Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
AI Movies

The AI Protections Hollywood Actors Got After Their 118-Day Strike (rollingstone.com) 60

Posted by EditorDavid from the casting-calls dept.
The longest actor's strike in Hollywood history ended with "groundbreaking" protections against the use of AI, reports CNN: Studios will have to provide informed consent for the creation of any kind of digital replica of a performer or background actor, with a specific description of the intended use, the union officials said. Compensation for the replica will vary. Notably, the contract also protects background performers from any use of their digital replica without their consent, SAG leadership said. [Even after they are deceased.]

Negotiations over using AI to create synthetic performers continued down to the wire. Union leadership said studios will have to gain consent for any actors whose facial features are used for the AI performer, the studios have to inform actors they're using AI, and the union can bargain over compensation for those affected by it.
The separate deal signed in September with the writer's guild "also includes assurances that AI cannot write or rewrite literary material," the article adds, "and will require AI-generated materials to be disclosed to writers." Now the president of the actor's union tells the Hollywood Reporter, "We got everything we wanted with the AI protections, which was key. Plus we're going to be meeting with the AMPTP [the entertainment industry's bargaining unit] twice a year to make sure that our finger remains on the pulse of the progress, and also to align ourselves on the same side with regard to federal regulations and protections against piracy."

And the union president underscored the importance of AI-related protections to Rolling Stone" "If we didn't get that package, then what are we doing? We're not really able to protect our members in the way that they needed to be protected... If we didn't get those barricades, what would it be in three years...?"

In the union's initial announcement of the tentative deal on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA promised it had secured a contract "of extraordinary scope" valued at more than $1 billion and "unprecedented provisions for consent and compensation that will protect members from the threat of AI."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The AI Protections Hollywood Actors Got After Their 118-Day Strike More

The AI Protections Hollywood Actors Got After Their 118-Day Strike

Comments Filter:

  • There will be lawsuits (Score:4, Insightful)

    by flatulus ( 260854 ) on Saturday November 11, 2023 @04:05PM (#63998063)
    Crystal ball tells me the studios' lawyers already identified a loophole. They will find non-actors who are spitting images of famous actors and license the non-actor's likeness for a pittance of what the real actor would have received. In a way this is already done with voice actors. There is a series of ads I hear on AM radio for survival food packs with a voice actor that sounds all the world like Sam Elliott. I finally looked online and found him. I'm sure he's happy with 2% of what Sam would have charged to voice those commercials :-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      I wonder if that would be complicated by the studio having already employed the actor within the franchise. If they wanted to replace, say, Michael Fassbender in an X-Men movie, if they found a Fassbender-lookalike and created a 3d model of the lookalike, after perhaps giving the lookalike a a single on-screen moment as the young version of Magneto, would Fassbender have grounds to challenge a lack of payment?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        You can try, but at that point you're claiming rights to another person's appearance. That isn't going to go well, because of just how insane ramifications of granting someone rights to appearance of another just on the grounds of "they look similar to me" are.

      • But why go with a look-alike? In your example, they won't be able to use Fassbender's name anyway, and I think the name is what attracts viewers much more than the face. If it becomes impossible (or just too difficult or expensive) to keep using the same actor for some movie series, studios could replace the star with an AI character using a random person's appearance and handwave the change. It's not like actors haven't been replaced in quite a few long-running series; sometimes explicitly, like Colonel Po

        • I don't know what mushrooms did you take while binging Two and a half men - those were two different characters and there was no "surgery". I barely watched a couple episodes, but from what I saw they couldn't write more than 5mins of script before making a joke/exposition to explain the absence of the charlie character. Not sure if they had such little faith in the audience, or they just couldn't stop throwing shade at Charlie Sheen by proxy.

          If anything that hallucination is a standard example that it *is*

          • I haven't actually watched Two and 1/2 Men, so I haven't seen with my own eyes how the switch was justified. I was somehow under the impression that Kuchner was supposed to be the same person, and surgery was involved. Maybe somebody told me about the switch, but I didn't pay enough attention, since I didn't really care? Anyway, if that's not how it happened, my apologies and please ignore this example.

