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After AMPTP yesterday described their AI proposal to SAG-AFTRA as “groundbreaking,” actors’ union national executive and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland still disagrees.
“We’re pretty far apart on AI,” Crabtree-Ireland said, explaining yesterday his argument that the AMPTP is interfering with background actors on this deal point.
Crabtree-Ireland delivered comments outside Disney Studios today on what marked the final stop of a studio Day One Strike Tour with SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher.
“Corporations refuse to recognize that people cannot be expected to give their name, likeness, likeness and voice, personality to a corporation without the right to ever say what they want to do in the future will do with it. ‘ said Crabtree-Ireland.
“It won’t happen, we won’t agree to such terms, so the companies have to go our way and reach a reasonable agreement,” he added.
“We didn’t go into these negotiations saying ‘let’s ban AI,'” Crabtree-Ireland said.
“We entered these negotiations and said that AI must be implemented in a way that respects the actors and respects their human rights to their own body, voice, image and likeness.”
“Anything less than that will be acceptable.”
AMPTP said yesterday that they have submitted to SAG-AFTRA “a breakthrough AI proposal that protects artists’ digital likenesses, including requiring artist consent for the creation and use of digital replicas or for digital modifications of a performance.”
However, Crabtree-Ireland refuted yesterday in the actors’ trade strike press: “This ‘groundbreaking’ AI proposal they made to us yesterday says that our background actors should be scanned and should be paid a daily wage and that their companies should be owned .” this scanned image, her likeness, to be able to use it in any project for the rest of eternity, without consent and without compensation, if you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.”
Regarding when the studios and streamers will start feeling the effects of the SAG-AFTRA strike, Crabtree-Ireland said: “I think given all the efforts they’ve made to manipulate us into an extension, I think they’re concerned about the immediate impact, especially in terms of promoting summer blockbusters and things like that.”
Regarding the ways in which consumers, as well as TV and streaming viewers, can show their solidarity, Crabtree-Ireland encouraged them to “speak up on social media”.
“Viewers can help us look at how companies behave; the companies they consume content from,” added the Chief Talks boss.
“Consumers are watching, consumers know the fight we’re fighting is fair, so I think these companies have to be very careful to scare off the public.”
“It’s not like it was 10 or 20 years ago: there’s a movement for labor solidarity and fair treatment of workers in this country and we’re part of that movement,” Crabtree-Ireland added. “There will be a cost to those companies if they refuse to acknowledge it.”
Though the strike is still in its infancy, Crabtree-Ireland said it doesn’t rule out picketing in other cities where some of those streaming HQs are located, sources in Seattle, home of Amazon, said.
“You can expect our presence wherever these companies have a presence,” he said.
Some rank and file stakeholders have been concerned about how SAG-AFTRA will deal with streamers’ tendency to remove movies and series from their OTT services in the recent AMPTP contract negotiations.
“I don’t think that’s going to be an issue in our discussions,” Crabtree-Ireland told Deadline. “We’re more focused on sharing streamers’ earnings than on specific projects because there’s obviously a lot of factors that go into that.”
“We have suggestions on AVOD, but actually we’ve focused on subscriptions, with streaming subscriptions being the main focus. We’re not talking about profit sharing here, but about revenue sharing.”
Similar to what he said at Drescher’s first Netflix strike call this morning, Crabtree-Ireland said again there had been no word from AMPTP to resume talks since splitting Wednesday night.