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.

Our Agent Listing now has 756 entries include 2 new sections for OpenClaw & Hermes! https://moshehbenavraham.github.io/Ultimate-Agent-Directory/ Our Boiler Plate Listing now has 131 entries covering 9 ecosystems! https://moshehbenavraham.github.io/Ultimate-Agent-Directory/boilerplates/index.html And the repo that builds it all has some cleanup, fixes, and updates posted! https://github.com/moshehbenavraham/Ultimate-Agent-Directory Show your love by STARring the REPO & sharing with your network! The repo can be used to create your own customized directories/listings!! Completely free and open source!

Six new deep dives just dropped in the Founding Members tier over the past two weeks. If you blinked, you missed a small library. Here's the what's waiting for you: 📌 Open Source AI Video Models: The Real Comparison Wan, HunyuanVideo, CogVideoX, LTX. Who actually wins when you stop reading press releases and start rendering. 📌 AI Script Coverage: What Hollywood Is Actually Doing (and What It Gets Wrong) Studios are already using AI to read scripts. The results are... instructive. 📌 Claude Inside DaVinci Resolve: An AI Agent in Your NLE Someone connected Claude directly to Resolve's scripting API. It talks to your live timeline. I have thoughts. (Made a little YT Short about this one) 📌 The WGA's AI Training Ban: What It Actually Means For Your Workflow Not what the headlines say. I read the deal so you don't have to. 📌 Morphic Workflows: What "Encode Once, Run a Hundred Times" Actually Looks Like A new tool that might change how you think about rendering pipelines. Might. 📌 OpenMontage: Turn Your AI Coding Assistant Into a Video Production Studio The open source project that turns Claude Code into an editing workflow. Full breakdown. That's what Founding Members get. Real workflows, real tools, no hype. And we're only starting to get rolling. Seriously, don't miss out on this: $29/month, locked for life — but only a few spots left. After that, it goes to $49/month or $490/year. Just saying. Support our free content by following us on social media: LinkedIn Twitter/X Instagram Facebook TikTok

State Media Just Deployed AI Animation as Geopolitical Messaging. Chinese state media CCTV released "The Eagle vs. The Persian Cat" this week — an AI-animated political allegory using animal characters to comment on Gulf tensions. Eagle = USA, Persian cat = Iran. Full AI animation pipeline. Set aside the politics for a second. Watch the craft: - Character design that carries emotional weight — anthropomorphized animals with clear personality - Narrative economy — tells a complex geopolitical story in under 3 minutes - Production polish — lighting, composition, camera movement that rival traditional animation - Emotional manipulation — you know exactly who you're supposed to root for (regardless of whether you agree) This is what happens when AI video generation stops being a creator toy and becomes a communication tool for institutions. Government propaganda offices are now using the same AI animation pipelines indie filmmakers are learning on YouTube tutorials. That's both impressive and unsettling — which is exactly why it's this week's Video of the Week in the newsletter. Questions for the community: 1. When state media can produce AI animation this polished, what does that mean for independent filmmakers competing for attention? 2. Does the source of an AI film (state media vs. indie creator) change how you evaluate the craft? 3. If you were teaching AI filmmaking ethics, would you show this as a case study? Why or why not? Watch it here: The Eagle vs. The Persian Cat on YouTube Founding Members: Head to the FM section for this week's deep-dive workshop on Adobe's new multi-model video editor — five AI video engines (Pika, Sora, Luma, Veo, Firefly) in one workspace. Link: skool.com/aiography/classroom

This morning, the American Cinema Editors, the organization behind the Eddie Awards, representing the top editors in film and television, featured AIography in their official newsletter. We're sitting alongside coverage of the Eddie Awards, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and Spike Lee's editor. That's the company we're keeping. If you're new here from ACE, welcome. Introduce yourself and tell us what you're working on. This community is for you. If you've been here a while and haven't joined the Founding Members tier yet, this is the signal. The professional editing community is paying attention. Be in the room where it happens. Go to the classroom and click on the link to join. — Larry