SAG-AFTRA Executive Committee Approves TV Animation Agreement, Sends To Members For Ratification Vote

6 months ago 26

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SAG-AFTRA

SAG-AFTRA Getty

SAG-AFTRA is sending its latest TV animation agreement to its members for a vote.

The guild announced Friday that the executive committee had approved the 2023 contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, so it will now be sent to all members for ratification.

According to SAG, the new three-year contract also benefitted from some of the gains made in the TV/Theatrical Contract, which the union went on strike for 118 days to achieve. Particularly, the guild highlighted the artificial intelligence protections in the animation agreement.

The new contract includes language denoting voice actors as “only humans” and also established regular, mandatory artificial intelligence meetings with producers, which will include discussion of methods and systems to track the use of digital replicas.

Here are more of the key points of the deal related to AI:

Removed the requirement that a digital replica must exclusively sound like the recognizable natural voice of an actor in order to be protected.

“Employment-based digital replicas,” need only be recognized and identifiable via contracts and other regular business documents, confirming that it was in fact the performer’s voice used to make the replica. “Independently created digital replicas” need only sound like the “character voice” from which the replica was created. Confirmation that if the voice actor’s performance is digitally altered into a foreign language, the voice actor shall be eligible for residuals based on the distribution of the foreign language version.

When prompting a generative artificial intelligence system with a performer name or names, consent of those performers is required. The contract removes the requirement, which exists in live action, that a “major facial feature” be included in the prompt with no substitute for that criterion.