AI One of the Main Sticking Points in Hollywood Labor Talks

Here are the morning’s top stories on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026

• SAG-AFTRA is beginning its second week of contract negotiations with Hollywood studios. The union, representing actors and performers, is hoping to avoid a repeat of 2023, when talks broke down and a strike lasted more than a hundred days. AI is expected to be one of the main focuses of the talks.
• A new bill in the California legislature aims to improve the safety of e-bikes. It would require owners of certain types of e-bikes to register with the DMV and display a license plate.

Hollywood studios, SAG-AFTRA return to negotiating table

SAG-AFTRA is in a second week of contract talks with Hollywood studios. And one of the biggest topics this time around is the use of Artificial Intelligence.

“SAG-AFTRA was way out in front on this topic, way back in 2018, 2019,” said Variety Senior Media Reporter Gene Maddaus. “They’ve been warning about what this could mean for performers and now it’s only gotten more urgent with all of the developments that have occurred in the last months. These advances in AI are just coming leaps and bounds and it creates a real problem for workers. Performers having potentially viable careers in an era where you can just sort of push a button and create a performance.”

During the last contract negotiations, SAG-AFTRA, the union representing actors and performers, received some safeguards from AI. “Really, the focus in 2023 was on consent and compensation, and what they were sort of going for was if you’re going to use my image, my likeness, then it’s going to be with my permission and I’m going to get a cut of it,” Maddaus said. “What they didn’t get was really any protection around a synthetic actor — that would be a performer that doesn’t resemble any actor, a living person. And so that has become more of an issue as the technology has advanced. Now they can sort of put all the performances in the world and into a soup and create a performance out of that that doesn’t really resemble any one person. The question is — do SAG-AFTRA members have any compensation for that and that’s what I think they’re driving at now.”

During the last contract talks in 2023, things broke down and SAG-AFTRA union members went on strike for more than 100 days.

Proposed bill aims to improve e-bike safety

A proposal in Sacramento would require owners of certain types of e-bikes to register with the Department of Motor Vehicles and display a license plate.

Bay Area Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan is the bill’s author. “The statewide integrated traffic record system shows that between 2018 and 2023, e-bike incidents in California increased 18 fold in five years,” she said.

The proposal would apply to Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes, which have either a throttle or the capability to go faster than 20 miles per hour. “If they’re riding on our streets at 70 miles per hour, if they’re on our trails putting our bike riders, our pedestrians at risk, we don’t need to chase them. They will be held accountable. The license plate will be clear. We ‘ll know who violated the rules of the road. And we’ll be able to hold them accountable. And honestly, I think we’ll have to hold them accountable less because I think the ability to know who it is will in and of itself be a deterrent,” said Bauer-Kahan.