Artificial Intelligence is Infringing on Actors’ Image, Likeness Says U.K. Performers’ Union Equity

21.04.2022 - 02:09 / variety.com

K.J. Yossman Performing arts union Equity is launching a campaign around performers’ rights over artificial intelligence (AI).They hope to persuade the U.K.

government to introduce laws that will prevent companies using AI performance synthetisation – based on real performers’ voices and likeness – without their permission.As the U.K. law currently stands, performers’ rights extend to being able to give consent to the making of a recording of a performance and the right to control use of the recordings and any copies.However, AI technology falls outside the scope of these protections because it “reproduces performances without generating a ‘recording’ or a ‘copy,'” according to the union.

In addition, in a survey of 430 Equity members, 79% of those who have undertaken AI work said they didn’t feel they had a “full understanding” of their rights before signing their contracts. Meanwhile 93% of audio artists responding to the survey said they were worried AI posed a threat to employment opportunities.

According to Equity, AI is increasingly being used in the audio and audio-visual sector, from audiobooks to digital avatars.Equity’s new campaign, which is titled Stop AI Stealing the Show, is backed by actor Talulah Riley (“St Trinian’s”), politician Lord Clement-Jones, who is co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence, and Canadian voiceover artist Bev Standing.Standing won a settlement after she sued TikTok, saying the company had used her voice for their text-to-speech feature without her permission based on recordings she had provided for another company years earlier.“In 2018, I was hired to do a text-to-speech job for a translation app,” said Standing. “But in 2020 these recordings were