New generative artificial intelligence protections and a long-awaited merger of SAG-AFTRA’s two pension plans are just some of the terms of SAG-AFTRA’s four-year deal with studios and streamers, which were revealed Monday.
In a year when the spotlight was on the performers’ union to deliver on AI protections, the provisional agreement offers notable safeguards against “synthetic” (i.e. non-human) performers generated by the technology. It commits producers to “a principle strongly favoring human performances,” in the union’s description, and calls for producers not to use synthetic performers instead of human performers unless doing so offers “significant additional value” to the project.
The agreement also sets out a long-awaited plan to merge the union’s two pension plans for the first time since the Screen Actors Guild merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 2012. The SAG Pension Plan and AFTRA Retirement Plan are targeting a consolidation by Jan. 1, 2028, while contribution rates will rise by 1 percent.
These details arrived on Monday after the union’s national board approved the deal and sent it to members for a ratification vote. The vote, which will determine whether the agreement can take effect, will take place between May 14 and June 4.
“This contract is a testament to the incredible unity and determination of our members, and I am proud to deliver an agreement that results in meaningful gains across the board, from benefit plans to artificial intelligence to residuals, and beyond,” national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said in a statement.
The deal additionally establishes fresh guardrails for AI-created digital replicas, requiring companies to have an “articulable business reason” to scan a performer and forbidding digital replicas from being used in a way that would trigger a consent request for an actor (or crossing the picket line, as it were) during a SAG-AFTRA strike. It establishes a minimum payment rate and residuals for the use of independently created digital replicas, or when a company uses a digital replica they did not produce themselves, among other protections.
As is usual, compensation gains are part of the package. Minimum wage rates will increase by 3 percent each year of the deal and the union’s health plan contribution rate will increase by 1 percent starting July 1. (Still, the health plan will have to bow to the realities of healthcare inflation in the U.S., as the negotiators will recommend to the trustees of the health plan to make a one-time quarterly eligibility premium increase and to raise the eligibility threshold by one percent per year.)
A closer look at the deal yields some other interesting tidbits. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers agreed to recognize SAG-AFTRA as the exclusive bargaining representative for choreographers, who have been organizing for some time, and consented to cover them as part of the film/TV agreement. The union is requiring studios and streamers to display its logo in the end credits of covered projects. The union and the studios agreed to meet to revisit the confidentiality agreements that determine how the labor group can review the studios’ new media licensing agreements.
And there’s more. Both the union and the studios are going to meet to determine whether they will, in the future, create an “industry-wide resource” to conduct background checks on intimacy coordinators, who are represented by SAG-AFTRA. If one of the studios in the AMPTP starts producing microdramas on “more than an experimental basis,” the union says it may reach out to start bargaining the terms and conditions of the employment. Further details, such as residual increases and a boost to the union’s success bonus fund, are available on the union’s summary of its agreement.
The union reached this tentative agreement with the AMPTP on May 2 after negotiations took place over the course of several months. The talks were led on the union side by SAG-AFTRA national executive director Crabtree-Ireland, while AMPTP president Greg Hessinger headed up discussions for studios and streamers.
The stakes of the dealmaking were high for the performers’ union, considering that generative AI tools have significantly improved since the union first enshrined its protections against the technology in 2023. Moreover, the contraction of the business that followed the 2023 actors’ strike hit performers’ bank accounts hard and the union sought to improve compensation for members in this round of talks.
In a statement on Monday, SAG-AFTRA president Sean Astin called the agreement a “very strong deal that builds on the gains of 2023.” He added, “I am proud and pleased to send it to the membership with my full support for ratification.”
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