SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP are set to restart negotiations on Monday. One of the issues SAG is looking to achieve gains on is the use of AI. The WGA had some protections against AI in its new deal, which was brokered last Sunday. But SAG-AFTRA has slightly different problems with the robot menace slowly encroaching on our human way of life. Beyond background actors allegedly being scanned without informed consent on what it will be used for, many actors are worried about some studio potentially owning their likeness in perpetuity. It’s something that Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin Williams and an actor/voice-over artist in her own right, has specific experience with. “I am not an impartial voice in SAG’s fight against AI,” Williams wrote on IG Stories. “I’ve witnessed for YEARS how many people want to train these models to create/recreate actors who cannot consent, like Dad. This isn’t theoretical, it is very very real.”
“These recreations are, at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people, but at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for,” she wrote. But her beef isn’t just personal, it’s also deontological: “While I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings,” she wrote. “Living actors deserve a chance to create characters with their choices, to voice cartoons, to put their HUMAN effort and time into the pursuit of performance.” Robin Williams was very protective of the use of his voicework in life. The actor feuded with Disney after it used the character of the Genie to sell merch.
