SAG-AFTRA and the Studios reached a tentative four-year contract on May 2. The deal includes new AI guardrails on top of the 2023 digital-replica rules. The Board votes this week. The Directors Guild starts its own talks May 11. Most of the coverage is HR-side or labor-side. Here is the working creator read. What changed The current contract did not expire until June 30. SAG-AFTRA agreed to a fourth year to lock the AI rules in early. That means the line for AI in commercial filmmaking is now set through 2029-2030. What this means in the cutting room Working editors and post-production crews should read the actual deal language when it goes public. The 2023 rules covered "digital replicas." The 2026 rules build on that. We do not have the specifics yet. But the framing matters. A four-year horizon means the guardrails define the operating window. Productions in pre-production this fall will be the first ones inside the new rules. What I am watching - The Board votes in the coming days. That is when the language goes public. - The DGA talks on May 11. Directors hold the next AI rules card. - The first production to publicly run inside the new rules. The bigger picture Six months ago we were talking about whether AI would have rules in Hollywood. Now we are talking about which rules. That is progress. Working actors, editors, and crews now have a frame to plan against. Producers have a frame to budget against. Studios have a frame to commit to. The art is going to keep moving. The rules just told us where the lines are. Discussion What is the one specific question you want answered when the deal language goes public this week? Drop it below. Founding Members are getting the full multi-model routing playbook this week, including the new Alibaba HappyHorse-1.0 model that just took the #1 spot on the video Elo leaderboard. If you are routing shots between Veo, Kling, Runway, and Seedance, the playbook is the upgrade.

Just published today's AIography newsletter, and it's one of the densest weeks we've had. Canva shipped Canva AI 2.0 with what they're calling the world's first design foundation model and nine new capabilities. Google quietly opened Veo 3.1 to any Google account (10 free videos a month). Anthropic dropped Opus 4.7 the same morning. Runway's CEO went on stage at Semafor and pitched Hollywood on making 50 films with the $100M they currently spend on one blockbuster. And the WGA ratification vote opened today while SAG-AFTRA heads back to the table April 27. If it felt like everything happened at once today, that's because it did. The newsletter breaks down what actually matters from each announcement, what doesn't, and where Runway's 50-films math falls apart. Also calls out a real fact-check the writer team caught: Scene Extension isn't new this week, the free tier is. I write this twice a week because this space moves faster than any single person can track. My job is to translate what's noise and what's signal from inside the work, not from a press release. Free to read. Link in the comments. If you want the deeper workflows, tool breakdowns, and the "here's exactly how I'd set this up" walkthroughs, that's what Founding Members get. $29/month, locked for life, heading toward 50 members, then the price goes to $49. Which of today's announcements lands biggest for your work?

Hey Everyone, I've been under the weather. Well, that's an understatement. Some kind of stomach virus has had me completely knocked out. However, I saw the doc today, and I'm hoping it will be gone in the next few days. If things go as planned, next week, I'm doing the first of a 12-video series for founding members. We start from the beginning. Foundation models, what they are, what they mean, and where they actually fit into your AI filmmaking workflow. I'm excited about it, and I think you're going to like it. Talk soon, LJ

NAB 2026 was the week AI got serious about post-production. Eddie AI hands you a rough cut by morning; TwelveLabs lets you search footage by sentence; and Adobe/Blackmagic/Avid all rebuilt features around AI in the same 72 hours. Not the "what's the next awesome video generator" story. Tools you'll actually be using in your work very soon. Read here: https://aiography.beehiiv.com/p/nab-2026-ai-gets-serious-about-post-production What's the one move from this batch you're actually going to try? — LJ

Two NLEs rewrote their color strategy within 24 hours at NAB. Adobe's new Color Mode in Premiere dropped the same week as DaVinci Resolve 21's new Photo page. And for the first time we have ALL the numbers public on an AI-assisted studio feature: Doug Liman's $70M "Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi" wrapped with 55 AI artists in post, a 20-day physical shoot, and a production budget that would have been $300M traditional. Click this link for the full issue Question for the group: When you read "55 AI artists in 30 weeks of post," what's the first thing you want to know about that workflow that the press coverage isn't telling you?