The performing arts union Equity has threatened mass direct action over tech and entertainment companies’ use of its members’ likenesses, images and voices in AI content without permission.
The warning came as the union said growing numbers of its members had made complaints about infringements of their copyright and misuse of their personal data in AI material.
Its general secretary, Paul W Fleming, said it planned to coordinate data requests en masse to companies to force them to disclose whether they used members’ data in AI-generated material without consent.
Last week the union confirmed its was supporting a Scottish actor who believes her image was used in the creation of the “AI actor” Tilly Norwood, which has been widely condemned by the film industry.
Briony Monroe, 28, from East Renfrewshire, said she believed that an image of her face had been used to make the digital character, created by the AI “talent studio” Xicoia, which has denied her claims.
Most of the complaints Equity has received from members concerned AI-generated voice replicas.
Fleming said the union has already helped members make subject access requests to producers and tech companies which failed to provide satisfactory explanations about where the data they used to create AI content came from.
He said: “The companies actually became very willing to start discussing compensation and usage. So the industry needs to be more careful because it’s not going to stop there.
“AI companies need to know that we will be putting in these subject access requests en masse. They have a statutory obligation to respond. If an individual member reasonably believes that their data is being used without their consent, we want to find out.”
Fleming said he hoped the tactic would push tech companies and producers resistant to being transparent about the sources of their AI content to strike an agreement on performers’ rights.
“What we’re trying to do is use people’s individual rights to make it so hard for tech companies and producers to not enter into collective rights,” said Fleming.
As the union has 50,000 members, significant numbers of them making subject access requests would create a “hassle” for firms unwilling to negotiate, he added.
Under data protection law, individuals have the right to ask for all the information an organisation holds about them. Organisations normally have one month to reply to a subject access request.
“It’s not a silver bullet,” Fleming added. “It’s not easy to do because they may well have got data from somewhere else. A lot of people are behaving very recklessly and immorally.”
Monroe said she believed that Norwood had copied both her image and her mannerisms.
Monroe said: “I move my head quite a lot when I’m acting. I noticed in the last few seconds of Tilly’s show reel, that is exactly what she did. Other people have also said, ‘Those are your mannerisms. That’s how you act.’”
Liam Budd, industrial official for recorded media at Equity UK, said the union was taking Monroe’s concerns seriously. The AI production company Particle6, which launched Xicoia earlier this month, confirmed it was working with the union “to address any concerns”.
A spokesperson for Particle6 added: “Briony Monroe’s likeness, image, voice or personal data have not been used in any way to create Tilly Norwood.
“Tilly was developed entirely from scratch using original creative design. We do not and will not use any performer’s likeness without explicit consent and fair compensation.”
Although he would not comment on Monroe’s complaint, Budd said: “We’ve had increasing numbers of members getting in touch about specific infringements where they believe that their image or voice has been used without their consent to then create an output which can identify them or resembles them in some way.
“It’s been a lot more common in the audio space because the technology is much easier. You don’t need many recordings to create a digital replica of a voice.”
But Norwood represented a new challenge for the industry, said Budd, because “we haven’t really seen the launch of a wholly synthetic actor” before.
Equity UK has been in negotiations with the UK production trade body Pact (Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television) about AI, copyright and data protection for more than a year.
Fleming said: “The bosses are not asking questions about where this data has come from. Privately, they will admit that it is impossible to ethically use AI because it has been scraped and trained on data where the provenance is at best unclear.
“But nine times out of 10, we know it’s been used completely outside of the existing copyright and data protection framework.”
Max Rumney, the deputy chief executive of Pact, said its members needed to use AI technology in production or they would be at a commercial disadvantage to those firms with no collective agreements with unions, who did not remunerate actors, writers and other creatives.
But he added that there was no transparency from tech companies on what content or data had been used to train foundation models, the technology that underpins AI tools such as image generators.
“The foundational models have been trained without permission on the films and programmes of our members,” said Rumney.
“Our members want human creative expression in their films and programmes. They value this and consider that this is what makes UK productions so compelling and innovative.”
