Brian Cox and Simon Pegg among British stars rallying in support of Hollywood strike: 'AI is taking our jobs'

 Dozens of actors and performers descended on London's Leicester Square in solidarity with their colleagues in the US, who have walked out in protest at pay and conditions in the industry.Actors including Brian Cox, Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis have told Sky News of their fears about AI as they rallied in support of the Hollywood strike.

Dozens of British stars turned out to London's Leicester Square on Friday for the demonstration, which was organised by British acting union Equity in solidarity with performers in the US.

It comes after 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA in the US walked out last week in protest over pay and conditions - including concerns over the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the industry.

The action has brought Hollywood to a virtual standstill, forcing many film and TV productions to shut down, and marks the first time in more than 60 years that both actors and writers have gone on strike.

Members of the Writers Guild of America union launched a separate walkout two months ago.

Equity actors cannot legally take part in the strikes in the UK - but can if they are working in the US and are also SAG-AFTRA members. However, the walkouts have already had a knock-on effect on productions in Britain.

Succession star Brian Cox said the issues involved were of concern for performers around the world."This is a major strike that's happening in the States and we need to support them.

"We'll be under siege next, we're already under siege, particularly with artificial intelligence, and it's something that has to be stopped and nipped in the bud."Mr Cox also called for greater regulation of the industry in the UK - or as he put it: "Legislation that says 'AI f*** off'".

The Crown star Imelda Staunton said pay was also a major issue for struggling performers in the industry, but said technological advancements had added to anxiety across the profession.

"The issues that are being raised about streaming and AI are all issues that really need addressing.

"This is a global problem, this isn't America or England, it's all over," she toldOther stars at the rally included Rob Delaney, Jim Carter, Naomie Harris and Penelope Wilton.

Some protesters carried signs reading: "Leave AI to Sci-fi," "Write to Strike" and "This Barbie's last residual was $0.02".

Shaun of the Dead writer and star Simon Pegg, who is a member of both SAG-AFTRA and Equity, described the industrial action as a "tipping point" after years of concern over pay and the impact of streaming services such as Netflix."AI is worrying too, because we're looking at being replaced in some ways.

"And they want to scan the faces of background artists and then use their image in perpetuity, which is incredibly unreasonable, because they could use them for anything.

"We have to be compensated and we have to have some say in how it's used.

"I don't want to turn up in an advert for something I disagree with, some fossil fuel company, because I'm fundamentally opposed to them. I want to be able to hang on to my image, and voice, and know where it's going."Hayley Atwell, who stars in the new release Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, said the industry needed a "course correct" as bosses had failed to keep up with rapid technological advancements.

"We have the existential threat of AI taking human jobs, that means that it's a more precarious situation than ever before," she told"This is a time to adapt to that and regulate it, so that people who are creating content can continue to do so and make a fair living wage from it."

She added: "We're striking and it's absolutely the right thing to do. I'm 100% in support of it. [But] it's awful because it's a last resort for everyone. We don't want to strike but we've been stonewalled."

Lord of the Rings star Andy Serkis, who described himself as "one of the most scanned actors on the planet", said he was hopeful strikers in the US - and actors across the world - would eventually win their fight."I think there's unquestionably going to be a victory for SAG, for the Writer's Guild, for Equity, it's going to come out positive. They are going to hold on this time."

Serkis also said he had grave concerns over the future of AI, adding: "Artists are becoming severely undervalued. We think actors going on strike is a bit of a joke, [but] when the pandemic was happening, what was everyone doing for two years inside? They were watching shows...

"It's a very important job. It's a service and you just want to be paid a reasonable wage."

Industry body the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major film and TV studios in the US, says it has offered better terms and conditions, while it also accused SAG-AFTRA of walking away from negotiations.

The union has rejected the claims and said its members would remain on strike indefinitely until concessions were made.

The impasse has prompted fears the dispute could drag on and delay the release of major films and TV programmes later this year, while also causing disruption to major industry events such as the 75th Emmy TV awards, which is scheduled to be held in September. 

Hollywood strikes: How much of a threat is AI to actors and writers?

 Dr Alex Connock, a senior fellow at the University of Oxford's Said Business School, who has written a textbook on the media and AI, and TV and theatre writer Lisa Holdsworth, who is chair of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, speak to Sky News' Daily podcast about AI in Hollywood.Actors and writers in Hollywood are striking for a number of reasons, including pay and working conditions - but also because of concerns about artificial intelligence (AI).

Writers are worried about control over AI in the screenwriting process, while actors have fears about AI replicas of themselves being used without adequate compensation.If this all sounds like something out of Charlie Brooker's dystopian series Black Mirror, that's because it is - Joan Is Awful, an episode from the latest series released earlier this year, features Hollywood actress Salma Hayek fighting against a streaming service when she realises her AI likeness is being used in any way that it chooses.The looming cloud of AI hangs over all industries, but are writers and actors right to be worried?

