The Screen Actors Guild; American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, representing roughly 160,000 US performers across film, television, radio, and streaming. Formed in 2012 from the merger of SAG and AFTRA.

What is the SAG-AFTRA Tilly Tax?

A proposed royalty on AI-generated performers that would make synthetic actors cost the same or more than real ones. Revenue would fund SAG-AFTRA healthcare and pension funds. It is being negotiated in the 2026 AMPTP contract talks.Source: SAG-AFTRA

What is the difference between the Tilly Tax and the robot tax?

The Tilly Tax is a sector-specific royalty pricing synthetic performers at parity with humans in entertainment. The robot tax is Bernie Sanders' proposed federal per-position levy across all industries. Both aim to remove AI's cost advantage but operate at different scales.Source: event

Background

SAG-AFTRA's 2026 contract negotiations with AMPTP resumed on 28 April under a full media blackout, with National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland holding firm on the Tilly Tax as the precondition for any deal. The negotiations carry an external Deadline: the Directors Guild of America contract expires on 11 May 2026, and a DGA deal would remove the most effective source of solidarity pressure on studios. Both sides are aware that a deal before 11 May preserves the multi-union coordination that defined the 2023 strikes.

The Tilly Tax, a royalty on AI-generated performers priced to make synthetic casting cost the same or more than real performers, has evolved from an abstract proposal into the central test case for whether entertainment unions can extract structural AI compensation rather than merely consent safeguards. The 2023 agreement secured the right to say no; the 2026 negotiation seeks the right to be paid when the industry says yes to synthetic casting anyway.

The media blackout signals both sides believe a deal is within reach but do not want public posturing to complicate the final stages. If SAG-AFTRA secures a Tilly Tax framework before the DGA Deadline, it will be the first sector-level AI royalty mechanism in the United States, a template that writers, voice artists, and eventually workers in other industries using AI-generated content will attempt to replicate.

The 2023 SAG-AFTRA AI side letters established consent and disclosure requirements for AI-generated performer likenesses, but those provisions are time-limited and expire in 2026. Their expiry is the contractual backdrop to studio AI-production decisions visible in the current briefing cycle: Netflix's confirmed use of Runway for VFX in The Eternaut, and Netflix's INKubator animation unit, both operate within the window before the 2026 renegotiation locks new terms.

The side-letter expiry matters structurally because it sets a Deadline for studios deploying AI production tools under the lighter 2023 consent framework before the 2026 successor potentially prices synthetic casting at human-performer rates. Media companies weighing buy-versus-build on AI production tools are doing so with the 2026 labour contract clock running. SAG-AFTRA's posture in those negotiations is therefore a material input to streamer AI-strategy timelines, not merely a labour story.