            I agree that many shows that pull a switch end up failing, but this is not always the case: M.A.S.H. for e

            • I haven't actually watched Two and 1/2 Men, so I haven't seen with my own eyes how the switch was justified.

              Then simply don't use it as an example. In that show they literally killed the character and replaced it with a completely new character, so the switch was justified as this: person X dies, person Y moves into house.

      • "if they found a Fassbender-lookalike"

        Bad example.

        Better would be a female actress, who has different hair, teeth, noses, tits and eye-color every few weeks.
        Nobody really recognizes them after the 5th surgical procedure.

        AI would at least make movies with a young, unblemished original version until the end of time.
        And completely legal for movies made in Canada, like the most already are, to avoid other Union rules.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Here's another way to look at it as well. Studios who will be able to use appearances of attractive people for less will do better than those that don't.

      So even if this or other loopholes aren't applied for some reason, new studios will be created that don't have these problems. You could make them abroad in Mexico or Bulgaria, since you won't be needing that much on site filming staff to avoid potential conflicts as well. All you need is distribution capabilities.

    • Crystal ball tells me the studios' lawyers already identified a loophole. They will find non-actors who are spitting images of famous actors and license the non-actor's likeness for a pittance of what the real actor would have received.

      In a way this is already done with voice actors. There is a series of ads I hear on AM radio for survival food packs with a voice actor that sounds all the world like Sam Elliott. I finally looked online and found him. I'm sure he's happy with 2% of what Sam would have charged to voice those commercials :-)

      In that case, why don't they do that already? A Sam Elliott look-alike isn't going to charge much to stand around and look like Sam Elliot.

      I think the first place it's going to actually make an impact isn't actors but stunt doubles. In the short term it's a win-win since you can now deep-fake the actors face onto the stunt double so they don't need to turn away from the camera or be out of focus. In the long term you'll be able to fully and convincingly CG the lead actor doing the dangerous stuff, which wil

      • "In that case, why don't they do that already? A Sam Elliott look-alike isn't going to charge much to stand around and look like Sam Elliot."

        To be fair, Sam doesn't do much else either.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I think the first place it's going to actually make an impact isn't actors but stunt doubles. In the short term it's a win-win since you can now deep-fake the actors face onto the stunt double so they don't need to turn away from the camera or be out of focus. In the long term you'll be able to fully and convincingly CG the lead actor doing the dangerous stuff, which will put some stunt doubles out of work (which isn't always a bad thing).

        They already do this. Stunt doubles either have masks or makeup put o

    • (From TFS) Studios will have to provide informed consent for the creation of any kind of digital replica of a performer or background actor, ...

      Or they'll simply say create something as close to [actor] as legally permissible w/o needing consent ...

    • Please give me a single example of a celebrity look a like that would pass well enough. Why haven't they been doing this already? If this worked why don't we see it already sans the AI? You don't need AI if you've got a look alike already. Why aren't they hiring impersonators for anything other than being a double for the main actor they are already paying?

      • "Please give me a single example of a celebrity look a like that would pass well enough. "

        They did Furious 7 with a dead celebrity and the movie Crow and some.

        • I mean... they did an undead Carrie Fisher in one of the recent Star Treks. But all it did was weird everyone out.

    • If all it takes is a voice to sell your product, then you have already set the real value of wasting money on ACTUAL celebrity voices. We live in a world full of impersonators. And Autotune.

    • Lawsuits? Sounds too complicated. They just wrote themselves out of a job. Many other hungry mouths will do it if they won't.

    • 2Crystal ball tells me the studios' lawyers already identified a loophole. "

      The loophole is called 'Canada'.

    • Thats the beauty of industrial activism though. If the lawyers find a loophole, then you can bet the unions lawyers find a loophole to go back on strike (the easiest being "fuck you , I'm not going back to work tomorrow)

  • To see AI robot titties that look like Farrah! OK, one can look like Megan Fox.

  • CGI Extras? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Saturday November 11, 2023 @04:43PM (#63998165)

    I'm not sure - what's a "likeness" of a background character or extra really worth?

