UK Actors Union Threatens Court Action To BBC, ITV, Disney & Pact If Members Rights Are Breached Over AI

EXCLUSIVE: The UK actors union has threatened to go to the “courts if necessary” if members’ rights continue to be breached in the training of AI models.

In an open letter to bosses at the BBC, Disney, ITV and producer trade body Pact, Equity pulled no punches in delineating what it expects from both past and future use of British actors’ rights in the development of the thorny and invasive tech.

Ramping up the stakes, Equity concluded the letter by saying: “Where performers’ rights are breached, Equity will robustly defend members, including via the courts if necessary.” Liam Budd, Equity’s Recorded Media Industrial Official, described what the union believes has been taking place as “industrial scale theft of our members’ data.”

As set out in the letter, which Deadline has seen in advance of publication, Equity’s issue surrounds AI developers’ demand for access to rights-protected content that can be used to “train” AI models.

“Content owners are capitalising on this demand by entering into licensing deals with AI companies – granting them rights to use the content for AI training purposes and thereby exploiting the content in new ways that have not been contemplated until now,” the letter said. “An urgent conversation is therefore needed to ensure that any such new exploitation of rights-protected content in the context of AI is carried out with full respect and recognition of performers’ property rights and applicable data protection laws.”

The union has had “productive conversations with companies who engage our members for the express purpose of creating content to train foundational AI models,” it said, and urged that conversation to expand to broadcasters, streamers, indies and video game platforms. The letter has been sent to bosses at the BBC, Disney, ITV, Pact, Audible and video games trade body UKIE.

In the letter, Equity sets out the background to actors’ rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 and UK General Data Protection Regulation, and argues why frameworks need updating. The UK government recently published an AI Opportunities Action Plan, which proposed creating a copyright-cleared British media asset training data set as one of 50 recommendations for the UK to support AI growth.

“We look forward to a constructive dialogue with producers to ensure historical, current and future use of our members’ work is based always on informed consent, transparency and compensation,” added the letter.

Equity has made AI one of the key planks of its negotiations with Pact – negotiations we are told have rumbled into 2025 and are yet to cross the finishing line. Using the new U.S. SAG-AFTRA contacts as a partial blueprint, Equity’s claim with Pact is tailored to the implications of generative AI for different categories of actor including dubbing and supporting artists.