The actress Salma Hayek discovered in Black Mirror that, after transferring her image to a content platform called Streamberry (curiously very similar to Netflix), she could do whatever she wanted with it. Through artificial intelligence, one day she could open that streaming service and find herself defecating in the middle of a church. And, it seems, the scriptwriter Charlie Brooker was not so far off the mark if we pay attention to the information published these days as a result of the actors' strike called this past Thursday in the United States.
At a press conference, Fran Drescher, the actress known for The Nanny who chairs the actors' union SAG-AFTRA, denounced that she herself "thought we could avoid the strike." But she realized they had no choice because they are "victims" and are being "victimized by a very greedy entity." “I can't believe, honestly, how far we are on so many points. It's disgusting. They should be ashamed. They are on the wrong side of history, ”she said, visibly outraged before the media after seeing that there was no interest in improving the actors' agreement.
And what is, for example, one of the things that outraged the representatives of the actors? Discovering the future plans of Hollywood studios regarding artificial intelligence, which was already worrying scriptwriters who feared they would end up working on recycled ideas generated by these new technological tools. According to Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the leader of the negotiations on behalf of SAG-AFTRA, the studios that make up the employers' association of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, want the actors to give up their own image in perpetuity.
“The groundbreaking proposal on AI that they gave us yesterday was that our background performers (that is, the actors who work as professional extras) should be able to be scanned, be paid for a day's work and that companies can own their image, their similar, to use it for all eternity in any project they want without needing their consent or compensation," revealed Crabtree-Ireland. "If you think this is a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again," she concluded.
According to Drescher, this is a fundamental moment because, if they are not careful, they could end up being literally replaced by machines after seeing the advances in artificial intelligence. But, in addition, there are other elements on the table. The irruption of streaming, for example, has practically wiped out the residual benefits of the actors. In addition, budgets increase both in film and television but, in an incomprehensible way, the actors are not better compensated. These points are shared by both the actors and the scriptwriters who are in their third month of strike.
It is also reported that the sector has become precarious to the point that actors lose more time and money to get a job. Actors are now required to provide recordings to casting directors with their own tests, often at direct out-of-pocket costs to make the test as accurate as possible. This circumstance, in fact, was criticized in the series The other two, a comedy adored by critics that dissects the entertainment industry in the United States. There you could see how an actor wastes more time and money in an audition from home than when he had to physically go to a casting.
