Hollywood's strike: Times SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher spoke about AI
Hollywood is currently at a standstill due to a historical strike by the actors and writers over fair pay, benefits, and demand for appropriate residuals, among other issues. Most importantly, SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher has repeatedly emphasized how the possible catastrophic use of Artificial Intelligence will uproot the industry altogether and render artists and writers jobless. Here's what Drescher thinks about AI.
Drescher believes AI is a 'deadly cocktail, a poison'
While recently speaking to Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the guild's national executive director, and Ben Whitehair, the guild's executive VP, Drescher slammed AI. "When you have a combination of Wall Street, greed, technology, and whizz kids that I am not seeing exemplify a great deal of empathy - it's a deadly cocktail. And I don't want us to have to drink that poison anymore."
She went on to call AI a 'dynamite'
Drescher added, "Everybody has to know that we are dealing with a kind of dynamite, and it has to be handled with care and safety regulations." "What is our business, our likeness, our gestures, our acting, our voices? That's what we're selling. They [want to] mimic that on artificial intelligence. Everybody's watching dystopia series as entertainment while my members are living it."
AI will likely replace humans sans any compensation, fears Drescher
In July too, Drescher had come down heavily on AI and said, "AI poses an existential threat to creative professions and actors and performers deserve [contracts] that protect them from having their identity and talent exploited without consent and pay. If we don't stand tall, we're going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines."
The union earlier described the biggest danger of AI's usage
Crabtree-Ireland revealed in July: "The groundbreaking AI proposal that they [studios, streamers] gave us..they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day's pay, and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want, with no consent or compensation."
What happens if AI comes into the picture?
If studios and streamers can have their way, AI will gradually emerge as a massive game-changer for the industry, though the danger looms large over writers and actors (especially the background ones and extras). AI can assist with screenwriting, can be used for voice manipulation and modulation, de-aging (making an actor look several years younger), and actors can simply be "recreated" using breakthrough technologies.
Kow more about SAG-AFTRA and Drescher
SAG-AFTRA stands for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and is a union of around 1,60,000 professionals, including actors, broadcast journalists, announcers, hosts, and stunt performers. Drescher has been the union president since September 2021. She is best known for her lead role in the American sitcom The Nanny and was also seen in Indebted and The Christmas Setup, etc.
