For as long as Duncan Crabtree-Ireland has been brokering deals and negotiations for the 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA, he has attended the Consumer Electronics Show. In his words, he has always been fascinated with technology. 

“Almost everybody says that now,” he said. “But if you were to go back and search the world of archives, there was a profile of me, I think, done back in 2006 when I was appointed to general counsel (of SAG-AFTRA) that described me as a technophile.”

His interest in technology has now been put to work when, earlier this month, he led the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists to announce the makers of 80 video games agreed to its terms around the use of artificial intelligence.

SAG-AFTRA has been in negotiations with video game companies since 2022 over one provision: AI, and how to determine consent and compensation for digital replications of human performances. The strike prohibits union members voice acting or performing motion capture services for certain companies. 

The strike not only impacts video game companies on production releases slated for 2025 and 2026, but it is also impacting the growing number of generative AI companies that are popping up in the media sphere. According to Pitchbook, funding in the sector peaked in 2024 with $742 million – and the year isn’t over yet.

“Startup ventures have always been responsible to act ethically and following regulations, whatever they may be,” said Sherry Shugerman Gunther, an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California. “Sometimes people don’t know the rules when they begin a new venture…but the stakes are higher because of AI.”

Treading cautiously 

Startups are learning from the mistakes of big technology companies from the past. Uber and the subsequent rise of gig work turned into a decades-long-and-counting battle between gig work companies, workers themselves and legislation defining the protections of this new class of workers.

When Alex Serdiuk started Respeecher, a Burbank and Ukraine-based AI voice startup, he carefully followed legislation and union actions around AI amid a swirl of deepfakes made with similar technologies to his.

“Investors could be divided into two big buckets,” Serdiuk said. “Those who get big scale numbers in terms of adopting technology without paying any attention to ethics, and those who follow the rules of the top of the industry, like Hollywood.”

Respeecher has worked on more than 170 projects since its inception in 2018, and has a roster of actor voices like Chris Farley and Orson Welles. With Respeecher, productions don’t have to spend time and money bringing actors back to the recording studio, and they can use the same voice in multiple languages instead of using multiple actors. The company has raised $3.25 million.

“(Some companies) are removing all the constraints of utilizing the technology and just living with the fact that their tech is being misused by a global audience for some awful cases,” he said. “So our approach has been pushing for trust. That’s not just a meaningful thing for us to do, but it’s also a business decision to see the outcome from the trust itself.”

The technology union

This isn’t the first technology shakeup SAG-AFTRA has seen. The Screen Actors Guild once had to learn how to navigate television shows when the serialized format became widely adopted. Then came VCRs, which could record television shows and create copyright concerns for actors, and streaming services.

“You can’t block the technology. Past history shows that labor unions that have tried to do that inevitably fail,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “Instead of wasting your political and bargaining capital trying to block technology, you can use that capital to channel it in a direction that’s more beneficial.”

There are certainly some benefits to digital replication performances enabled by generative AI. It can help avoid scheduling conflicts when two actors need to work together. It can help entertainers reshoot scenes at a reasonable cost. It can give actors with disabilities a chance to be considered for roles they may not have otherwise had a chance to audition for. 

For Nikola Todorovic, a filmmaker and visual effects artist, AI was an opportunity to produce a lavish indie science fiction animation movie without an unrealistic million-dollar franchise budget. He co-founded Wonder Dynamics, a West Hollywood-based AI visual effects startup, with actor Tye Sheridan in 2016.

“What I’m excited about AI, long term really, is that expansion of the market and giving more opportunities to people outside of Hollywood,” he said. 

Wonder Dynamics raised $11.5 million between 2019 and 2021 from companies like North Hollywood-based Sunset Ventures. It was acquired by Autodesk for an undisclosed amount in May. 

Wonder Dynamics is part of a slew of startups that are coming in to address the many logistical challenges – from filming on set during bad weather, to schedule changes, to funding mishaps – that make up the world of film and entertainment. It also allows low-budget filmmakers to make movies with higher production quality.

“If we lower the barrier of entry, we’re going to have new voices, we’re going to have a really global approach,” Todorovic said. “And then we’re going to hear better stories.”

As for SAG-AFTRA, the union was still striking against video game companies it didn’t have agreements with as of press time.

“What (the studios) need to remember is the thing that distinguishes them from every AI company out there is the relationship that they have with creative talent. And if creative talent isn’t important to them, then there is nothing they can do that OpenAI or anybody else can’t do,” Crabtree-Ireland said. “Because if it’s just algorithms, then their unique competitive advantage in this business is gone.”