'Legitimate concern, but a bit overblown'

Speaking to the Sky News Daily podcast, Dr Alex Connock, a senior fellow at the University of Oxford's Said Business School who has written a textbook on the media and AI, said that while tools such as language model ChatGPT are already being used to produce written content elsewhere, Dr Connock said, there hasn't yet been any "truly" creative writing produced.

"There's a really good reason for that, which is that the way it functions, is it's trained on historic documentation that has been fed in the case of ChatGPT from almost the entire internet," he said. "So it's learned its behaviours, if you will, it's learned its language from what's already been written. The writers are concerned that something with that facility to do that could then replicate other styles of writing and writing preliminary scripts and so forth, which is a legitimate concern.

"The actors, meanwhile, are concerned that some of the contracts, that particularly extras have been given, have included the rights for their faces to be ingested into AI systems... they're worried that they will then later be replicated in productions without being paid for that. And that's probably a legitimate concern."

However, he said there are nuances to both cases.

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"So taking the actors first, it's quite unlikely that the very legally minded Hollywood companies, say Disney, would take the risk of using an actor's likeness in a production if they hadn't explicitly got that actor's permission to be in that production," Dr Connock said.

"In any case, if you were making synthetic faces using AI, you probably wouldn't train the system just on one person's face, but you would train it on a million or even a billion faces. So the ultimate faces that would be used in those projects would not, in fact, be the likeness of a single actor. So I think the concern may be slightly overblown there, even though I can see the actors' point that they want to be very careful to protect their likeness.

"What [writers are] concerned about is that the studios might, for example, use AI to write preliminary scripts and then ask the writers to polish them, thereby denying them the right as the originator to make really big money on the project. So I think that's probably a legitimate concern. But again, a bit overblown."One of the things about generative AI is, of course, it's not really original at all. And if we think that we love to see original content rather than content that directly represents content of the past, it's quite unlikely that anyone would be truly entertained by content that was was exceptionally derivative, which is what all the outputs of generative AI systems in fact are. So the writers may be a little bit over-concerned.

"And in fact, there's a school of thought that instead of synthetic content taking over, actually human content will become ever more valuable. And this is happening because generative AI systems that are trained on synthetic content are subject to something called dogfooding, where the quality of the content goes down and down as each generation of synthetic content is trained on the last. And what those systems really need is original human content.

"So if I was trying to reassure the writers, I would say that actually if they're good writers and they're writing real human stories that are based on real experiences, that content could become ever more valuable in the future rather than less valuable."

'We want some safeguards in place'

TV and theatre writer Lisa Holdsworth, who is chair of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, says AI is a "hot-button issue" in the industry.

"We want some safeguards in place to make sure that we're not replaced by an algorithm into which our our existing work is funnelled and then, like a sausage factory, scripts come out the other end and our job becomes just giving them a polish," she told the Daily podcast. "Because that's not creation - that's theft, in our opinion.

"So there's a lot coming over the hill. We want to get in front of it. We want to discuss this with companies, production companies and broadcasters and streamers."

Currently, "very little" AI is being used for writing, Ms Holdsworth said, and it is still a "fairly blunt instrument" in its current form. This means that at the moment, the strikes are about pre-empting potential future problems.

"But the more and more of our existing work that is fed into those algorithms, into that system, the more of a concern and a threat it becomes," she said. "It's being used in graphics, visuals on screen - the recent Secret Invasion, the Marvel series, the opening titles were designed by AI and that made some people feel very uncomfortable."

Ms Holdsworth says it is "laughable" to think AI can replace human writers and produce the same standard of work.

"So there's part of me that doesn't feel that it's a risk in that way. I think what'll pop out the other end of any AI system will be incredibly run-of-the-mill, incredibly poor, and will need the human writers - eventually someone will be knocking on the door going, 'please can you help us with this?' But if in the interim people lose work, lose status and their position in the industry, that obviously is of great concern."

While quality would diminish, the power lies with "people who do the sums", she added.

"The people who make the money, look at the spreadsheets, are not creatives for the most part, and that's been a good relationship for a long time. Some people make money and work out how to pay for all this, and some of us do the creative work.

"Where the balance seems to have shifted in the last few years is the power lies with the non-creative people within the industry. And if they can find a way to save a penny, not have us annoying creative people around demanding rights and wages and copyright and things like that, then it feels like they will. So actually the threat is not necessarily from the technology, the threat is from people who, with that lack of creativity, don't realise the Pandora's box that could be opened if we go down this road."