May 15, 2026
MAN AND ROBOTS: A weekly column from MARS Magazine on AI, Hollywood, and the future of work.
🎬 SAG-AFTRA New AI guidelines for Actors & Studios
1. The new tentative agreement between SAG-AFTRA and the major Hollywood studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), has been revealed and posted on its website for members to vote on.
The new agreement updates a number of guidelines regarding AI and adds a few new ones. Most notably, the new guidelines dictate:
•Studios must obtain consent to use a digital replica for audio dubbing into another language.
•Producers cannot use an actor’s biometric (eye scan, fingerprint, palmprint) for any non-film/TV production purpose.
•Producers need consent before sharing digital replicas with a third party. (Which I suspect will end up being one of the more important guidelines.)
•“Producers may not use the digital replica of a minor performer or background actor to depict them as nude or engaged in simulated sexual activity.”
•And, in a surprisingly forward-thinking move, a new guideline states that producers cannot use an actor’s digital replica to stand in for them during a strike action.
More guidelines regarding AI get into several technical details available here [PDF], but the gist of the updated agreement is that the actors’ union finally seems to have a full sense of what’s possible with AI and is baking in the proper usage and compensatory protections for human actors. The member voting began this week, and we’ll see the results next month.
🧙🏼♂️ Peter Jackson Isn’t Precious About AI
2. “I mean, to me, it’s just a special effect. It’s no different from other special effects… If you’re doing an AI duplicate of somebody, like Indiana Jones or anyone else, as long as you’ve licensed the rights off the person who you’re showing, I don’t see the issue. It’s when people’s likenesses get stolen and usurped… A lot of the current environment, everyone’s so worried about AI … I don’t think a Gollum-type character or a generated character has any hope for winning any awards. Which is a bit unfair, especially in the Andy Serkis case, where it’s not an AI-generated performance, it’s a human-generated performance 100% of the way.”
–Peter Jackson, director, Lord of the Rings, comments while receiving an Honorary Palme d’Or this week at the Cannes Film Festival
*Source: Variety
🔈 Taylor Swift’s Producer Goes Scorched Earth on AI
3. Jack Antonoff, the producer and songwriter behind some of the greatest tracks from Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Lana Del Rey, St. Vincent, Lorde, and many others, has a few thoughts on the growing phenomenon of AI-generated music. But instead of sitting for an interview on the topic, he followed in the footsteps of the likes of Reese Witherspoon and opted to post his thoughts directly on Instagram this week.
“You don’t have to write music anymore, you don’t have to record it and you don’t have to bring the band out and play it. And yet for us, the idea of optimizing what we do is a complete miss of the entire point of what compels us in the first place,” wrote Antonoff on Wednesday, just before midnight West Coast time. “We (myself, the band and everyone I know frankly) have never been looking for this work to become quicker or easier. We were never frustrated by the randomness and magic it takes. We do it for that exact reason — and without the process itself ::: nothingness.”
But that’s just his opening salvo, affirming where he stands on music creation. Next, he takes aim at those using AI to generate music that is now competing with traditional music on Spotify and on the Billboard charts.
“To everyone who is gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art, by all means drive right off that cliff. We’re genuinely happy to see you go. Generations coming will be engaging in the ancient ritual of writing, recording and performing as it comes to us from God,” wrote Antonoff. “So as we embark on this strange detour where the bad actors will willingly reveal themselves through [AI] slop, and the struggling greats will be further spread thin to make an honest living doing what they were put on earth to do, we (myself, the band and frankly everyone I know) remain more dedicated than ever to reveal what comes from within. Writing music, recording and performing it — that’s it. Nothing more embarrassing than considering there is a way to optimize that holy process. Godless whores.”
🦸🏻♂️ The Boys’ Superpowered Parting Shot At AI
4. TV showrunners continue to find unique ways to slip commentary on AI into their productions. Whether it’s Ice Cube yelling “Fuck AI” in Seth Rogen’s The Studio, or Vince Gilligan noting that Pluribus was “made by humans,”Hollywood is weighing in on the technology. The latest sort-of-stealth critique on AI came this week in episode 7, the second-to-last episode ever, as the show will end next week.
During a shoot for a Vought Studios fictional TV show, one of the actors complains about the script being derivative of “red state bumper stickers.” The director of the show, played by Ely Henry as The Worm, explains, “The Taylor Sheridan AI wrote the thing, and it does not take notes.” If you know who Sheridan is, you know this is a pretty deft double-tap cultural shot at one of the most popular TV showrunners working, cloaked in tech schadenfreude. And if you’re a fan of the show, you can also watch the finale next week on May 19 with other fans at AMC theaters around the country.
📺 Netflix Soft Launches AI Animation Effort
5. I’ve been predicting here that animation would be the beachhead for AI’s mainstreaming in Hollywood, with Netflix, Disney, and Amazon likely to lead the way. Now the cat is out of the bag on Netflix’s move in this direction. The streaming company has posted several job listings for a role at Inkubator, its new AI animation unit.
A number of job listings have been posted on Netflix and LinkedIn calling for producers, technical directors, animators, and software engineers to “join our pioneering team creating animated shorts and specials using experimental, creative-led, GenAI-native production pipelines.” In particular, a role for a producer says that the new hire will be “responsible for leading a number of directors/creators and artists on short-form content creation using new and emerging technologies, including Generative AI.” Likewise, a software engineer position asks for candidates ready to “help build enterprise-wise technology and platforms for INK to support scalable GenAI-native production across shows.
What It Means: Netflix has been a pioneer in popularizing cutting-edge animation through its award-winning Love Death + Robots series where a rotating team of animators use a wide array of technologies to deliver stunning adaptations of popular science fiction short stories. However, to date, none of those animation shorts have been AI-generated. It looks like that might be about to change. However, given the recent public backlash against at least some forms of AI, this might be territory Netflix needs to tread carefully. Disney was ready to go all in with OpenAI on AI animation shorts via Sora, and then the deal fell apart. Now that the public may be souring on AI, at least for the moment, Disney will likely be watching closely to see how Netflix’s AI animation shorts are received by viewers. ✍︎
SEEN: ByteDance aggressively marketing its Seedance AI video creation tool in Hong Kong.
MAN AND ROBOTS is a weekly column from MARS Magazine on AI, Hollywood, and the future of work. All editorial text is written by humans.
Cover image: Jack Antonoff on Instagram, raging against the AI machine. (Instagram)
