By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A search for Wes Anderson on YouTube turns up&nbsp;trailers&nbsp;that the famed director with a distinctive style appears to have made for adaptations of "Star Wars," "Harry Potter" and "The Lord of the Rings" featuring Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson and other stars.
Artificial intelligence allowed people with no real&nbsp;actors&nbsp;and far smaller resources than major&nbsp;Hollywood&nbsp;studios to generate the&nbsp;fake&nbsp;movie&nbsp;trailers, feeding debate on the issue that will be on the bargaining table when the SAG-AFTRA&nbsp;actors&nbsp;union begins&nbsp;labor&nbsp;talks&nbsp;with studios on June 7.
AI&nbsp;already has divided studios and striking film and television writers, who want assurances that the emerging technology will not be used to generate scripts.
SAG-AFTRA wants to ensure its members can control use of their "digital&nbsp;doubles" and ensure studios pay the actual&nbsp;actors&nbsp;appropriately, said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union's chief negotiator.
"The performer's name, likeness, voice, persona - those are the performer's stock and trade," Crabtree-Ireland said. "It's really not fair for companies to attempt to take advantage of that and not fairly compensate performers when they're using their persona in that way."
Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves already have been the subject of widely viewed unauthorized deepfakes - realistic yet fabricated videos created by&nbsp;AI&nbsp;algorithms. Reeves called the technology "scary," in part because it can be deployed without&nbsp;actors' input.
Interest in generative&nbsp;AI&nbsp;exploded globally after the November launch of ChatGPT, the fastest growing app of all time, by Microsoft Corp-backed OpenAI. U.S. and European regulators have demanded guardrails to prevent misinformation, bias, violation of copyrights and invasion of privacy.
Actors&nbsp;and writers envision various scenarios in which studios could try to cut costs and boost revenue using generative&nbsp;AI, which can be fed existing material and pump out new content. The technology already is used to erase age marks or alter mouth movements to sync with words when programming is dubbed in various languages.
Actor Leland Morrill said he has worked on sets where he was surrounded by cameras taking pictures from all angles.
"With that type of content, they could use you for part of it, and then create the rest of the character, and then we're not on set anymore and nobody gets paid," Morrill said at a multi-union rally in Los Angeles.
Producer, writer and former "Family Ties" actor Justine Bateman, holds a degree in computer science and has been sounding the alarm about&nbsp;AI. She said companies could allow fans to make their own "Star Wars" movie, and add themselves for an extra fee.
Or, a studio could take footage from a popular 1980s TV show such as "Family Ties" and make a new season with&nbsp;AI.
YOUNGER YOU
Some&nbsp;actors&nbsp;have signed off on specific uses of&nbsp;AI.
The upcoming "Indiana Jones" movie features scenes where 80-year-old star Harrison Ford appears 40 years younger. He said Walt Disney Co's Lucasfilm used images of his face that were shot during "Indiana Jones" films in the 1980s.
"It's fantastic," Ford raved about his youthful on-screen appearance in an interview with late-night host Stephen Colbert.
James Earl Jones, now 92, agreed to allow&nbsp;AI&nbsp;to replicate the menacing voice he gave to Darth Vader, according to Vanity Fair, so the character could live on.&nbsp;AI&nbsp;helped Disney put the late Carrie Fisher in 2019 film "The Rise of Skywalker," with the blessing of her daughter.
SAG-AFTRA's Crabtree-Ireland said&nbsp;actors&nbsp;have varying comfort levels with how&nbsp;AI&nbsp;is used, which is why the union will advocate for informed consent in&nbsp;talks&nbsp;with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the group that represents Disney, Netflix Inc and other studios.
A representative for the AMPTP had no comment on its position on use of&nbsp;AI&nbsp;with&nbsp;actors.
In negotiations with the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the AMPTP proposed discussing the topic once a year, which the Guild viewed as an attempt to avoid the issue. The WGA has been on strike over&nbsp;AI&nbsp;and compensation since May 2.
If SAG-AFTRA cannot reach a deal on&nbsp;AI&nbsp;and other issues,&nbsp;actors&nbsp;also could go on strike, which would pile more pressure on the studios. Ahead of negotiations, SAG-AFTRA leaders have asked members to provide authorization to call a strike if needed. Voting on a strike authorization ends Monday.
Both unions want safeguards in place&nbsp;before&nbsp;AI&nbsp;becomes widely used.
Bateman, a former SAG board member, derides&nbsp;AI&nbsp;as "automatic imitation" that could lead to a future filled with rehashed entertainment from the past.
"I don't want to live in that world," Bateman said. "What's the next genre in film? What's the next genre in music? You're never going to see anything like that if we're all using&nbsp;AI."
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(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Additional reporting by Jorge Ramos and Dawn Chmielewski; Editing by Mary Milliken and David Gregorio)

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Digital doubles, fake trailers: AI worries Hollywood actors before labor talks