I've seen headlines about actors/actresses protesting about stuff. The same goes for other creative talent in the entertainment industry. What's going on there? What are their demands? What fueled these protests all of a sudden?
They're striking. Collective bargaining negotiations broke down with the studios ostensibly negotiating in bad faith. It started with the Writer's Guild, and then SAG jumped in after the studios basically told the WGA to go piss up a rope.
One of the issues that was reported on about the SAG (actor's union) strike was the studios trying to get actors to agree to be face scanned for CGI in exchangs for a one- time payment with no royalties or residuals and no other rights
To be fair there's product of your labor and then there's your labor is literally your likeness. We gotta get ahead of AI regulation cause oh man it's ripe for exploitation of likenesses
I believe it was a regularly scheduled contract negotiation (because the previous contract was about to expire), and no agreement was reached for the terms of the new contract.