As AI Encroaches on Hollywood, Animators Say This Is An Existential Moment
Jeanette Moreno King’s daughter is 17 and wants to eventually work in animation. As the president of The Animation Guild — a union that represents more than 5,000 artists, writers, technicians and production workers who have been credited on Kung Fu Panda 4, Wish and other recent releases — Moreno King, you might think, would eagerly encourage this dream. But at this juncture, she’s instead advising caution. “I can’t promise her that that’s going to be possible,” she says.
The animation industry is turmoil as Moreno King’s union entered its latest round of contract negotiations with top Hollywood studios and streamers on Aug. 12. While the larger entertainment business undergoes a major contraction, rounds of layoffs have buffeted top firms like Netflix Animation, Dreamworks Animation and Pixar in the last few years. The outsourcing of work and/or production to companies in foreign countries, long the bane of the union, has continued apace, per the guild. (Disney’s new animation studio in Vancouver, announced in 2021, for example, is non-union, the guild claims. DreamWorks Animation is reportedly moving away from in-house production on certain projects and working more with outside vendors.)
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Then, there’s the threat of generative AI on the horizon, with several animation roles expected to be among those hardest hit by the technological revolution. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co-founder of DreamWorks and former chairman of Walt Disney Studios, has predicted that generative AI could eradicate 90 percent of animation artist jobs.
The word that some negotiators at the union are using to describe this moment is “existential.”
“These are people’s dreams that they’ve turned into careers that could be disappearing,” says writer and negotiations committee member Madison Bateman (DuckTales). “So we really try to keep that in mind as we move into negotiations — that we are fighting for the livelihoods of our membership, for our careers and our dreams.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the employers’ representatives in bargaining, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, for comment.
Securing contract language on generative AI is a top priority. After forming an AI Task Force in the spring of 2023, the union has polled its membership on how generative AI is being used in their workplaces and partnered with other organizations to survey media leaders on how the technology could affect jobs in their industries. Especially impacted in animation will be sound editors, 3-D modelers, compositors, graphic designers, effects artists and animators, that survey predicted. Overall, the union asserts that 29 percent of animation jobs are estimated to be possibly “disrupted” in the next three years, the length of the union’s next contract.
Will generative AI really bring about a complete sea change? Former Animation Guild president and USC School of Cinematic Arts professor Tom Sito notes in an email that, since computers emerged as an animation tool in the 1980s, “there [has] always [been] a cadre of executives who rub their hands together with glee at the thought of getting rid of a lot of artists.” However, he adds, the resulting computer-generated animation still necessitated human artists and technicians. “Today similar claims are being made about AI. We shall see.”
Whatever the outcome of this period, storyboard artist Sam Tung (X-Men ’97), a member of both the AI Task Force and the negotiations committee, says that in bargaining “it’s going to come down to making sure that artists can choose what technology is used in the pipeline and making sure that that isn’t coming at the detriment of staffing and work.”
The union’s other key issue is fighting the outsourcing of L.A. County studio work to other countries. The labor group has battled this phenomenon before: After winning a protective clause against so-called “runaway production” during its 1979 strike, the union gave up that language in a subsequent work stoppage in 1982. Now, the Animation Guild’s main contract largely doesn’t have any outsourcing protections, says Moreno King.
These issues could become points of contention with studios, which will likely seek the flexibility to experiment with AI and attempt to minimize labor costs. While The Animation Guild has not disclosed specific proposals yet, leaders tell THR that the AI language in the deal ratified by other IATSE Locals in July offered a starting point, but would need to be adjusted to suit their union. It remains unclear how the union will seek to fight outsourcing. But at a rally in Burbank on August 10, two storyboard artists suggested in a speech that the union would be fighting for “staffing minimums” to help alleviate shrinking crews. In 2023, a minimum staffing ask from the Writers Guild of America for TV writers’ rooms became a sticking point in negotiations with the AMPTP; eventually, following a 148-day strike, the guild did win a staffing baseline.
Other, craft-specific issues will raise their heads in negotiations as well. Animation Guild writers are looking to stem an alleged trend of companies hiring many in their cohort as freelancers, rather than as staff writers. “Freelance writing used to mean flexibility or a little extra money. Now it’s a hardscrabble existence that’s becoming the norm,” says Bateman. Timing directors are pushing back against what they say are unlivable unit rates that compensate freelance workers based on their work’s screentime, rather than the hours they put in. “I am super meticulous and I do really good work, but I’m not fast,” says timing director and negotiations committee member Christine Smith Ishimine (American Dad!). “So for people like me, I just can’t make enough to live on it.”
Still, this year’s negotiations will undoubtedly be affected by the high levels of unemployment in the union. In a sobering statistic, The Animation Guild disclosed on July 31 that it estimates, through research and internal surveys, that about one third of its working members have been laid off in the past year. There’s a possibility that that level of unemployment could result in members shying away from the union taking an aggressive stance in talks, for fear it could risk a strike and/or result in further financial hardship.
Then there’s another possibility, adds Tung. “I think people are engaged and activated and feel that times are dire,” he says. “When everybody is comfortable, it can be easy to check out and assume things are fine. If anything, [this situation] may be actually activating the membership.”
A version of this story appeared in the Aug. 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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