{"id":219478,"date":"2025-10-12T15:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T15:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/219478\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T15:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T15:48:07","slug":"tilly-norwood-and-ai-confusion-will-shape-looming-guild-talks-top-copyright-lawyers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/219478\/","title":{"rendered":"Tilly Norwood And AI Confusion Will Shape Looming Guild Talks, Top Copyright Lawyers Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn the looming contract talks between Hollywood studios and above-the-line unions, confusion around AI<\/a> and issues raised by the debut of synthetic actress Tilly Norwood<\/a> are certain to be key themes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe negotiating cycle is starting and the DGA is probably negotiating their contract within a month,\u201d said Jonathan Handel, an entertainment and technology lawyer at Feig\/Finkel. SAG-AFTRA<\/a> and the WGA are also also heading into negotiations ahead of the mid-2026 expiration of their current contracts with studios and streamers, with the wounds barely healed from the dual strikes of 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\tNorwood, whose arrival last month stirred up an industry tempest<\/a>, is \u201ca difficult situation,\u201d Handel added, \u201cand the union did not get anything on completely synthetic characters in the last round. So maybe they will this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHandel and Mishawn Nolan, managing partner of intellectual property law firm Nolan Heimann, shared their perspectives during a panel Friday afternoon at Infinity Festival<\/a> in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\n\tDigital scanning of human actors, for the purposes of using their likenesses in film and TV projects is another tricky area for the unions given how untested the legal<\/a> questions are, the attorneys agreed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI actually have a client right now,\u201d Nolan said, whose body is being scanned. \u201cWhat I received [from the company] was just a sort of standard certificate of engagement. It was all rights, just like you would normally use. And I said, \u2018Well, what are you gonna do with the data? What is the scope of the use?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause of the intense pressure on productions to move quickly, Nolan said, \u201ceveryone would like to just turn around [a talent agreement] tomorrow.\u201d But the complexities of copyright<\/a> issues raised by AI, which is evolving at a breakneck clip, require a lot more thought, she argued. \u201cThe way that we\u2019ve always done business can\u2019t be done in the future. It can\u2019t be done instantaneously,\u201d she continued. \u201cYou have to take a moment and think about, what are you doing? What are you capturing? What are you going to use it for? How are you going to use it? How long are you going to have access to it? And what happens in the long term? Who holds onto it? Is it safe? Is it gonna be destroyed?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scanning of human actors, Handel said, \u201cvery much implicates what SAG-AFTRA negotiated\u201d in its last contract, and insisting on the data being destroyed isn\u2019t necessarily a solution. \u201cTwenty years from now, the company may say to the celebrity, \u2018You know, we really like to do a reboot of that thing with you de-aged, but the ideal de-aging is actually the data from when you were younger,’\u201d he posited. \u201cAnd the celebrity might say no, or the celebrity might say, \u2018Hey, that\u2019s great, more money for me, and I\u2019m gonna reboot my career.\u2019 And then they\u2019re like, \u2018Oh fuck, my talent lawyers insisted that you throw away the data. So we don\u2019t have the data anymore.\u2019 But on the other hand, you don\u2019t want the necessarily want the production company or studio to have the right to store the data indefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother vexing area is the trove of unproduced screenplays whose copyrights are owned by studios and streamers. They could potentially be used to train AI models, Handel said. \u201cThe union agreements, as of two, two-and-a-half years ago, did not address, \u2018Hey, what about retroactivity?\u2019 That may come up in the in the current situation. It\u2019ll be very hard fought because, you know, it\u2019s obviously a big potential source of monetization for the companies, but also something that, OK, well, if you\u2019re going to do that, just like when you rerun a movie, you\u2019ve got to pay residuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe use of generative AI tools in production is also problematic, Handel and Nolan noted. There are different copyright issues facing the input (text submitted to a model like OpenAI\u2019s Sora, for example) and output (the video that is produced as a result.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe trouble and the confusion is that the technology and the workflow have advanced so quickly and are gonna continue to advance,\u201d Handel said. There can be hundreds of prompts, and revisions of prompts, resulting in video sequences with some resemblance to protected work, but the eye is sometimes in the beholder. \u201cThat is going to force at some point more nuanced court decisions, and it\u2019s going to be very difficult to figure out, you know, where\u2019s the line?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tMedia giants like Disney, NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery have sued various AI players in order to enforce their copyrights. OpenAI\u2019s Sora 2, introduced less than two weeks ago, has created an uproar <\/a>that some stakeholders believe will only die down once lawsuits are filed there as well.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt all adds up to a business environment defined by profound uncertainty, Nolan said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe way that you\u2019ve operated for the past year, the past five years, the past 10 years, you cannot assume that that is the business environment in which you can operate moving forward,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of the foundations and assumptions that you have been relying on, you cannot rely on them moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne example is the tried-and-true staple of all contract law: the multi-year agreement. \u201cHow do you do a five-year deal when the law and the technology can be different next week?\u201d Nolan asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the looming contract talks between Hollywood studios and above-the-line unions, confusion around AI and issues raised by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,23517,123826,1929,6655,3801,34086,74,110261],"class_list":{"0":"post-219478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-copyright","12":"tag-infinity-festival","13":"tag-labor","14":"tag-legal","15":"tag-sag-aftra","16":"tag-techline","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-tilly-norwood"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}