Hollywood striker: 'They're trying to use AI to take humanity out of art'

AI's been the top buzzword for tech companies this year — and, now, it's a hot topic on the picket lines in the midst of Hollywood's first writer-actor strike in more than 60 years. Yahoo Finance spoke to four striking actors and writers outside Netflix's (NFLX) Los Angeles office this week about their concerns about AI, a key part of The Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America's (WGA) negotiations.

"I'm no Luddite, I'm not afraid of the future, and I don't think most of the people on the line with me are afraid of the future," said WGA member Charlie Kesslering, a feature film writer who has previously worked on The Late Late Show with James Corden. "The worst case scenario for me isn't just about me being replaced as a writer; it's about no longer having art made by humans that other humans can connect with ... The [Guild's] AI proposals are only geared towards making the product better, and helping us continue to create television and movies for audiences around the world. I think the worst thing that could come out of it is for those real human stories to get lost in the shuffle."

WGA member Blythe Ann Johnson, who most recently worked on the CW TV series "Walker," is also "personally worried" about AI's future in entertainment.

"Right now, the technology might not be there yet, but over time, companies can use AI to try and replicate what we do and save pennies," said Johnson. "We know they'll save pennies when they can ... I think it's important that we tackle it now and define writers and actors as people, not an algorithm."

'I'm most worried about this generation of stars being the last ones'

To be sure, there's a wide range of concerns at the center of this strike, and the demands from both SAG and WGA have a lot of overlap, including increased pay that accounts for inflation and improved residuals. Ultimately, the reason AI is so fully part of the discourse is because the goal is to protect workers in a rapidly changing industry, strikers say. It's also hard to overstate the importance of Netflix specifically in the context of this strike — after all, Netflix represents the massive technological shift that Hollywood has faced in recent decades.

"Netflix was the beginning of the streaming revolution," said SAG member Bella Cruz. "They're making all this money, building this company on the backs of creatives ... The threshold to make insurance with SAG is $26,000 a year — you need that in order to get health insurance. I want to say 85% of members don't make that."

To a certain extent, out of this strike — whenever it ends — some artists are increasingly interested in taking control of their own careers outside the system.

"The thing I've been doing is taking it into my own hands, doing my own projects, and hoping to generate revenue that way," said Cruz. "What we all need is to recognize is that we don't necessarily need these companies to do everything we do."

However, there's something about the existential threat of AI, the uncanny valley of seeing or imagining oneself saying or doing something that never happened.

"As more of an up-and-coming actor, I'm worried about AI," said SAG member Adam Krist. "Some people are worried about AI, say, making movies entirely by themselves, which I guess is a possibility, but I'm also not totally in fear or anything like that. My dad's in cybersecurity, and I work as a filmmaker, so I've used these AI tools and they are the best ones."

For Krist, it's the ramifications down the line he's most worried about.

"I'm most worried about ... this generation of stars being the last ones, because they can just keep mapping Harrison Ford's face onto mine again and again," said Krist. "I then get paid less and less, and never get to do what I love to do. People don't get to know what I do, and we also have nothing new ... There needs to be some kind of protection."

Ultimately, the prevailing sentiment out on the picket lines about AI is this: that AI, even as it gets better, just doesn't have what it takes to make great art.

"They're trying to use AI to take humanity out of art," said SAG member Alan Starzinski. "The reason why life is worth living is because there are ups and downs and ebbs and flows. It's like that sign said, 'AI has no childhood trauma.'"

Nevertheless, the studios and streamers have reportedly been incredibly resistant to the unions' proposals on AI to date. Johnson points out that, for the writers, there's an anniversary coming up — on Aug. 9, they'll have been on strike for 100 days.

"I would jump for joy in the streets if we weren't here that day, but I don't imagine we're going to get out of this by then," she said.

Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @agarfinks and on LinkedIn.

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