Fran Drescher And Actors Union Spox TORCH Studio Offer — Mock ‘Disgusting’ AI Proposal

Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) President Fran Drescher and SAG-AFTRA Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree torched the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) offer, especially the “egregious and disgusting” AI proposal included in it.

The actors’ union went on strike Thursday, joining the Writers’ Guild of America in grinding Hollywood to a halt over issues like Artificial Intelligence and compensation in the streaming era.

Drescher and Crabtree announced the action at a press conference, and each chafed when reporters confronted them with studio comments that their offer had been “historic” and “groundbreaking”:

REPORTER: So the AMPTP just sent out a press release basically saying you guys are reiterating what they said yesterday, what Bob Iger said. You guys have chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry. They’re claiming they offered a 60, 76% increase in high budget SVOD foreign residuals, 58% increase in salaries for major roles. They say 11% pay increase in year one globally. They’re saying, they’re claiming all these double-digit promises and they’re claiming they had a groundbreaking I’m quoting that, hey, air proposal, which protects performers, digital likeness. So what do you say to that?

DUNCAN CRABTREE: Well, let me I may have some things you want to say to that, but let me let me just take one of the items that you mentioned, and I’m not going to be able. Not having seen their press release. I can’t respond to every point of it. But this groundbreaking AI proposal that they gave us yesterday? In that groundbreaking AI proposal, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay, and their company should own that, scan, their image, their likeness, and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation. So if you think that’s a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again.

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REPORTER: Motion picture companies released a statement saying that you guys walked away from this historic offer. Was this, in fact, historic?

FRAN DRESCHER: Can you repeat that again?

REPORTER: Yeah, The motion picture companies released a statement saying that that the union walked away from a historic offer that you guys left the negotiating table. Was this, in fact, historic?

FRAN DRESCHER: What was historic about it is that we were really so marginalized, so dishonored and so respect– disrespected that it was really egregious and disgusting! So that’s what was historic, that at a moment when streaming and A.I. and digital is so prevalent in the industry, it has disemboweled the industry that we once knew. When I did The Nanny and everybody was part of the gravy train. Now it’s a walled-in vacuum. And not only is it unfair to everybody up and down the ladder, but the entity that employs us, it’s really un-American and it’s unconscionable. What are you doing? We’re not curing cancer here. It’s a collective art form.

Watch above via Yahoo.

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