Justine Bateman criticizes AI provisions of tentative SAG-AFTRA deal

Justin Bateman

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Although SAG-AFTRA officially reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with the studios and streaming companies earlier this week, Justine Bateman isn’t too happy with the rulings surrounding artificial intelligence.

said the actress, writer and director MSNBCAli Velshi said on Friday that actors should only agree to the deal “if they don’t want to work anymore. If they want to be replaced with artificial things made by generative AI, why not?”

SAG-AFTRA members are scheduled to begin voting to ratify the agreement on Tuesday after the new contract was approved by 86 percent of the union’s board of directors on Friday.

Velshi went on to refer to a recent story from Hollywood Reporter DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg predicts that artificial intelligence will significantly reduce the number of workers needed to produce animated films.

In response, Bateman, who has served as union counsel for generative AI, said she feels studio executives are “choosing to stop working in the movies and series business.”

“I think they like to think of themselves as technology moguls themselves or something like that. But that, by doing projects that don’t involve humans… you’re not in the movie business anymore,” she added. “People who don’t want Involving any human being who was not present on set at all. They don’t know what it’s like to make a movie.”

“She never uses generative AI,” Bateman said of herself as a filmmaker. “I love what people do as crew members, writers, editors, cinematographers, makeup artists, actors.

Velshi also asked the outlet what entertainment and media consumers can do to help protect creators in the industry who want to avoid the use of AI. “It depends on what you want,” Pittman said.

“I mean soon they’ll have personalized movies for you based on your viewing history,” she explained. “And they wouldn’t bother with copyrights because it would be like tissue paper. They would make a million of them an hour, they wouldn’t care. … You could scan yourself and put yourself in these pieces. And there would be a novelty that would eventually wear off, because I think that People will still be hungry for something real and human.

She continued: “The train’s path is divided. One of the train tracks says, “Okay, we’re going to engage in this kind of negotiation with the cannibals and we’re going to talk about how you’re going to cut off my feet, and are you going to roast them or boil them, and what kind of sauce are you going to put on them?” “This path is the one that involves generative AI.”

But Bateman said she’s on a completely different train track where “I’m going to be making human things for human audiences using human crews and actors and so on. We’ll see what happens.”

After discussing it on MSNBC, Taking Batman to X (formerly Twitter) to say early Saturday that it planned to read the actual contract and not its summary so that it could explain the “violation.” [AI] The permissions that AMPTP will have on you. I am very disappointed that the SAG leadership and committee did not heed my guidance on… [AI] problems.”

She added in her topic: “I said from the beginning that the use of obstetrics [AI] The structure of this business will collapse. I want the cast and crew to have enough self-respect to turn the tables and turn on the CEOs when this happens. They will leave you with nothing left to lose.”

Later in the day, Batman Another thread was shared on X To make the actors “familiar with some of the language in the film.” [AI] Part of the initial SAG agreement.” After listing several points, she pointed out what she called “the most serious of them,” which is the “inclusion” in the agreement of “artificial performers” or “human-like” “AI beings.” This gives studios/broadcasters the green light to use creatures Human-looking artificial intelligence instead of using a human actor.

“It’s one thing to use AI to create a King Kong character or a flying snake (although this displaces many VFX/animation artists), but it’s another thing to have an AI being playing a human character instead of a real actor,” she added. . “To me, this inclusion is anathema to any union contract whatsoever.”

Although the contract has not yet been shared publicly, national executive Duncan Crabtree-Ireland detailed several aspects of the contract in a press conference on Friday, including AI protections covering consent and compensation if part of an actor’s face or His body is under construction. An “artificial” performer via generative AI.