Netflix: Who Needs Actors? Netflix ignores the strike and invests in AI

• Will film studios and streaming services respond to the demands of the striking writers and actors?
• Currently, the strike is paralyzing all of Hollywood and Netflix seems to be planning a future without disruptive employees.
• A job posting is looking for an AI professional, with a hefty salary beckoning – which Netflix doesn’t want to pay the strikers.

The strike currently crippling Hollywood isn’t just about money. Instead, actors and authors also fear a future in which film studios and streaming services will increasingly rely on artificial intelligence, or AI for short. Not without reason – plans to scan actors and then use them in later projects without their permission or further payment were already leaking to the public.

Memories of the episode “Joan is Awful” from the series “Black Mirror” are brought back – produced by Netflix. In it, a woman named Joan discovers a series about herself created by AI, retelling Joan’s everyday life against her will. Also dissatisfied is actress Salma Hayek, whose face is being used for the Joan series without having any control over what her digital counterpart is doing on the series.

Lots of money for AI, no money for the actors

Netflix job postings are looking for a “Product Manager – Machine Learning Platform”. In the meantime, the job offer has been adjusted because it made big waves, after all, it initially talked about “producing great content” – i.e. AI productions that could make the work of actors or authors superfluous.

In addition, Netflix promises applicants a salary of up to $900,000 a year – a hard blow for the strikers, who can barely pay their rent with the money they received from the streaming service. According to The Intercept, actor Rob Delaney, who last appeared in the Black Mirror episode “Joan is Awful,” said:

$900,000 a year for soldiers in their godless AI army while that sum could qualify thirty-five actors and their families for SAG-AFTRA medical insurance is just plain ghastly. Having been both rich and poor in this business, I can assure you that there is plenty of money to hand out; it’s all about priorities.

Rob Delaney

So far the strike has come to a standstill, and negotiations have been awaited in vain. This is of course a tactic used by the studios, because the longer the strike lasts, the longer the strikers have to go without money. Well-intentioned donations from stars like Dwayne Johnson don’t help much in the long run, at the same time the studios are gradually running out of films and series, and the stock market price of Netflix and Co. continues to collapse.

No matter how the strike ends, the AI ​​plans of the film studios and streaming services will not soon be forgotten by the authors and actors. In the last few months of 2023, film fans can still expect a few highlights if the strike does not lead to various postponements.