The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is a US trade body representing around 350 studios and streaming platforms. It negotiates collective bargaining agreements with Hollywood's major unions, including SAG-AFTRA, the WGA, the DGA, and IATSE, and holds near-total authority on the employer side.Source: AMPTP

What is the Tilly Tax the AMPTP is being asked to accept?

The Tilly Tax is a royalty on AI-generated performers that SAG-AFTRA is seeking in 2026 AMPTP contract talks. It would make synthetic actors cost the same or more than real ones, removing the cost incentive to replace human performers, with revenue going to union healthcare and pension funds.Source: SAG-AFTRA

Did the AMPTP resolve AI rights after the 2023 strikes?

Not fully. The 2023 strikes ended with interim agreements on AI digital replicas and residuals, but the core question of royalties on AI-generated performers remained unresolved, which is why SAG-AFTRA is pushing the Tilly Tax in the 2026 contract cycle.Source: SAG-AFTRA

Background

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) completed the 2026 Hollywood bargaining cycle on 9 June 2026 when it reached a tentative four-year deal with the Directors Guild of America (DGA), following settled agreements with the Writers Guild of America (WGA, April 2026) and SAG-AFTRA (May 2026). The DGA deal gives directors creative authority over AI-generated footage but imposes no training-data ban and no AI residual, an outcome trade press read as the studios holding the pattern established across all three guilds: no training levy, no synthetic-performer royalty, health-fund increases in exchange.

The 2026 cycle's resolution leaves AMPTP with a settled industry template through 2030 across all three major guilds. The AI terms in each deal are additive for studios: the WGA secured notification rights only; SAG-AFTRA secured consent for digital replicas but not the Tilly Tax royalty; the DGA secured creative control but no new financial liability. Cumulatively, AMPTP has closed the 2026 round without accepting any financial mechanism that prices AI displacement of labour. The DGA's 29-day settlement, the fastest of the three, also establishes that the studios' pattern-bargaining strategy accelerates when guilds have less leverage than SAG-AFTRA, whose Tilly Tax demand prolonged its talks into late April.