SAG-AFTRA

SAG-AFTRA — the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — was formed in 2012 by the merger of two unions whose roots reach back to 1930s Hollywood. It represents roughly 160,000 actors, broadcasters, voice artists and other media professionals, and over the past three years it has become the single most consequential labor opponent of unregulated AI in entertainment.

The 2023 strike and the digital-replica fight

On July 14, 2023, SAG-AFTRA walked out against the major studios in its first film-and-TV strike since 1980, joining the striking writers in Hollywood’s biggest shutdown in decades. Alongside pay and streaming residuals, AI was the emotional core of the fight: performers feared being scanned once and replicated forever. President Fran Drescher called AI an existential threat at the launch press conference, and later told Deadline the AI protections — not the money — were the final sticking point. The 118-day strike ended in November 2023 with a contract establishing consent and compensation requirements for “digital replicas” of performers.

Video games and Sora

The union then struck the video game industry on July 26, 2024, after publishers refused AI protections for all performers — voice cloning being the flashpoint. That strike ran nearly a year, ending with a new Interactive Media Agreement ratified on July 9, 2025, that requires transparency, consent and compensation for digital replica use. In October 2025, after OpenAI’s Sora 2 app flooded feeds with unauthorized deepfakes of members including Bryan Cranston, SAG-AFTRA pressured OpenAI into strengthening opt-in guardrails for voice and likeness, with new president Sean Astin declaring that opt-in protocols are the only acceptable way to do business. The union continues to lobby for the federal NO FAKES Act.

Notably, SAG-AFTRA’s posture is consent-based rather than prohibitionist: its contracts permit digital replicas when performers agree and are paid, a framework critics within the membership have sometimes called too permissive — a minority of actors campaigned against ratifying the 2023 deal, arguing its AI language conceded too much.