content (ChatGPT, Sudowrite, Dall-E, and so more).
And last but not least, with the actors being replaced, wardrobe departments, hair and make-up would be no longer needed. Stuntmen would be entirely replaced, VFX departments would be shrunken down.
A vast majority of creatives are under threat of losing their job if AI usage isn’t regulated.
The internet was once new, but it was just as unregulated when it was introduced as AI is right now. The regulations followed slowly.
In this so called AI revolution, we’re not at the stage of governments regulating the usage of AI yet, but jobs are already under threat.
SAG AFTRA and WGA are calling for the industry to self-regulate before lasting damage is done on it.
The strikes reflect an industry that, because of technology, changed drastically over the last decade. The pay doesn’t reflect the change.
And with almost every job in jeopardy over the AI revolution now, this strike is an important signal. It’s protecting the creative minds that brought us countless hours of tv, movies and streaming content and to create the first regulations that will protect other jobs as well.
The solution is to find a compromise so creators can create their art and earn a living.
For Netflix, for example, meeting the current demands would be around 0.2% of their current revenue. Even less for the other major studios.