Disney Shareholders to Vote On AI Transparency Report Proposal Amid Unions’ Push

Alex Weprin
·2 min read
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The Walt Disney Co. won’t just have a potential proxy fight at its next annual meeting: Artificial intelligence will also be on the shareholder ballot.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has determined that Disney — as well as Apple — will need to include shareholder proposals from the AFL-CIO Equity Index Funds that seek to provide transparency about how the companies are using artificial intelligence.

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The AFL-CIO proposal requests that Disney “prepare and publicly disclose on the Company’s website a transparency report that explains the Company’s use of Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) in its business operations and the Board’s role in overseeing AI usage, and sets forth any ethical guidelines that the company has adopted regarding its use of AI.”

Similarly, the Apple letter requested a report “on the company’s use of Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) in its business operations and disclose any ethical guidelines that the company has adopted regarding the company’s use of AI technology.”

Both companies had sought to exclude the proposals from their annual proxy statements, arguing that it concerns their ordinary operations. The SEC disagreed, telling Disney that “in our view, the Proposal transcends ordinary business matters and does not seek to micromanage the Company,” and telling Apple substantially the same thing.

The SEC decision means that the proposals will be added to Disney and Apple’s upcoming proxy statements, and that shareholders will be able to vote on whether they want a report on AI.

The AFL-CIO — which counts the WGA East, Actor’s Equity, Communications Workers of America, and the American Federation of Musicians among its affiliated unions — initially announced its proposal in October, arguing that “the AI dehumanization of the American workforce threatens the very framework of the nation’s economy and endangers the existence of the already dwindling middle class.”

The union said it was also seeking to get AI proposals on the proxy statements of Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, and Netflix. It is not clear if those companies had opposed the inclusion of the proposal.

AI has been among the most hot-button labor issues in Hollywood, and was a focal point of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes last year.

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