Equity members and actors working in film and TV have signed an open letter “to express concern at the lack of progress on securing AI protections for performers” and say that they will not “not accept any deal that does not grant us key protections” in this area.
The open letter has so far amassed 1,472 signatures directed at the trade body representing the majority of the UK’s film and TV production companies. Signatories include Tamsin Greig, Alan Davies, Emma D’Arcy, Nicola Walker and Wilf Scolding.
Sign the open letter
The letter has been organised to coincide with our work negotiating a new agreement with Pact that will set minimum pay, terms and conditions for performers working in film and TV. The agreement will also set the minimum terms for contracts used by streamers such as Apple, Netflix, and Disney plus.
It comes ahead of a meeting tomorrow (Wednesday 25 June) between Equity officials and Pact to discuss AI protections for performers, in which the union hopes to make progress on the matter. We submitted a claim for the new agreement over a year ago, but so far Pact has not presented a counterproposal for AI.
The current situation, with no explicit protections in our contracts, is completely untenable. Equity members have sent a strong message to Pact that we urgently need to regulate the use of AI in film and television, and protect performers’ image, voice and likeness.
Equity member and actress Tamsin Greig
The letter states “thousands of performers working on Pact-Equity productions have been digitally scanned on set without their informed consent. We also have no transparency around how our performances, likeness and personal data are being recorded, stored and processed within the context of the production and beyond.”
“Our union has put forward a constructive proposal that seeks to modernise our collective agreements across television and film, creating long-term foundations for regulating the use of AI in production. This includes important provisions on AI training, which the union has made clear is a red line in these negotiations. We will not accept any deal that does not grant us key protections for the use of our personal data for training AI systems and creating AI-generated performances.”
“We urge you to use your next meeting to make significant progress on this matter, given no formal counter-claim has yet been presented by Pact.”
We are demanding comprehensive AI protections to regulate the use of AI and protect performers’ image, voice and likeness, specifically:
- Informed consent and fair compensation for use of performance data to train AI models
- Informed consent and fair compensation for creating AI-generated performances
- Control of your likeness during lifetime and post-mortem
- Prohibiting the use of AI for ‘dubbing’ content in foreign languages
Last week, Equity members working in film and TV came together at a rally to demand better from Pact contracts in areas such as pay, royalties and residuals, AI, casting (including self-tapes), hair and make-up, and more.
