Netflix has advertised a new opening for a machine learning product manager with a salary range of $300,000 to $900,000 at the same time as actors are striking over pay and AI concerns.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) reports 87 percent of its actors earn less than $26,000 a year.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and Sag, and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) held negotiations about the use of AI in film and television production.
Read More: Hollywood stars join strikes in biggest industry shutdown in 60 years
It includes scriptwriting, generating actors’ likenesses, and economizing in paying for creative work.
The position is a new role to “increase the leverage of our machine learning platform”, billed as “the foundation for all of this innovation”.
The job description hints at the company’s broader ambitions for AI implementation across all aspects of its business.
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The company aims to use AI to optimize content curation, produce original movies and TV shows, and other areas.
Netflix is also seeking a technical director for generative AI at its gaming studio, offering up to $650,000 per year.
Generative AI can produce text, images, and video from input data, potentially enabling the creation of original content or targeted advertising efforts.
Disney has also listed several machine learning-related positions without specifying salary ranges.
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During an earnings call, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger, who stated actors’ and writers’ pay demands were “unrealistic,” hinted at the challenges of integrating AI into their business model.
AI has become a contentious issue during the joint strike, with concerns raised about its use to generate deepfake simulations of actors without proper compensation or consent.
Negotiations have been tense, and disagreements between the parties continue to persist.
The AMPTP has disputed SAG-AFTRA’s characterization of their proposal, saying it’s a “mischaracterization” intended to garner support for the strike.
