If you don't know, SAG-AFTRA announced an agreement with AI company Narrativ on August 12. Supposedly this is meant to be an "ethical" AI agreement, where actors can set their own compensation rates and have "informed consent".

Putting aside the SAG Executive Director's insulting commentary at the time about non-union actors being of "lesser quality", this agreement is problematic for a number of reasons.

1. It directly harms non-union actors by taking jobs that could have gone to them and instead gives them to AI replicas. A union should act in the best interests of the industry it exists within, not sell the future of that industry down the river - after all, every union actor was at one point non-union. Harming non-union actors harms all future talent.
2. Giving ground to AI only prolongs its use in our industry, whereas standing strong against it would help to eliminate its use and preserve jobs for real actors.
3. A Narrativ co-founder is using the AI service Suno to make music for the AI-driven ads Narrativ provides. Suno is being sued for copyright infringement, calling into question Narrativ's ethics.
4. Narrativ says on their website that their voice model is already trained to speak, and they only need a 30-60 second clip to make it sound like a specific person. This begs the question: what data did they train their voice model on? (read more here: https://x.com/XanderMobusVO/status/1825236397139374277 ) without that information, who knows what copy-written material was stolen to train it?
5. Narrativ itself is a new company, with little background available on the founders that can instill a lot of trust in this so-called "ethical" AI company.
6. It appears Narrativ has only signed 3 actors so far: there is no meaningful history to back up their claims of ethical use.

Whether you're a card-carrying member of SAG-AFTRA, SAG-Eigible, or non-union for any reason at all, this deal with Narrativ affects all of us. At best it smells incredibly fishy and harms the future of our industry... and at worst reeks of a money grab by a lawyer in the leadership of the union who has no skin in the game.

Sign the petition if you want to demand better from SAG. Because we deserve better, now.