The Hollywood Reporter says that Tom Cruise, who plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible, led SAG-AFTRA members’ talks with big film and TV studios.

Actors in Hollywood are worried that they will be replaced by copies of themselves made by artificial intelligence.

Cruise was brought in to talk to the studios about this problem, and during a negotiating session in June, he also said he was in favor of stunt performers. SAG-AFTRA has 160,000 members, and Hollywood stuntmen are among them.

During talks with studios and streaming services, SAG-AFTRA put forward a number of ideas about how generative AI could be used in the entertainment business.

The union wanted to develop stricter rules to ensure that artists give their permission and are paid fairly when their work is used in this technology.

During the talks before the strike, Cruise also asked SAG-AFTRA to let actors sell their movies. He did this to show how the Covid-19 pandemic was hurting theaters.

Under the current strike rules, actors can’t promote movies that big studios back. This means that Cruise can’t promote his latest movie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, which is currently playing in theaters around the world.

Even though Tom Cruise was involved in the talks, the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) couldn’t come to a deal.

This led actors to join the writers on the picket line on Friday, stopping or delaying many projects, including Mission: Impossible 8.