On May 2, 2023, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) began a strike, protesting against the increasing use of AI in film with a lack of legal protections for artists and their work, that comprised around 11,500 screenwriters. A few months later, on July 14, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) joined the strike, the first organized actors’ strike since 1980. Among the priorities of both unions was to establish protections surrounding generative AI in content creation and actors’ likeness. The final SAG-AFTRA deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) ensured that studios would gain permission from actors before creating digital replicas and compensate the performers when the replicas were used.
This new guideline was put to use immediately in the 2023 film, “Alien: Romulus.” With the permission of his estate, Ian Holm, who played Ash in Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien,” reappeared posthumously in “Alien: Romulus.” Since Holmes died in 2020, the filmmakers sought permission from his widow and children to recreate him as what they call an “Artificial Person” using AI technology.
However, despite the agreement between the guilds and the AMPTP, there were still some apprehensions over whether the deal provided enough protection for actors. Shaan Sharma, a SAG-AFTRA national board member, out of a concern that companies will begin to refuse to hire those who do not consent to digital replication, forcing actors who want employment to consent through coercion. The estate permission we saw from Ian Holm may not even be necessary in the near future if actors begin to give defaulted consent to digital replication as part of their employment contract.
Future legal battles on this issue can be glimpsed from the ongoing Lucasfilm lawsuit, where the company was sued for their CGI recreation of the late Peter Cushing’s character, Grand Moff Tarkin, in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” This case was initiated by Kevin Francis through his company Tyburn Film Productions, who claims as Cushing's friend that he was given authority in 1993 to approve digital recreation, even naming the executor of Cushing’s estate as one of the defendants. However, on the other side of the lawsuit, Lucasfilm countered that they had received permission from Cushing to digitally recreate him due to their 1977 contract for “Star Wars: A New Hope.” As AI digital recreation and resurrection become more prevalent in Hollywood with the development of more advanced technological tools, the question of who owns the rights to an actor’s likeness may be confronted more frequently.
In addition to the SAG-AFTRA agreement, the United States Senate proposed a bill called the “Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe ,” which protects voice and visual likenesses from unauthorized replication through generative AI. This act was proposed by Sens. Chris Coons, Marsha Blackburn, Amy Klobuchar and Thom Tillis to establish guardrails for non-consensual deepfakes already circulating the internet. One instance of an alleged deepfake is OpenAI’s speculated use of Scarlett Johansson’s voice to train their ChatGPT voice tool “Sky” after she turned down their proposals to hire her to voice ChatGPT 4.0. When Sky’s voice was released, the public drew comparisons to Johansson’s performance in the movie “Her,” where she voiced the character Samantha, a computer that the main character falls in love with. OpenAI denied these accusations, claiming that an actor who went through extensive auditioning provided her “natural speaking voice” to train Sky’s voice, but the voice was removed from ChatGPT a week later.
An inciting factor of the WGA strike was Hollywood studios’ interest in training generative AI using public domain books and scripts to write content, then relying on hired writers to polish the work. In the WGA's agreement with the AMPTP, they ensured protections for writers so that AI could not independently create literary material. Another aspect of the agreement forbids the use of writers’ material to train AI. In the realm of music, the intellectual property complications in training AI have provided the grounds for some major lawsuits. For example, the record labels Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group filed copyright infringement against AI companies Suno and Udio in June 2024. The labels allege that the AI companies used their copyrighted songs to train their generative AI, which offers text-to-song services. Suno and Udio admitted to mining their music libraries but maintained that it was legal under fair use. Some of the songs they mined included Green Day’s “American Idiot,” Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” The outcome of this ongoing lawsuit involving three power labels could lend significant insight into how the music industry will operate around generative AI and copyright procedures.
Overall, the rapid advancement of AI technology is forcing Hollywood’s actors, writers, labels and studios to confront the complex legalities surrounding copyright and consent. The SAG-AFTRA and WGA agreements mark initial steps in protecting the rights of actors and writers, but concerns about coercion and exploitation still remain to be seen. Ongoing disputes, such as the Lucasfilm lawsuit and the Suno and Udio copyright case, illustrate how these boundaries of intellectual property are being tested across various forms of media, and upcoming legal battles will likely shape how AI will be regulated within the entertainment industry.
This is a continuation of a previous article on AI use in the film industry.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, ¶·Å£ÆåÅÆ University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.