The idea that studios want actors to relinquish their digital doubles forever in exchange for a few tanks of gas (and that's before taxes!) was just too deliciously infuriating not to retweet or Thread. The scenario transformed the studios into creative labor–devouring supervillains. Even if you hadn't previously cared much about the looming strike, suddenly you were angry--the studios wanted to get away with replacing human actors for free. And who knew how they'd use those digital doubles! If you've watched the recent episode of Black Mirror in which a streaming site rationalizes all kinds of twisted uses of Salma Hayek's digital double based on a legal agreement, it's not hard to imagine the whole thing truly going off the rails.

Getting digitally cloned was easier than Devin Finley expected it to be. The voice-over artist, who also works as a model and bar manager, entered a studio in Manhattan last spring and read a script from a teleprompter. Across the room, a man with a large camera working for Hour One, a Tel Aviv–based video agency specializing in providing clients with lifelike virtual humans, filmed Finley from the waist up. Over Zoom, a director offered instructions about how much to move his hands. He was done in less than an hour.