With the emergence and “mainstreaming” of ChatGPT, Midjourney, DALL-E, DeepMind, and similar technologies just a few months ago, generative artificial intelligence burst in the public imagination. Now, mankind is facing out against these highly disruptive technologies. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, a significant labour organisation representing approximately 160,000 people working in the American film and television industries, including A-list actors, is leading a well-publicized strike against the erosion of their rights brought on by the emergence of AI and new media. The strike is taking place far away in Tinseltown. The protesters are calling for greater compensation and safeguards against the future use of artificial intelligence (AI) in television and films. Their actions have caused the first industry-wide shutdown in Hollywood in 63 years. “The development of the streaming ecosystem has significantly undermined compensation. Additionally, artificial intelligence poses an existential danger to the creative industries, according to a statement released by SAG-AFTRA after failed negotiations with major Hollywood companies.
Artificial intelligence (AI) specialists at this week’s Reuters MOMENTUM conference that rapid breakthroughs in AI have the potential to exacerbate societal issues and potentially represent an existential threat to human life, which increases the need for global regulation.
Recent months have seen a boom in generative AI, which can respond to open-ended cues by producing text, images, and videos. This has sparked enthusiasm about the technology’s potential as well as concerns that it may displace some workers, disrupt economies, and even surpass humans.
The organisation wants to protect actors from having their physical likenesses used as “digital doubles” in ads and other types of media, among other concerns. Additionally, it wants any AI programmes that reproduce actors based on their past performances to be subject to restrictions. It has been made plain that it is illegal to use AI to imitate a performer without the performer’s permission and compensation. A sign of how swiftly AI has developed recently is the fact that all of this is now more than just science fiction but rather a conceivable reality.
Scientists and influential figures in the technology sector recently petitioned to halt development of AI systems so that mankind could catch up with the repercussions of its inventions. Even experts today seem to concur that computers are on the verge of surpassing their creators. What brave new world will they build, we wonder? Anyone who has played around with AI knows that there are a lot of exciting possibilities.
