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Directors open AI talks with the studios

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The Directors Guild opened AMPTP contract talks on 12 May with AI training-use protection central, the next test of whether a Hollywood union can beat the limited terms the writers and actors settled for.

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Key takeaway

Two prior union settlements won AI guardrails but no payment; the directors test whether that ceiling holds.

The Directors Guild of America (DGA), the union representing film and television directors and their Teams, opened formal negotiations with the AMPTP (the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the studios' bargaining body) on 12 May 2026, with protection against AI training use of directors' creative work as a central demand. ¹ The current contract expires on 30 June. DGA President Christopher Nolan told the studios they "are going to have to raise their contributions" to the health plan, putting healthcare alongside AI at the top of the table. ²

The DGA enters with a precedent it would rather beat than match. SAG-AFTRA, the actors' union, reached a four-year AMPTP deal that won digital-replica consent but no synthetic-performer royalty, the so-called Tilly tax , and the writers settled earlier on limited AI training protections with no payment for AI use of their work. Both unions secured guardrails without securing a price. The question for the directors is whether a third union at the table can convert consent rights into a revenue share, or whether the studios' two prior settlements have set the ceiling. Behind them sit the craft unions, IATSE among them, watching the result as the model for their own talks.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The Directors Guild of America, known as the DGA, is the union representing film and television directors in the United States. It has about 19,000 members. Every few years, the DGA negotiates a new contract with the AMPTP, which stands for Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and represents the major film studios and streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney and Amazon. The central issue in 2026 is whether studios can use a director's creative work to train AI systems. When an AI learns to generate film scenes by studying thousands of existing films, the directors who made those films receive nothing. The DGA wants the contract to restrict this, or require payment. SAG-AFTRA, the actors' and performers' union, just settled its own four-year AMPTP deal in May 2026. It just reached a four-year deal with AMPTP in May 2026. The actors won the right to approve any use of their digital likeness (an AI copy of their face and voice), but did not win the Tilly tax. The Tilly tax was a proposed fee studios would pay every time an AI-generated character replaced a real actor. The studios rejected it. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) settled earlier in 2026 on similar terms: studios must notify writers when licensing their work for AI training, but do not have to pay for it. Christopher Nolan, the British filmmaker known for Oppenheimer and Inception, became DGA President and is leading these negotiations. His public position is that studios must also raise their contributions to the DGA health fund, which covers medical costs for members.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The DGA's weaker negotiating position relative to SAG-AFTRA traces to a structural difference in AI exposure between directors and performers. A synthetic performer (an AI copy of an actor's face and voice) is a direct, commercially scalable substitute for the original in advertising, streaming content and interactive media.

A synthetic director is not yet commercially deployable at scale: the creative-decision layer in film direction is more diffuse, harder to capture as a data artefact, and the market for AI-generated direction does not yet exist in the way that synthetic performers do.

This means the studios face less immediate cost-reduction pressure to reach a DGA AI deal than they did with SAG-AFTRA's Tilly tax demand. The DGA's leverage depends on whether its healthcare and pay demands give the AMPTP more reason to settle fast than to let the DGA contract expire on 30 June. Nolan's healthcare framing is a negotiating signal that the DGA is content to fight the economic battle even if the AI-protection battle is harder to win at this cycle.

What could happen next?

Precedent
If the DGA accepts fund contributions over per-use training royalties, as SAG-AFTRA and WGA did in 2026, the three-union settlement pattern establishes that no major Hollywood union has won payment for AI training use of members' work in 2026 contracts.
Risk
IATSE, the below-the-line crew union, is watching DGA terms as its own AI-protection model; a weak DGA settlement forecloses the strongest precedent IATSE could use in its own upcoming negotiations.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The 1960 Screen Actors Guild strike over residual payments for films reused on television provides the closest structural parallel to the DGA's AI-training demand. In 1960, SAG under Ronald Reagan as president negotiated the first residual formula for TV reruns: studios paid into a health and pension fund (not per-member royalties) in exchange for the right to re-broadcast theatrical films.

The formula that emerged, a lump-sum fund contribution rather than per-use royalties, became the template for every subsequent SAG and WGA residual deal. The DGA AI-training demand is structurally identical: a new exploitation mode (AI training) has appeared, and the union must negotiate whether it attracts a royalty or only a fund contribution.

Counter-parallel: In 2007-2008, the WGA struck over residuals for internet streaming, demanding per-view payments for content distributed online. The studios rejected per-use royalties and offered fund contributions. The 2008 settlement, reached after a 100-day strike, accepted the fund-contribution model.

The DGA, which settled without striking in 2008, accepted the same terms. The counter-precedent is that unions that push for per-use royalties in technology transitions consistently accept fund contributions as the final deal, and the precedent of no AI training royalty in the SAG-AFTRA and WGA 2026 settlements repeats that 2008 pattern before the DGA even reaches its own deadline.

Sources:Boston.com

Mentions:Directors Guild of America →AMPTP →SAG-AFTRA →Writers Guild of America →IATSE →Ronald Reagan →Netflix →Amazon →United States →

First Reported In

Update #10 · Rival studies split on AI's hit to jobs

Boston.com· 24 May 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

SAG-AFTRA wins consent rights, loses the Tilly tax

SAG-AFTRA's four-year settlement with limited AI protections sets the precedent the DGA is negotiating against, making the DGA the next test of whether unions can win stronger terms.

Occurred 2 May 2026

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This Event

Directors open AI talks with the studios

The DGA is the next test of whether a creative-sector union can win stronger AI terms than the deals before it.

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