Netflix offers $900k for AI product manager while actors strike for protection
theregister.com
theregister.com
Additionally, the strikes are also about production companies wanting to use ideas and images in perpetuity via AI without paying the original artists.
I agree the low-tier actors are paid at subsistence (or less).
This is fine. As long as there's legal protections which let him dictate how his likeness will be used, and his estate can hold the studios accountable to it.
The studios of course, don't want to have to get this kind of permission, and that's the rub.
As technology advances actors will be more under threath from 100% syntetic 'stars' than from some random meatspace origin lucky genetic draw.
I do understand the hurt and fear. Just not sure this deamon can be put back into the bottle.
Unions had coal shovelers on diesel locomotives for some time, but it did not last.
These people who work for scale are doing it for prestige, not money - because there is no money in it. The union is kind of taking advantage of people and making them think that acting is an actual career, but it's not unless you are in the top 0.0001%. (Yes that figure is accurate.)
Industry figures are that only 1 to 5% of people actually work in anything other than an extra or a day job. So with an active membership of 116K, that's between 1,000 and 5,000 people who actually make a living as actors.
They get a lot of press, and they like it that way, but the framing is kind of messed up, since this isn't a full-time job for most of them.
The guild really needs to reduce ranks, or at least let people know that it's not a career guild, it's more of a club.
If you mean profit sharing based on actual profit, then they would also need to share in the risk, i.e. invest money.
No one wants that, so residuals is what they do instead.
It wouldn't help anyway, most actors are mostly background or one-off scenes and do too little to actual make money there.
The big names aren't at risk of poverty. The issue is not the payment structure, the issue is that this field is way too small for the number of members, the union needs to reduce its ranks.
So I was saying they already have profit sharing without investment.
I guess I could have explained that in a simpler way.
Is that fair? It doesn't need to be. Studios don't try for fair - they get as much as possibly can. So should the actors and all of the other workers.
What makes some actor who showed up for 1 day on a film worthy of getting income from future works? What about the guy who made breakfast for them? How about the electrical who installed the light bulbs?
The whole concept of residuals is just a way to spread out payments and share risk - instead of everything being upfront, the money is given out later, and only if the work performs well.
Contracts. It's not about fairness. It's about what you can negotiate. If the electricians' union wants the same deal and can get it, good luck to them.