Actors vote for industrial action over AI concerns

Actors have voted overwhelmingly to refuse digital scanning on set in a bid to secure adequate AI protections.

Equity - the UK's largest acting union - announced the results of an indicative industrial action ballot on Thursday. With a turnout of over 75%, over 99% of those who voted said they would be prepared to refuse a set scan.

There have been growing concerns among actors that their work, voice and likeness are being used without their explicit consent, with Equity pushing for transparency of terms, and fair remuneration for usage via an enforced industry standard. Announcing the results at Equity's headquarters in Covent Garden, Equity general secretary Paul Fleming said: "Artificial intelligence is a generation-defining challenge.

And for the first time in a generation, Equity's film and TV members have shown that they are willing to take industrial action. "Ninety per cent of TV and film is made on these agreements.

Over three-quarters of artists working on them are union members. This shows that the workforce is willing to significantly disrupt production unless they are respected, and decades of erosion in terms and conditions begin to be reversed.

"The US streamers and PACT need to step away from the brink, and respect this show of strength. We need adequate AI protections which build on, not merely replicate, those agreed after the SAG-AFTRA strike in the USA over two years ago." The vote follows unrest in the US in 2023, when members of Equity's sister union, SAG-AFTRA, went on strike for four months over issues including artificial intelligence protections.

While nearly all those who voted in the Equity ballot said they would be prepared to take industrial action, Mr Flemming insisted "industrial action is not an inevitability". "It is a choice to be made by the producers," he said.

'A big AI sausage machine' The vote came after 18 months of talks with the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (Pact), the trade body representing the majority of film and TV production companies in the UK. While they say they have made significant progress in negotiations on protecting performers' rights when it comes to working with digital replicas (digital copies of real performers) and synthetic performers (artificially generated performers), the use of data, such as recorded performances or digital scans, to train AI systems, remains a sticking point.

Mr Flemming said: "The ball is in [Pact's] court when we return to the table in January." He warned that if negotiations did not produce a better AI deal, Equity's next step would be a statutory ballot for industrial action. Speaking to Sky News a little later, Mr Flemming dubbed the current system "a big AI sausage machine.