(Courtesy of the Writers Guild of America)
Los Angeles — Actors are hitting the picket line and Hollywood has come to a halt. All currently filming projects will be on pause until a deal will be reached. This comes after negotiations failed between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists). Members announced they will be joining the Writers Guild of America (WGA) as they picketed in front of many studios in both New York and Los Angeles to make their voices heard.
Many actors have taken to social media to post their solidarity for the strike. No promotion of any kind will be done during the strike and the last major premiere was the UK “Oppenheimer“ premiere as the actors walked off in solidarity to strike.
This is the first time in 60 years where both actors and writers were on strike simultaneously. While this will disrupt many planned films and shows, it is more important to let people have living wages for their work. Recently, on the season 6 premiere of the Netflix series “Black Mirror,” there was an episode in which a woman had her likeness used against her will in a television show. This hits harder now due to Netflix having a clause in some contracts to use actor’s voices in AI to generate new projects. According to the New York Times, a recent Netflix contract sought to grant the company free use of a simulation of an actor’s voice “by all technologies and processes now known or hereafter developed, throughout the universe and in perpetuity.”
It has gotten to the point in which a studio can pay an actor for a day of work, and keep their image and voice in perpetuity and use them however they wish. This is dystopian, unfair, and unethical as with how technology is moving quickly, it seems that art is about to die, especially with how many writers are scared to lose their jobs due to the threat of being replaced by AI.
I support both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA in their fight against the studios and big tech. No one should have to be unfairly compensated for their likeness or work to be fed into a machine to have them working constantly. These creatives are the backbone of the entertainment industry and as these two join forces, it will show the studios that you can never remove the human element from art and that life must be a constant in art. And for art to live, creatives must live, pay your creatives.
Zipporah Pruitt, (she/her) is an L.A. homegrown journalist, who covers entertainment and culture. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram: @zippzapps.
Edited by Nykeya Woods