SAG-AFTRA has sent members a tentative four-year agreement with the studios' bargaining group, the AMPTP, and its AI terms are drawing most of the scrutiny. They cover digital replicas of real actors and fully synthetic performers such as Tilly Norwood.
The union had been expected to ask that any production casting a synthetic pay the equivalent of a member's fee into a fund, nicknamed the "Tilly Tax". Studio sources told TheWrap the AMPTP refused because no studio has used a synthetic performer yet, and it resists contract terms for technology with no track record. That reluctance was also behind the 2023 strike. The fund was meant to remove the cost saving that makes synthetics attractive.
The compromise: studios commit to hiring union performers overwhelmingly and will not cast a synthetic in a role a member could play unless it brings "significant additional value". A producer who wants one must notify and bargain with the union and show the synthetic beats both a human actor and a digital replica of one. If talks fail, the union can go to arbitration, and damages are not capped at the fee a human would have earned. The contract does not define the key phrase.
National executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland argues the replica test narrows things a lot, because a replica is based on a paid, consenting member and can do nearly anything a synthetic can. He expects each case to take about a month, a delay he thinks will put producers off. Entertainment lawyer Ivy Kagen Bierman of Loeb & Loeb says the approach lets both sides work out rules on real projects and prepares the ground for firmer terms next cycle. Crabtree-Ireland says producers usually justify synthetics with stunts no human could do, safety, or a character who is itself artificial; on safety, the union will ask why a replica would not do.
Crabtree-Ireland accepts that many members fear losing work to AI, but says studios are uncertain too and risk an arbitrator ruling against them.
Sources · 1