    I mean, taking 20+ year old example: In Lord of the Rings trilogy, lot of the orc hordes are pure CGI, it was bit of groundbreaking even. Since you don't see their faces and it's mostly in the dark (e.g. Helms deep).

    Now, with Dall-E and Midjourney and the like...Can't they just tell an AI generator "give me 50 background charaters, with appropriate clothing and ethical divesity to put to a background in [medieval european fantasy/post-apocalyptic urban/modern New York/English church sermon] setting". AI says "here you go". Studio imports them to their post-processing software.

    Bye bye getting a day's paycheck as a movie extra.

    • With todays technology that was still too expensive until the union decided to strike and got these asinine contracts in place.

      Current generative systems just arenâ(TM)t as good as a real person or even a CGI artist when it comes to actually generating believable humans. Pictures are hard enough already not to get a creature with 6 fingers and the entire face to be neither too perfect not too odd (the uncanny valley), creating entire scenes with movement, reactions, shadows, stories and scenes that oft

      • Either way it was a matter of time. If the cost of extras went up a lot, then development of total digital replacements will happen sooner rather than later.

        • How much does an extra cost? A few bucks, a cup of coffee and some snacks?

          Compare that to the salary of the main actors, a chi artist team, or the newly hired "AI artist" team.

          Extras are... not much extra on those scales.

          • "How much does an extra cost? A few bucks, a cup of coffee and some snacks?"

            Simplified cost analysis for hiring extras in a movie:

            Casting Call:
            Casting calls are issued to find suitable extras for specific scenes.
            Details are published in various media.

            Selection Process:
            Extras may audition or be selected based on applications and headshots.

            Costuming:
            Selected extras are fitted with costumes matching the movie's theme.

            Payment:
            Extras are paid for their time, with rates varying.
            Common payment structures include a

            • 50 is a lot for most movies but I'll roll with it as a fair number of movies have many more.

              Accepting all your numbers straight up, let's say we need 50 extras for 10 days of filming. Total guess on my part but let's roll with that, too.

              So we get 50 x $100 x 10 days = $50k in salary.

              I'm not sure if you meant $500 each or total for casting. Let's assume each. That's another $25k.

              $2k for costumes. $40/costume? Depends on the movie. Let's say it's a modern day romcom so common street clothes off the rack

      • If the technology used 20+ years ago was good enough for LoTR, there is no reason for it to not be good enough now.

    • Surely you understand that not all background characters are CGI or people in full costumes. This clause may be less important for new/initial works, and more appropriate for prequels/sequels/series where the same, even background (non-main), characters exist. Say a TV show has a background character that doesn't do much, or anything, but is always there for some reason. S/He'd be easy to replace with an AI generation for, at least, much of the time.

      • This is not about the extras / background actors... though being consistent in those demands probably didn't hurt for the unions to keep the strike going.

        No one was complaining two years ago about CGI making it possible to remake Ben-Hur or Matrix without hiring a ton of extras. That was pretty much universally seen as a good thing.

        The scenario that is a concern here is a studio hiring an actor for an "extra" or minor job, then using their likeness as a main character going forward. Think Agent Coulson on t

    • Sounds interesting. Could be fun if the AI generates a likeness of an actual human being learned from previous footage though. Nice movie you got there, it would be a shame if someone happened in it...

      • "Nice movie you got there, it would be a shame if someone happened in it..."

        Yes, if the content mafia has their say, making impressions of famous actors will soon be a crime.

    • There's an even better reason to do this than just saving money on human wages - by adding in the background actors in post, you can ensure perfect continuity with multiple takes of your live actors, no matter the order you edit them together in while making your scene. Nobody ever teleports/glitches, or moves a prop in an inconsistent way. And they never ever make a mistake that requires the main cast to start over.

      • Yep, there are twenty thousand solid technical reasons AI+CGI can, will, and should be used for better movies, etc.

        That's incremental progress and hardly controversial - audiences may have complained about (bad) CGI oversaturating high budget movies. But the actors were not complaining about not having to do 20x more shots or spending less hours on makeup, etc.

        What is disruptive, whether realistic or not, is a perceived possibility to industrialize what remains today an old-school "artistic" endeavor.

