A surprising alignment has emerged between Washington and Hollywood over the governance of generative artificial intelligence, with the performers’ union SAG-AFTRA publicly welcoming the administration’s new national AI framework. According to the White House fact sheet, the executive order announced in December 2025 creates a coordinated federal approach intended to pre-empt a patchwork of state laws and set uniform standards for AI development and deployment.

SAG-AFTRA’s endorsement reflects long-standing union concerns that algorithmic systems can appropriate performers’ voices and likenesses without consent or compensation. The union has repeatedly advocated for federal protections for creative rights, including public remarks by its leadership at industry forums and statements emphasising the need for enforceable safeguards for members’ performances and images.

Central to the White House framework is a declaration that performances and physical likenesses are not merely “raw material” for unrestricted data harvesting, a stance that directly addresses the core anxieties that fuelled the industry’s recent labour disputes. The administration’s plan also directs federal agencies to evaluate and, where necessary, challenge state laws that conflict with national policy objectives, signalling an intent to establish federal supremacy on AI regulation.

The policy’s preference for a marketplace of licensing rather than loose fair-use defences offers unions fresh leverage to negotiate terms for how studios and technology firms may train models on copyrighted material. SAG-AFTRA leaders have previously defended negotiated AI terms as the best available protections for members and have urged collective bargaining rights over how performers’ work is used in algorithmic systems.

Industry trade groups joined the chorus for clear federal rules, underscoring concerns that a fragmented web of state statutes would complicate enforcement against unauthorised digital replicas. The union’s call for rapid passage of a bipartisan bill to create an explicit intellectual property right for voice and likenesses, often discussed under the NO FAKES rubric, reflects a wider push in the entertainment sector for a single, enforceable national standard.

Legal strategists in the sector favour resolving disputes over unauthorised model training through courts rather than through permissive legislative carve-outs for tech firms, arguing that existing copyright law should be applied to deter and remedy unlawful scraping. At the same time, the White House order establishes an AI Litigation Task Force to coordinate federal challenges where state measures are judged to impede national priorities.

Where the framework’s impact will be judged is in its implementation and the legislative battles ahead. Technology companies are expected to resist rules that impose retroactive compensation or strict limits on training pipelines, while performers’ groups and studios that rely on creative content will press for enforceable revenue-sharing and anti-deepfake protections. The outcome will shape whether creators retain control over the digital reproduction of their craft as AI becomes ever more capable.

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Source: Noah Wire Services