Thousands of voice actors went on strike on Friday in protest of their voices and likenesses being used to create AI models without their consent.
Voice Actors Stopped Work
One of the most important ways a game’s characters come alive is through good acting and voice acting. Their iconic voice lines further popularize many titles’ main cast. However, what happens when there is no one to voice and play characters? The video game industry may soon have difficulties regarding this as on July 26, more than 2,500 video game performers, which include voice actors, motion capture performers, and others, announced a strike.
The reason for this is the seeming failure of a nearly two-year long negotiation effort with major video game companies regarding the potential use of AI in the production of games and various protections regarding the use of their likenesses and voices. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) interactive media committee chair and Hi-Fi Rush voice actor Sarah Elmaleh said in a news release recently that “eighteen months of negotiations have shown us that our employers are not interested in fair, reasonable A.I. protections, but rather flagrant exploitation.”
SAG-AFTRA has already negotiated with companies such as Activision, Electronic Arts, Insomniac Games, Take-Two Productions, and other big names in the video games industry. Interestingly, it seems that these companies are rather distraught at the employees, who are currently on strike, as negotiations were seemingly quite close to completion.
“We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations,” a statement on the matter by them reads. “We have already found common ground on 24 out of 25 proposals, including historic wage increases and additional safety provisions. Our offer is directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA’s concerns and extends meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA. These terms are among the strongest in the entertainment industry.”
What Happens Next?
While both sides seem disappointed in the current state of affairs, the performers and voice actors have a reason to be concerned about the security of their jobs. In the last couple of years, AI-generated models have become quite advanced so much so that, given enough time for development, they can imitate human speech to an uncannily good level.
It may be funny to see parodies of US presidents, or other celebrities, play games as if on a Discord call, there is a lot of potential danger lurking. Considering an AI model can now be relatively easily thought to speak like a particular human, without the latter’s consent, there’s the danger of AIs taking over a voice actor’s job. The area is still a somewhat gray legal zone so the video game’s performers’ concerns seem rather valid. In fact, they harken back to last year when Hollywood writers protested for better protections against AI tools.
And while that issue seems to not be at least partially resolved, the same cannot be said for the video game industry. SAG-AFTRA’s executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland has said that while video game companies are saying they’ll protect voiceover performers, nothing much has come out of this. Furthermore, other performers seem to be left by the wayside for now. “The bottom line is if you have performers working for you, helping create the content that’s in your game, whether it’s voice content, whether it’s stunt work, whether it’s motion work…”, Crabtree-Ireland said. “All of those performers deserve to have their right to have informed consent and fair compensation for the use of their image, their likeness or voice, their performance. It’s that simple.”
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