LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood actors on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a new, hard-fought deal with studios that paves the way for a recovery in the entertainment industry, where film and television production had ground to a halt during a months-long strike.

The Screen Actors Guild, known as SAG-AFTRA, said 78% of members who voted approved the multiyear deal.

“This is a golden age for SAG-AFTRA, and our union has never been more powerful,” union President Fran Drescher said in a statement.

The deal includes more than $1 billion in new compensation and benefits, as well as protections for actors from studios’ use of artificial intelligence, the union said.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Netflix Inc., Walt Disney and other studios, welcomed the ratification of the union contract.

“With this vote, the industry and the jobs it supports can return in full strength,” the AMPTP said in a statement.

The vote ended at 5:00 p.m. on the US West Coast (01:00 GMT), with a simple majority of members needed to finally seal the deal.

The union said 38% of its members voted.

The tentative deal between SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood studios to end the 118-day actors’ strike was agreed to last month, and actors had returned to work before the ratification vote.

The proposed contract included higher salaries, better bonuses for starring in hit shows or films, and the first protections against using artificial intelligence to replace human actors.

Two days later it was ratified by the union leadership, although not unanimously.

Union leaders have since held meetings and sent emails and social media posts to members urging them to approve the deal.

“Today is the day,” SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said before the voting results were released.

“This is a big $1 billion deal with a lot of really important wins in areas like AI, minimums and streaming money,” he said. “It’s a deal I’m really proud of.”

DEFECTS?

The outcome of the vote was uncertain, and as details of the agreement emerged in recent weeks, warnings about its shortcomings, particularly around AI, began circulating online.

The actors feared that they might soon be replaced by entirely synthetic “actors,” created by AI from the body parts of many different people, whose likenesses were scraped from film archives.

The agreement does not prevent studios from using generative AI, but does contain a clause requiring them to inform the union each time the technology is used.

SAG-AFTRA would then have the right to negotiate compensation on behalf of the actors involved — although critics say it would be difficult to identify them.

Actors also say that the enormous number of viewers a show or film must attract to trigger bonuses for its performers is too high for all but the top tier of successful shows.