Thank you for that question.
It is one of the greatest tools of our industry, which is also one of the greatest threats. You have individuals who have been victims of this, like Tom Cruise. I happened to be down in Los Angeles for the SAG-AFTRA negotiations, and I know that someone as big as Tom Cruise was very interested in what was happening when it came to AI and having protections. Jennifer Aniston has been a victim of it.
We think the government needs to step in, and it needs to step in quickly, to make sure that we have three things. We'll go through the three Cs with you.
The first is consent. You have to make sure that, for an individual who is giving consent to have their image used, it is informed consent and it's not buried somewhere in the middle of a 10-page document. Eleanor can tell you that, when she shows up to the set, she is often given a large document to sign, without her agent or the union being able to go through it. You cannot bury it somewhere. We need to know what you're asking for, so there's consent.
There's control. It needs to be that we have some level of control over usage. For example, taking someone's image and putting it in a pornographic production is not okay. It is not okay. I can tell you there's an actor-performer who had her voice stolen and put into a pornographic production. Her voice is recognizable. Her business is now diminished, and there is no coming back from that. We need to have controls put in place by our government to protect people.
The last thing is compensation. That's the work of performers. They have given that work and they've been paid for that work, but only that work. Taking it, stealing it and putting it somewhere else takes away their livelihoods. It goes without saying, but some of the most precarious workers in this country are actors. They have to go to an audition for work every single day, free of charge. They have to memorize lines. They have to go into an audition. They have to create a performance that they get paid nothing for, and then they have to hope they can weave together enough of their work so that it allows them to subsist in this country.
We need to give the most precarious workers—the ones you all love to see on the screen—some fundamental protections so that they can continue to work in our country and they can have the security to know their work won't be stolen from them or misused.