The screen guild agreements: the construction pathway in contract
The 2023 memoranda of agreement won by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA after strikes, which made AI-generated material not literary or source material, barred requiring writers to use AI, required disclosure of AI-generated inputs, and required consent and compensation for digital replicas of performers; and their 2026 successors, which preserved and extended those terms. Bargained instruments binding on signatory employers for their term, not statute; the demonstration that a workforce without a statutory body can build the accountability layer itself.
When this decides something for you
A workforce facing AI with no statutory body behind it, whether content moderators, paralegals, data annotators or translators, is told that only a regulator can set binding terms. This page records two workforces that set them by contract, and kept them through a renewal cycle, which is the test of whether a bargained floor is an institution.
What the instruments are
In 2023 two American screen guilds struck over generative AI with no statute behind them and only collective power in hand.
The Writers Guild of America's memorandum of agreement for the 2023 Theatrical and Television Basic Agreement, per the Guild's own summaries of the party text, established that AI cannot write or rewrite literary material and that AI-generated material is not source material, so it cannot undermine a writer's credit or separated rights; that a writer may choose to use AI only with the company's consent and the company cannot require it; and that the company must disclose when material given to a writer is AI-generated. The Guild reserved its position that training on writers' material is prohibited. The 2023 agreement's term ran from 25 September 2023 to 1 May 2026.
SAG-AFTRA's 2023 TV/Theatrical contracts, effective 9 November 2023 to 30 June 2026, required informed consent before creating a digital replica of a principal or background performer, compensation and residuals for its use, per-project consent at the time of use, separate bargaining for use outside the original production, and protection for independently created replicas; producers may not use replicas to avoid hiring background performers.
In 2026 both agreements were renewed. The successor agreements preserved every AI protection and extended them: the writers added a notice regime for the licensing of their work to train generative systems, and the performers added further restrictions on synthetic performers.
What they are, precisely
Contracts, binding on signatory employers for the agreement's term. Not statute; not binding on non-signatories; renewable and therefore losable. The precision matters because a claim that guild terms "regulate AI" overstates them, and an argument that rests on them must not.
Why they are in this library
They are the construction pathway made visible. Where no statutory professional body exists, the accountability layer must be built from below, and these agreements show the building: a workforce organises, refuses, wins terms that name AI specifically, and then holds those terms through a full renegotiation. A floor that survives renewal is a load-bearing structure, not an episode. History suggests the next stage: most statutory professional councils began as voluntary associations whose collective power the state later wrote into law.
They also show the governance frontier the construction road has yet to walk. Who governs the accumulated professional knowledge, the indexed repositories of work that make individual practitioners substitutable, is a labour question before it is a procurement question, and it belongs on the association's table beside consent and compensation.
Where it stands in the record
The 2023 texts are archived from the parties' own sites; the 2026 successors were archived and their AI provisions confirmed for the author's conference paper. The article numbers within the memoranda are not given on this page and are recorded in the ledger at the archived copies.
Provenance and method.
Where this was published
- Writers Guild of America
- Memorandum of Agreement for the 2023 WGA Theatrical and Television Basic Agreement (party text
- archived D1a) and the 2026 successor agreement (archived D1b)
- SAG-AFTRA
- 2023 TV/Theatrical Contracts and Digital Replicas explainer (party text
- archived D2b) and the 2026 successor (archived D2c)
Changelog
- 2026-09-25, version 1. First published.