Hollywood wants to introduce a tax on actors and actresses generated by AI
A fee to dissuade studios from using artificial intelligence?
She is already nicknamed the “Tilly tax”. In reference to Tilly Norwood, the AI actress who freaked out the entire industry when she was revealed last year.
How can we counter a digital revolution that could well replace reality in the (more or less) near future? Impossible to stop the artificial intelligence train. So the Hollywood unions are looking for a solution: they have decided to introduce a toll to slow down the train in question.
In the future, studios that use synthetic actors in place of human actors could be forced to pay a fee into a fund managed by the union.
This is one of the ideas circulating as SAG-AFTRA prepares to sit down in front of the studios on February 9.
AI was already at the heart of the 2023 actors’ strike, and the topic has only gotten hotter since. Social networks are drowning in channel-generated content, while videos created by Disney users featuring Leia (from Star Wars) or Elsa (from The Snow Queen) are about to land on Disney+. And then there is Tilly Norwood: the digital creation that crystallized all the anxieties last fall.
Even though SAG-AFTRA wrested some protections from AI during the industrial action, the union can’t stop Tilly and her clones from eating into roles. On the other hand, he can try to charge for this substitution.
“Is this a perfect solution? No”, recognizes Brendan Bradley, a member of the union’s AI working group. “But it’s in the category of the least bad idea we have in 2026.”
The threat of a new strike remains on the table, obviously. But for now, the alert level is low. SAG-AFTRA agreed to open negotiations earlier than usual, several months before the contract’s June 30 expiration. And some even speak, with cautious optimism, of the possibility of finalizing an agreement as early as March.
