SAG-AFTRA announced Friday that members have ratified recent three-year contracts for voice actors who work on animated TV shows.
The deals addressed the identical concerns that fueled last 12 months’s 118-day actors’ strike, notably artificial intelligence, which many actors fear will replace their jobs.
As with the live-action agreement, the animation deals don’t forbid using AI. But they do prevent actors’ voices from being recreated without their permission.
Though the animation terms are largely patterned on the deal that ended the strike, there are a few differences. SAG-AFTRA negotiated for language declaring that animation voice actors should be human beings — a definition that was not included within the TV/Theatrical deal.
“We’ve got it in writing,” the union stated on X, formerly often known as Twitter, earlier this month. “‘Voice actors’ includes ONLY humans in the brand new TV Animation Agreements!”
The shortage of that definition within the TV/Theatrical agreement was a source of controversy through the ratification process. On the time, executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s top negotiator, argued that defining actors as human beings wouldn’t be an efficient protection against AI misuse.
“What you wish is actual protection against what these corporations might do,” he said last fall. “Not something that just sounds great, but doesn’t actually protect you.”
As with the TV/Theatrical deal, the animation agreements provide for consent and compensation for using “digital replicas” to recreate an actor’s voice. The deal doesn’t prevent studios from training AI models on past performances to create a “synthetic” voice — unless that voice feels like an actual voice actor or their character.
A studio would also must get an actor’s consent to make use of their name in a prompt to create an artificial voice. The deal also requires that the studios give the union notice each time they create an artificial voice. And the union can have the chance to argue that actors deserve payment for his or her contribution even when the top result not sound like them.
The deals generally follow the pattern set by the TV/Theatrical agreement in other respects, with 7% increases in scale wages retroactive to July 1, followed by increases of 4% and three.5% in the next years of the contract.
The animation agreements also include the identical “success bonus” for the most-watched shows on streaming.
The agreements were ratified with 95.5% support — significantly higher than the 78% approval for the TV/Theatrical deal in December.
