Video game voice actors strike in protest against AI protections

Video game voice and motion capture artists have gone on strike for the second time in a decade.

After a year and a half of negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and major video game companies, including Activision, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive, some of the union’s members who work in video games began striking on Friday morning. In a statement on its website, SAG-AFTRA made it clear that protecting artificial intelligence is a “challenging issue.”

“We will not agree to a contract that allows companies to misuse AI to the detriment of our members,” union president Fran Drescher said in a statement. “Enough is enough. If these companies are serious about offering a contract that allows our members to live and work, we are ready to negotiate.”

In a statement to Polygon, Audrey Couling, a spokesperson for the game companies, argued that the AI ​​terms that SAG-AFTRA did not agree to are “among the most stringent in the entertainment industry.” Couling said the two sides have agreed to 24 of the 25 proposed contracts, with AI being the final nail in the coffin.

Details of the deal the two sides have been trying to reach over the past 18 months have not been made public, but the issue is familiar to anyone who has followed AI and the arts in recent years. Put simply, voice actors and motion-capture performers worry that without proper labor protections, video game companies will use their work to train AI models that could then replace their labor.

As The Washington Post points out, the use of AI could have a negative impact on young performers trying to break into the industry, who may find it harder to break into the industry if background and non-player character roles that are typically filled by these people are handed over to AI.

Notably, SAG-AFTRA struck a side deal with an AI company earlier this year, suggesting that so far the union is not inherently opposed to AI.

This isn’t the first time SAG-AFTRA game industry workers have gone on strike: in 2016, voice actors began a strike that lasted nearly a year. That strike was over “old” issues like bonuses, royalties, and worker safety, rather than rapidly evolving new technology, meaning it could theoretically be a while before the two sides reach an agreement.