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Solidarity Among Hollywood Unions Grows Stronger in Face of AI Challenges

Photo from Tara Winstead via Unsplash

Solidarity Among Hollywood Unions Grows Stronger in Face of AI Challenges

By Movieguide® Contributor

The Labor Innovation & Technology Summit started off strong this year by addressing the elephant in the room — artificial intelligence.

“The fear of replacement is very real at this moment and in this room,” said Linda Powell, EVP of SAG-AFTRA.

“Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s National Executive Director & Chief Negotiator, noted the positioning of the LIT Summit during CES, the major tech confab where a range of AI wares are on display. ‘CES has helped us identify trends coming down the road and separate the wheat from the chaff’ in terms of focusing resources and energy, he said. NFTs, he noted, ‘were the last thing everyone was freaking out about’ but labor leaders were able to see it lose steam among the Technorati,” Deadline reported.

Crabtree-Ireland says transparency is critical when negotiating AI contracts because they are published online.

“We don’t have the choice of stopping the technology from happening,” Crabtree-Ireland continued. “If we’re going to make the most of the leverage of power that we have at unions, we can’t just be against the technology. Because that didn’t work with the invention of electricity, or the internet, or the VCR.”

“In 2023, both actors and writers made AI protections a key objective in their bargaining, fueled by the introduction of OpenAI’s updated version of ChatGPT, which kicked off debate across society and in business about its impact,” Deadline reported. “The overriding concern in the already-battered entertainment business is that IP could be used to train AI, diluting the value of creative work and compromising the privacy and identity of individual members of the creative community. While a large portion of the panel centered on takeaways from the 2023 talks, the session also assessed the stances being assumed ahead of the next round, which will arrive in a little more than a year.”

DGA Executive Director Russell Hollander said some members see the positives of AI tech. Regardless, consultation rights that detail how AI is used are useful protections.

READ MORE: AI IS SPLITTING HOLLYWOOD — HERE’S WHY

Crabtree-Ireland recalled that when streamers and studios were called out publicly on their AI mistakes, they responded well. Workers in Hollywood shouldn’t have to “just trust” studios with AI.

“If you say we should trust you, why don’t you want to put that in writing?” Crabtree-Ireland said.

“If we can determine that there are common priorities, signaling that far in advance of negotiations with the employers helps whatever union is up first to achieve that because they know it’s important to the other unions,” Hollander said. “Solidarity doesn’t begin when negotiations fail. Solidarity is something you have to work on every single day.”

Crabtree-Ireland believes there’s been progress on that topic.

“Since the start of the pandemic, we have been on a trajectory in the entertainment industry that begins to have deeper and stronger solidarity than we ever have before,” he said. “And that’s not to say that it’s perfect, and it’s not to say that mistakes don’t get made…But the type of communication and collaboration that we have has served our members well.”

Disney CEO Bob Iger recently emphasized that Hollywood professionals need to “embrace” tech instead of running away from it.

“You’re never going to get in the way of it. There isn’t a generation of human beings that has ever been able to stand the way of technological advancement,” Iger said. “What we try to do is embrace the change that technology has created, and use it as the wind behind our backs instead of wind in our faces.”

Major studios seem to be in line with that way of thinking, as many CES. Disney, Warner Bros. and Discovery, Sony, and Panasonic all had significant presence at the event.

“NBCUniversal, Amazon, Roku and Fox Corp. are among many making announcements and having execs on panels. Two of the confab’s handful of keynote speeches are by the CEOs of SiriusXM and Nvidia,” Deadline reported.

“We have really invested, over the last decade, in technology that differentiates us from all of our traditional competitors,” Disney President of Global Advertising Rita Ferro said. “We can also compete with any of the new technology platforms, and what sets us apart across all of those is truly our scale. The ability to have the amount of content that we have across sports, which is a hugely popular marketplace right now in terms of advertisers and where they’re spending their dollars, is also a differentiator.”

READ MORE: WHY HOLLYWOOD PROFESSIONALS STRUGGLE TO FIND WORK IN AND OUT OF THE BUSINESS


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