The world of Black mirror can feel like a dark alternate reality. But as it turns out, Hollywood is closer to being an episode of a Netflix anthology series than anyone — except perhaps the creator. Charlie Brooker—may have noticed.
During a press conference announcing SAG-AFTRA’s plans to send its cast members on strike, the union’s chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, suggested that if they accepted Hollywood studio’s proposal to use artificial intelligence, the actors might suffer the same fate as Salma Hayek inside Black mirror episode “Joan was terrible.”
The Alliance of Film and TV Producers, which represents producers, studios and streamers, said in a statement that it has provided SAG-AFTRA with a “groundbreaking AI proposal to protect digital images of performers, including requiring performer consent to the creation and use of digital copies or to digital alterations of a performance perform.” But Crabtree-Ireland countered, “in that ground-breaking AI proposal, they suggested that our platform performers could be scanned, get paid for a day’s pay, and their company should own own that scan, their picture, their portrait and be able to use it forever in any project they want without consent and without compensation. If you think it’s a groundbreaking proposition, I suggest you think again.”
Main spoiler alert for Black mirror season six: in the twisted episode “Joan is terrible,” viewers learn that the actress on a new show on a service called Streamberry is, in fact, an AI-generated digital image. by Hayek. (There’s a lot more going on; just watch it.) Brooker recently said Vanity Fair that the prospect of using your images to tell stories “must be scary for the next generation of actors to come. Do you suddenly have to compete with all the once-famous Golden Age actors?
AI has become a hot-button issue for both actors and writers during their contract negotiations with AMPTP. “AI is not going anywhere, not with Silicon Valley hungry for the Next Great Thing,” John Lopeza member of the AI working group of the Writers Guild of America (an internal committee), wrote for VF. “You can’t handcuff the digital monster after it leaves Dr. Frankenstein’s AI lab.” During negotiations with the studios, the WGA released a statement explaining that it wanted to prevent AI-generated material from being used as source material or from writing or rewriting scripts. After the writers put down their pens and started lining up, the WGA said that AMPTP rejected their proposal, instead holding “annual meetings to discuss advances in technology.”
“Joan is Awful” sounds like a comedy, but Brooker doesn’t really laugh. As he said VF“It’s an existential nightmare.”
