The 2023 SAG-AFTRA Strike
The Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists called a strike on July 14, 2023, shutting down Hollywood production for 118 days. Among the central issues was the use of AI to replicate actors' likenesses — their faces, voices, and embodied characteristics — without consent and without ongoing compensation. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had proposed contract language that would have permitted studios to scan a background performer's likeness in a single session and use the digital replica in any future production, in perpetuity, for a single day's pay. The actors' resistance was not to digital technology but to the specific proposition that a person's physical appearance could be captured, owned, and deployed by a corporation without ongoing consent or compensation. The strike concluded November 9, 2023, with a contract containing specific AI protections — a genuine achievement, though one limited to SAG-AFTRA members.
In the AI Story
The strike's AI provisions became the model for subsequent negotiations across creative industries. The contract established that studios must obtain consent for the creation and use of digital replicas, must compensate performers for AI-generated material that reuses their image or voice, and must engage in ongoing bargaining over future AI applications.
The structural limitation that Thompson's framework immediately identifies: the contract protects SAG-AFTRA members working under SAG-AFTRA contracts — perhaps 160,000 people. It does nothing for the millions of other creative workers whose likenesses, voices, and performances are being used by AI systems. The protection is precisely as broad as the organized constituency that demanded it, which illustrates both the power and the limit of traditional labor action.
The strike also revealed the political content of the AI debate with unusual clarity. The studios' initial proposal — single session scan, perpetual use, single day's pay — was so transparently exploitative that it became impossible to frame the actors' resistance as irrational technophobia. The condescending label could not be applied. The grievance was too obviously political, too specifically tied to terms of deployment rather than the technology itself.
The concurrent Writers Guild of America strike, which began in May 2023 and concluded in September, similarly included AI protections in its settlement. Together, the two strikes represent the most significant labor response to AI in the United States to date — and the template for what collective bargaining by code can achieve when a sufficiently organized constituency mobilizes traditional labor tools.
Origin
The strike was authorized by 97.9% of SAG-AFTRA members voting on June 5, 2023, and began July 14 after negotiations with AMPTP failed. It was the first simultaneous actors' and writers' strike since 1960.
Key Ideas
AI likeness as central issue. Protection against unauthorized digital replication was among the defining demands, not a peripheral concern.
Traditional tools, novel stakes. The strike used a century-old labor mechanism to address an unprecedented technological threat.
Bounded success. Contract protections apply to organized members only, leaving the vast majority of creative workers unprotected.
Political clarity. The transparently exploitative initial proposal made the political character of the conflict impossible to disguise.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- SAG-AFTRA, "TV/Theatrical 2023 Memorandum of Agreement" (November 2023)
- Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, public testimony and strike coverage (2023)
- Jennifer Schuessler, "Hollywood's Summer of Discontent" (New York Times, 2023)