Actors on strike - against AI
🎥 Disney CEO Bob Iger recently stated he was “very disturbed” by demands from striking actors, calling them unreasonable.
Yet a recent industry memo proposes that with the help of AI, Hollywood studios will own the identity of day-rate actors.
- Numerous working actors make a living from being extras in movies.
- This new proposal means that an extra will show up for work, be fully scanned by AI, get paid for one day’s work, and then the studio could feasibly use their AI-generated likeness in perpetuity—without ever paying the actor again.
- The day rate for such a role is roughly $200.
✊ This isn’t the only “disturbing demand” that led actors to join writers on the picket line. There’s also the question of agency: if a company creates an AI version of you, do you have any say in what that version says or does?
- These digital doubles are being referred to as “source codes,” and some studios want to copyright the codes of the actors they hire.
- Actors are striking for their rights, though some, like the 92-year-old James Earl Jones, signed off on his Darth Vader voice for many years to come.
⛈️ Iger might be “disturbed,” but Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting founder Barry Diller sees this “perfect storm” as an existential problem in the American entertainment industry:
“Who cares about Hollywood? Who cares about it? But the truth is, this is a huge business! Both domestically and for world exporters. … But these conditions will potentially produce an absolute collapse of an entire industry.”
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