Thirty-seven hosts for home shopping network QVC voted Thursday to unionize with SAG-AFTRA, turning concerns over generative AI and the use of their voices and likenesses into a new front in the media industry’s growing labor battles. Only nine voted against the move, giving SAG-AFTRA roughly 80% support in a National Labor Relations Board election covering full-time and part-time presenters at the company’s West Chester, Pennsylvania, headquarters, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The vote covers hosts who appear across linear television, livestream and shortform programming. While the bargaining unit is small, the fight behind it reflects a broader industry battle over a question becoming harder to ignore: who controls a performer’s image when companies can create synthetic versions of it.

SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin framed the vote around that concern. “QVC, HSN and Omni Channel employees deserve fair compensation, AI protections and a stronger voice in decisions that affect their work,” he said in a statement, adding that the union’s 160,000 members are proud of the hosts for organizing.

QVC said it has historically preferred a direct relationship with employees but will “respect the outcome of the election” and begin working with SAG-AFTRA toward a first contract.

The organizing effort was driven in large part by concerns over generative AI. The Hollywood Reporter reported earlier this summer that hosts feared their images, voices and likenesses could be used without consent or compensation. In a petition delivered to management, the hosts said they “should have meaningful input into [their] role in the network’s future, and that this is best accomplished through a formal collective-bargaining process.” They also sought clearer standards around pay, promotions and job protections.

Those demands mirror the fight SAG-AFTRA already waged with Hollywood studios in 2023, when AI consent and compensation protections became central issues in the film and television contract that ended a monthslong strike. QVC hosts do not have the same bargaining power as scripted actors, but the underlying concern is similar: companies gaining the ability to create digital versions of a person’s face or voice without their permission.

The timing adds another layer of complexity. Qurate Retail Group, QVC’s parent company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April after cutting 900 jobs earlier this year. The company is also shifting its business model toward live shopping on social platforms and streaming services as traditional linear television declines. SAG-AFTRA will enter negotiations with a company restructuring both its finances and its distribution strategy.

For other newsrooms and media companies leaning on on-camera talent, hosts, anchors, livestream personalities, the QVC case is a preview. As publishers experiment with AI-generated avatars and voice clones to expand content across platforms, the people whose likenesses power those systems are seeking contract protections before the technology gets ahead of them. The Media Copilot has tracked similar consent and compensation disputes emerging wherever generative tools touch a recognizable face or voice.

What QVC’s first contract with SAG-AFTRA ultimately includes on AI rights, consent and compensation could become a reference point for other retail media and livestream operations facing similar questions.

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Cate Blanchett has co-founded a new nonprofit aimed at solving one of AI’s most urgent unsolved problems: the ability for any person to control how their work, likeness, and identity are used by artificial intelligence systems.

RSL Media launched Tuesday as a public benefit nonprofit, built around a deceptively simple idea: Human consent should function like a traffic light—allowed, allowed with terms, or prohibited—that AI systems can actually read and respect. The organization has already secured support from a roster of A-list entertainment figures including Javier Bardem, George Clooney, Viola Davis, Tom Hanks, Dame Helen Mirren, Steven Soderbergh, Kristen Stewart, Meryl Streep, and Dame Emma Thompson, as well as Creative Artists Agency and the Music Artists Coalition.

“AI technologies are expanding rampantly, essentially unchecked and unregulated,” Blanchett said in a statement. “In order for humans to remain in front of these technologies, consent must be the first consideration.”

The launch comes less than a year after the Really Simple Licensing standard released version 1.0 of its open protocol that lets publishers define machine-readable terms for AI training on their content. RSL Media builds on that same architecture, extending the principle of machine-readable rights from content licensing to the protection of human creative expression, identity, and likeness.

“The right to decide whether AI can use your work or identity should not be reserved for only those who can afford lawyers or have platforms big enough to be heard,” said Nikki Hexum, co-founder and CEO of RSL Media. “It is a basic human right.”

The organization covers four distinct rights areas: creative works (songs, films, books, art, photography), identity (name, image, voice, movement, personal attributes), characters (fictional figures including their names, voices, and visual depictions), and marks (logos, trademarks, trade dress, brand identifiers). Its co-founders include not only Blanchett and Hexum but also Doug Leeds and Eckart Walther, the latter being the RSS co-creator behind the original RSL standard.

The legal framework was co-authored by James Everingham, former head of engineering at Instagram and CEO of Guild.ai; Jacqueline Sabec, a partner at King, Holmes, Paterno & Soriano; and Francesca Amfitheatrof, former artistic director of watches and jewelry at Louis Vuitton and design director at Tiffany & Company.

A free, public registry launches in June. Once live, anyone will be able to verify their identity through RSLMedia.org, declare permissions for their work and likeness, and have those preferences translated into machine-readable signals that AI platforms can query before use.

The approach mirrors the logic behind IAB Europe’s compensation framework (and the earlier RSL protocol) in aiming to turn consent into infrastructure. RSL Media’s registry goes further, however, by applying that model to individuals rather than publishers, covering identity and likeness alongside creative work.

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A new coalition of more than 500 Hollywood professionals launched Monday to push back against unregulated AI adoption in the entertainment industry. The Creators Coalition on AI brings together Oscar winners, A-list talent, and below-the-line workers to establish shared standards for AI use in creative industries.

The group announced four core demands: transparency and compensation for content used in AI training, job protection plans, guardrails against deepfakes and misuse, and safeguards for human creativity in the production process.

“This is not a full rejection of AI,” the coalition wrote in its launch statement, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We believe humanity is creative enough to design a system that allows for the tech and creative industries to coordinate, collaborate and flourish.”

Founding members include Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang of Everything Everywhere All at Once, actors Natasha Lyonne and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and former Academy president Janet Yang. More than 500 signatories joined, including Cate Blanchett, Aaron Sorkin, Rian Johnson, and Kristen Stewart.

The timing matters. The coalition accelerated its launch after Disney announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI last week, a deal that blindsided many in the industry. “We weren’t planning to announce this soon,” Kwan told THR. “But when we saw the vacuum of leadership in our industry, we felt the need to step up.”

The group held meetings with representatives from the Writers Guild, Producers Guild, Directors Guild, SAG-AFTRA, and Teamsters in November to discuss alignment on AI principles. “Everybody seemed to be much more strongly in agreement than we even anticipated,” Yang said.

Why it matters for newsrooms: The coalition offers a model for cross-guild coordination that media organizations could replicate. Its emphasis on transparency, consent, and compensation for training data directly addresses concerns facing news publishers as AI companies scrape their content without permission or payment.

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