Labor, likeness, IP, and AI infrastructure accountability intensify

The June 2026 SAG-AFTRA agreement and ongoing WGA, DGA, and IATSE debates make consent, compensation, residuals, creative authority, and human authorship permanent bargaining issues. The Apple Studios VFX IATSE contract adds explicit AI protections to a growing set of production-labor agreements, while state rules and the MPA-ByteDance framework expand safeguards without resolving training-data rights, licensing economics, or enforcement.