Hollywood’s video game actors want to avoid a strike. The sticking point in their talks? AI

LOS ANGELES | For more than a year and a half, leaders of the Hollywood actors union have been negotiating with video game companies over a new contract that would cover the actors who bring their titles to life.

But while negotiators for the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have made progress in negotiating wages and job security in their video game contract and interactive media agreement, union leaders say talks have stalled on a key issue: protections for the use of artificial intelligence.

“That is the biggest obstacle to agreement, and that has been this contract area for quite some time,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, executive director of SAG-AFTRA. “The fundamental problem right now is the unwillingness of this bargaining group to provide all of our members with an equal level of protection from the dangers of AI.”

Union leaders say they are not “blanket anti-AI.” But voice actors and other video game performers fear that unchecked use of AI could provide a way for game makers to displace them – by training an AI to imitate an actor’s voice or create a digital copy of their likeness without their consent.

In some cases, the role of an AI voice is often invisible and is used to clean up a recording in the later stages of production or to make a character sound older or younger at a different stage of their virtual life.

“Our concern is that all this work is being used as fodder for the mills that are displacing us,” said Sarah Elmaleh, chair of the interactive negotiating committee. “You don’t have to call us back, you don’t have to be informed about what they have created with your material.”

The union has kept one last option open in its fight for a collective agreement: a strike. Crabtree-Ireland said the union hopes to avoid a work stoppage but will “do whatever is necessary to ensure our members are treated fairly.”

“Anyone who thinks we are afraid of a strike or that we will not strike has obviously not been paying attention,” he added.

SAG-AFTRA members voted to give union leadership the authority to strike against video game companies in September. Concerns about movie studios’ use of AI contributed to the union’s strikes last year, which lasted four months.

Scott Lambright, an actor who has voiced monsters and non-player characters for games, said artificial intelligence could threaten jobs by making it cheaper to use a generated voice while reducing the quality of vocal performance as an art.

“Emotionally, it will be superficial,” he said.

AI could also deprive some actors of the opportunity to land smaller supporting roles, such as NPCs, where they can hone their craft before landing bigger roles, Lambright says.

“Having those roles gives you the confidence to take on a bigger role,” he said. “And if you don’t have access to NPC roles and can only tell a small part of a story, then you don’t have the confidence to direct something.”

The last interactive contract, negotiated in 2017, did not offer protections related to AI. The agreement covers more than 2,500 “off-camera performers (voiceover), on-camera performers (motion capture, stunt), stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers and extras,” according to the union.

SAG-AFTRA, the collective bargaining group representing major video game producers, said it was willing to introduce protections for voice actors, but would not go so far as to include other performers such as stunt workers and motion capture artists.

The video game companies covered by the interactive agreement include Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc. and WB Games Inc.

Audrey Cooling, a spokeswoman for the companies, said they were negotiating in good faith and had made “tremendous progress.”

“We have reached tentative agreements on the vast majority of proposals and remain optimistic that we can reach agreement soon,” Cooling said in an emailed statement.

Amid tense negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a new, separate contract in February covering indie and low-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget, independent interactive media contract includes some of the AI ​​protections that the video game industry giants have rejected.

In January, the union also announced a side deal with AI voice company Replica Studios. The agreement, which SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher called “a great example of AI done right,” allows major studios to work with unionized actors to create and license a digital replica of their voice. It sets out terms that also allow performers to opt out of the permanent use of their voices.

Contract protection is important for an agency of this type, says Tim Friedlander, president of the National Association of Voice Actors.

There is currently no technology to monitor what happens to actors’ audio files, he said – it’s unclear whether decades of recordings have already been used to train AI models. Actors, he said, essentially send their audio files to the person who recorded them and trust that person to ensure those recordings “are safe.”

Uncontrolled AI can raise ethical questions, especially when it involves a so-called “synthetic voice” that generates voice output that the original actor may not morally agree with.

“If my voice is out there … and I do something I wouldn’t say, then I may be in conflict with myself. Now I’m losing work to my own voice,” Friedlander said.

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