        • >or spending less hours on makeup,

          This is the one that currently fascinates me. I wonder how close we are to the point you could put an actor in a chair for a couple of minutes and maybe draw some registration marks on their face... and then let all the 'makeup' be added later with little to no skilled labour involved.

        • I'll be really impressed when an AI model can be context aware enough to spot out of place objects left in a scene by production staff. Like the starbucks cup in Game of Thrones.
    • Can't they just tell an AI generator "give me 50 background charaters, with appropriate clothing and ethical divesity to ... Shouldn't it the studios getting more ethical diversity ?

    • "give me 50 background charaters, with appropriate clothing and ethical divesity to put to a background in [medieval european fantasy/post-apocalyptic urban/modern New York/English church sermon] setting".

      I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm forced to provide the precise legislated amount of diversity, even if it doesn't match your setting.

    • "Bye bye getting a day's paycheck as a movie extra."

      Also as stars.

      Why pay Tom Cruise millions when you can make dozens of movies with John Wayne for a pittance, his estate will gladly take any extra money.

      No need for Scientology tents on the movie stage, nor hairdresser, stunt-men, costumes, make-up, lighting, gun-masters...
      No animals nor humans getting killed or hurt.
      AI is way better.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Briareos ( 21163 )

      Now, with Dall-E and Midjourney and the like...Can't they just tell an AI generator "give me 50 background charaters, with appropriate clothing and ethical divesity to put to a background in [medieval european fantasy/post-apocalyptic urban/modern New York/English church sermon] setting". AI says "here you go". Studio imports them to their post-processing software.

      Well, Disney tried this already (modulo the AI part) and failed spectacularly [youtube.com]...

  • A starving and out of work actor is likely to be exploited and give consent. It's not like they weren't giving consent prior to this, it was in their contracts. If this allowed for them all to opt-out and not lose the gig it would be powerful.

  • I'm not particularly knowledgeable about how things work in Hollywood, but it does seem to be very competitive with a lot more people wanting to get into the business than the business needs, which means a lot of vulnerable people. So I wonder how much the suits of the business can lean on these people to get their 'informed consent' without getting called out on it.

    The summary says compensation will vary. If I were an actor, I'd feel better if it simply weren't allowed to use my digital replica at any ti

    • "If I were an actor, I'd feel better if it simply weren't allowed to use my digital replica at any time without compensation until the movie or whatever it's being used in goes into the public domain. No signing it away into perpetuity period."

      They'll use dead actors, they won't object and their descendants will gladly take the money.

  • I see a lot of possibilities in this, and maybe it is a better deal for the human artists. A background actor could be a waiter, someone walking by on the street, someone taking the same elevator, etc. There are loads of these characters in movies, most don't have a speaking part, but they are essential to the illusion of reality. And while they aren't critical performers, you want those folks to be attractive and interesting. But it is expensive to have a huge cast.

    Now what can happen is that they can be a

  • Now you can unbundle the actor - take the appearance from someone, voice from someone else, and acting from yet another person. What will the effect be?
  • It is not that hard to just create complete AI characters.

    • AI characters would still be based on training using images of real people. One would have to get their permission.

      • In order for a human to learn to draw other humans it has to see humans. You don't owe every human you come across if you then go on to invent a fictional human and draw it based on your experiences of seeing humans.

  • I uploaded lots of selfies to an app called Remini. It created a picture of me that looks better than me. Also what I would look like as a woman. I don't have to be a Hollywood actor now! They already have everything they need. I paid $3

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dr. Tom ( 23206 )

      My girlfriend saw me looking at that picture of me as a woman and she left me. It's a really good picture of a woman who doesn't exist

  • AI likenesses of actors is going to happen so rarely as to be irrelevant. First of all, the total number of actors that people recognize is very small compared to the size of SAG-AFTRA. Next, the only time this is likely to come into play is if an actor dies in the middle of production. No one is going to be making say Tom Cruise movies that don't have Tom Cruise in them. And if they do, they will flop.

  • Funny, that. We all know what "informed consent" means in the USA. It means clickwraps, forced contracts, etc. It will never mean either "informed" or "consent" or even both.

Slashdot Top Deals

"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes." -- Rick Obidiah

Close