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Academy-Award winner Susan Sarandon has joined the chorus of leading Hollywood actors warning about the growing threat of artificial intelligence in the arts, saying that AI could use "my face, my body and my voice" without permission.
- Sarandon says actors need a new contract for a new type of business
- She described AI-generated imagery in films as "soulless", saying "it's important to present human beings to human beings"
- Titanic star Frances Fisher says Hollywood studios are being "tone-deaf and greedy" in their refusal to substantially increase salaries
Sarandon, 76, whose high-profile acting career has spanned more than half a century, said "the issues of streaming and AI are things that have to be dealt with now".
"We're in an old contract for a new type of business and it's just not working for most people," Sarandon told reporters in New York City at the start of Hollywood's biggest strike in more than six decades.
"We need to find an answer to streaming and AI which are situations that are new."
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has followed Hollywood writers in going on strike, forcing major productions to come to a halt.
More than 160,000 performers stopped work on Friday, joining the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), who went on strike at the start of May.
Protests were held in both Los Angeles and New York.
Sarandon, who won the Academy Award for best actress in the 1995 film, Dead Man Walking, has also appeared in acclaimed movies like Thelma & Louise, The Client — for which she won a best actress in the UK's BAFTA awards — The Witches of Eastwick and Little Women.
In a later interview with BBC, she described AI-generated productions as "soulless".
"I think it's important to present human beings to human beings," she said.
"Even putting aside money, I don't know how people want to see a product that is soulless like that.
"It's pretty clear to me that on a very primitive level, if you could take my face, my body and my voice and make me say and do something I have no choice about, it's not a good thing."
Hundreds of strikers marched with placards at the Netflix building on Los Angeles' famed Sunset Boulevard, as well as at Disney, Paramount, Warner and Amazon premises, with passing drivers honking their horns in support.
Jason Sudeikis, the star of hit-comedy series Ted Lasso, joined Sarandon as the A-listers who showed up for demonstrations in New York, triggered by the refusal of studio bosses to meet actors' demands for better pay and job security.
The union's agenda has focused on dwindling salaries in the streaming era, caused by the popularity of on-demand shows with international appeal like Ted Lasso, which features an apparently clueless American head coach at a fictitious English Premier League club.
"The studios are tone-deaf and greedy, and they need to wake up — because we are the ones that made them rich," said actress Frances Fisher, who starred in Titanic, while marching outside Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles.
It is the first time since 1960 that the unions have gone on strike together, although the actors did stop work in 1980 for two and half months.
"We're in this for the long haul, but this is a historic moment," said actor Vera Cherny who appeared in For All Mankind and The Americans.
"It is time for us to lock down the contracts that are going to serve generations of actors to come. Just like they did in 1960."
Sarandon added: "The corporate greed that the studios show has made it very difficult [for actors and writers] to have lives."
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