For the second consecutive summer, SAG-AFTRA is on strike — and artificial intelligence provisions are putting a wedge between the union and a new deal.
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This time, the union called a work stoppage Thursday after more than 18 months of negotiations on a new Interactive Media Agreement, which covers work for several of the major video game companies.
The strike went into effect on Friday and, within hours, SAG-AFTRA held a press conference at San Diego Comic-Con (which had already been scheduled alongside a video game voice actors panel for fans) to discuss the issues they’ve faced over the course of the negotiating process.
“All performers who work under our agreement are delivering performances that deserve to be protected. Their likeness deserves to be protected. Their voice deserves to be protected. Their movement and their performance deserves to be protected. It belongs to them. We are not going to allow employers to alienate that from our members through artificial intelligence or any other technology. That is unacceptable to us, and that is why we are on strike,” SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said during a press conference at the convention on Friday afternoon.
In the interview below, Rodriguez spoke with Deadline about why the negotiating committee felt now was the time to finally call a strike and what provisions would be necessary in order to make a deal.
DEADLINE: You’ve been negotiating this deal for more than 18 months. What was the final straw that led the union to finally call a strike?
RAY RODRIGUEZ: I don’t know if it’s so much a circumstance of it being a specific final straw that I can point you to. But like you said, negotiations have been going on for 18 months. We’ve been back and forth with multiple drafts of proposals [and] really felt that we had exhausted our options for an amicable resolution and came to the conclusion that we weren’t going to get where we needed to go in this negotiation without a strike. So we just got to the point where that had to be. Nobody ever wants to go on strike. So that’s why we spent 18 months not trying to go on strike, and it just didn’t work.
DEADLINE: You’ve said AI is the big sticking point. But, can you go into more detail about what, specifically, you’re looking for in this contract?
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RODRIGUEZ: First and foremost, what we’re looking for, broadly speaking, are informed consent, compensation and transparency. Those have been the guiding principles. But, what’s also important to us is that these protections extend to all of our performers, not a subset of performers…there is a great contribution made to these games by stunt performers and other on-camera and motion performers who are delivering real performances. We’re not going to make a deal that leaves people out, and that’s really where we’re at right now, is we’re not able to pull these companies over the line to getting the protections that we need for everyone who deserves them. That’s what we need.
DEADLINE: Comic-Con is exempt from the strike rules. Why make that decision to let performers continue to talk about and promote their work this weekend?
RODRIGUEZ: Yes, that is a decision that the committee made. I think it was the right decision for two reasons. One…it’s an opportunity for us to talk to people who care about video games right as we are going on strike. And the second is, it’s a bit unfair to ask people to comply with a set of rules around promoting video games one day before Comic-Con. So we didn’t want to put people in that position. Those were the two reasons why we decided to carve Comic-Con out.
DEADLINE: How similar is the language you are looking for to the language in the film and TV contract? Did you try to use that to move the needle at all on the Interactive Media Agreement?
RODRIGUEZ: Absolutely. All the deals that we’ve made in AI, we have attempted to use in other negotiations. We really want to see evolutionary progress as we address this issue across multiple negotiations in improving the protections that we have. I will tell you candidly that what we are asking for from these producers is in many ways less than what we achieved with the AMPTP, but we certainly do look to that as a benchmark and as guidance for how a provision can be structured and drafted.
DEADLINE: There’s been some rising interest in video game adaptations in film and TV lately. Are you hoping to use that leverage to amplify this strike among audiences who aren’t generally familiar with video games and the work these actors do on them?
RODRIGUEZ: One of the biggest advantages we have going for us in the context of this strike is the fact that artificial intelligence is an issue that cuts across not only our industry, but every industry, and not only on the industry side, but on the everyday experience and lives of the people who play video games. I think that the market is ultimately going to punish producers who are unethical in their use of artificial intelligence. I think that the people who are unethical, the businesses that are unethical in their use of artificial intelligence, are going to have a poor relationship with the creative community. If you are in a creative business, that sucks for you. You don’t want to have a bad relationship with the creative community. So the added visibility is helpful to us, and we absolutely believe that these employers need to think about and are thinking about how their reputations are affected, and how their position in the market is affected by being identified as a company that is unethically using artificial intelligence to hurt artists.
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