The 2023 SAG-AFTRA deal made consent the price of a digital replica

The figure or the record

SAG-AFTRA's 2023 strike over the TV/Theatrical contract ended with a tentative agreement the union's National Board approved and recommended for ratification; members ratified it in December 2023. A contemporaneous FAQ page, archived 13 November 2023, states the deal delivered 'a 7% general wage increase effective Nov. 9, 2023, and another 4% increase effective July 1, 2024, for a compounded first-year wage increase of 11.28%,' with a further 3.5% increase effective July 2025. The page puts the total value of the minimums package at $479.8 million over the contract's term.

What the documents establish

The same wage increases are memorialised in the union's Memorandum of Agreement, archived 25 November 2023, which contains the negotiated redline text behind the FAQ's summary figures. A separate AI resources FAQ, archived 24 November 2023, sets out the contract's digital-replica terms: consent to scan a performer must be 'clear and conspicuous,' separately signed or initialled, and accompanied each time by a 'reasonably specific description' of the intended use, with narrow multi-project exceptions that still require an episode-by-episode description.

Scope and caveats

The FAQ is explicit that a producer may still refuse to hire a performer who withholds digital-replica consent — the contract creates a disclosure and consent process, not a right to refuse scanning and still get the job. On the training-data question, the same page records that SAG-AFTRA did not secure an outright ban and 'retained' the right to argue training requires consent without that right being 'expressly referenced in the contract,' a position it says the WGA and DGA share in their own agreements. These are 2023 terms for television and theatrical work; they are not the vertical-specific agreement this ledger could not open.

What to watch

Editorially, the marker to watch is whether the 2026 vertical-programs agreement imports this same consent-and-disclosure structure for digital replicas, or negotiates something narrower or broader for a format built around AI-assisted, high-volume production.

• Does the vertical-programs agreement apply the same 'clear and conspicuous,' per-use consent standard for digital replicas as the 2023 TV/Theatrical contract?
• Has the unresolved AI-training-data question, left to courts and the Copyright Office in 2023, been settled in a way that changes this position?
• What share of the $479.8 million minimums package actually reached performers as wages, against fund contributions?

The 2023 contract's real innovation was procedural — consent, disclosure and a description requirement for each use of a digital replica — layered onto a wage increase whose size the union itself attributes directly to the strike that preceded it.