TLDR: International animation, video game, screenwriter, and actors’ guilds united at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 12, 2025, to protest the pervasive use of generative AI. Unions assert that AI technology actively undermines artists’ careers and the integrity of creative industries, calling it a ‘copying machine’ that destroys rather than supports human talent.
A powerful coalition of international workers’ unions, representing animation, video game, screenwriter, and acting professionals, staged a significant protest on June 12, 2025, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and MIFA market. The demonstration, held at La Paquier lawn in front of the Bonlieu, aimed to raise urgent alarms about the escalating dangers of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the audiovisual arts and entertainment sectors.
Approximately 150 individuals participated in the protest, carrying signs and guild flags, underscoring a unified stance against AI’s perceived destructive impact on creative livelihoods. The coalition includes prominent unions such as The Animation Guild (U.S./Canada), La Guilde Francaise de Scenarists, SNTPCT, FIM (France), CSVI (Spain), AWI (Ireland), ABRACA (Belgium), Kunstenbond (Netherlands), BECTU (U.K.), GWUI (Game Workers United Ireland), and SPIAC-CGT (France).
Central to their message is the assertion that ‘Generative AI does not support artists, it destroys them.’ A joint statement, signed by over 20 creative professional organizations, was read aloud by Lauri Sanders, a Belgium-based director and artist who heads the AI task force for ABRACA. The statement emphasized that generative AI is ‘neither a tool, nor effective, nor cheap. It is a copying machine that is flawed, destructive and expensive to run.’ Unions argue that this technology builds upon copyrighted works and human cultural values, posing an immediate threat to creative innovation by replacing human diversity with biases inherent in AI’s training data.
U.K. animator Howard Wimshurst further articulated the unions’ concerns, stating, ‘The technology is a vehicle for exploitation. It’s a vehicle to extract data that people have worked their entire lives to create, they put everything into that data.’ He stressed that AI ‘actively pushes creatives out of their respective industries,’ leading to an ‘inevitable loss of knowledge and talent that will never be recuperated fully,’ and directly contributing to the ‘privatization of all art process and thinking.’
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The protest occurred amidst a festival that, ironically, featured numerous panels and roundtables discussing the role of AI in the industry, and even screened several shorts created via AI, highlighting the ongoing tension and debate surrounding the technology’s integration into creative fields. The unions maintain that the ‘absence of humans is a feature, not a bug, of AI art,’ and that generative AI promises ‘only the loss of employment and livelihood for the millions of people worldwide that work at keeping the world connected through their art.’
