Video game performers will go on strike over artificial intelligence concerns
Video game performers will go on strike over artificial intelligence concerns
Hollywood’s video game performers are going on strike, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.
Hollywood’s video game performers voted to go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.
The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.
SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the studios will not make a deal over the regulation of generative AI. Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.
I fully support them, but it is a sad irony that the dystopian cyberpunk stories they told are starting to come true, and they are probably the protagonists.
What would JC Denton do?
Apparently he would do all three of becoming a cybernetic dictator ruler of the illuminati, while also plunging humanity into a dark age without technology, but also connect them all to one consciousness.
I mean, we’ve all been there
What a shame.
Industry executives have one fatal weakness, the GEP gun
He would go to Wan Chai market and get drunk on forty and wine.
We need humans in the economy, and art is our soul. I don’t want to see our artists replaced by robots.
It's a process that's been going on for a long time. It used to be that if you wanted to listen to music you needed a human artist to physically play it for you, but recordings have been normalized for so long that nobody gives it a second thought.
Heck, this is computer games we're talking about. Much of the performance is inherently "robotic" on some level already.
I wonder how AI Bros will defend Hollywood in this instance.
What makes you think they would? I might be considered that by some and I don't want AI used in place of real actors because human actors bring something unique to their performances an AI never could. If the actor agrees to allow an AI mimic due to scheduling problems for ADR or whatever, they should get paid every cent they would've been if they'd recorded it themselves.
Maybe I'm not AI Bro enough to be on the wrong side of this.
There are many types of AI Bros. They can be researchers who like to explore and develop the potential of AI, others who like to see AI-related research and like to explain how AI works to people who are not into the subject. Finally, there are those who say you can make money with a few steps or by doing nothing.
Wouldn't this just make them invest more heavily in AI so this can't happen a second time?
Well, this strike only affects the video game industry in the United States. The video game industries in other countries are still going and can use AI in development, we just have to see how this plays out in the future.
For example, in the future, if American actors decide to participate in Chinese or Indian video games and they use AI, they will have to accept the terms that the developer wants in their project or let someone else take their role.
Yup. It'll also be handy knowing that you'll never have an AI actor get "cancelled" for whatever random reason might come along.
They deserve the best deals and pay, but I do hope ai is implemented in gaming. Massive RPGs would benefit so much from ai generated convos with NPCs and using ai to help make combat and encounters better. You can't have a voice actor in a studio delivering unlimited dialogue anyways, so it's not like putting ai in there to do that is a bad idea imo
I have my doubts - happy to be proved wrong - that regardless of how good AI is at speaking AI will ever be good at acting.
Ugh. I get ai is bad but what about the small indie developers who are just using it to make modeling references instead of paying for modeling references? The prices of a lot of that stuff are absolutely criminal. What about using it to generate model textures instead of buying overpriced bloatware from the unity store that's probably stolen anyway? Surely there is at least some acceptable use case for ai. Fuck large corporations and everything they've done to destroy the economy and the job market, don't get me wrong. Absolutely fuck them.
It's not like indie devs can afford to pay for Hollywood actors. If this is to become a conflict of "professional actors vs small developers" then shit. This is a shitty conflict with no clear winner at best. For now these strikes may not effect indie developers but a future Clarence Thomas Signature Shitpost (TM) of a supreme court decision sure will.
What about using it to generate model textures instead of buying overpriced bloatware from the unity store that's probably stolen anyway?
They should probably either learn to texture, use free public domain textures, purchase some ready made texture packs from an artist, or pay a texture artist who doesn't deserve to be out of a job because of a techbro plagiarism machine.
Generative AI is some seriously cool tech but the fact that it's built off of plagiarised content and that it's being used to undercut workers is not a vibe.
It's over for artists of all types saddly
Main voices and significant side characters of the story, I agree. But for some random NPCs that just add to the ambience of the environment, I think A.I can fill those roles. It just would be too cost prohibitive to hire actors for every single character voice. The developers would just not do it or they just repeat the same dialogue over and over again and that gets monotonous.
I say this as a writer who also used to work in videogames.
Aren’t those minor roles exactly how people get their start in voice acting and start building up their resumes? Actors have to have a place to get their start, too.
I'm not talking about what is currently available. I'm talking about the future in gaming. Worlds are growing. You can't have like 5,000 unique actors in a game world... nor dialogue being written for all of them. The amount of dialogue writers would have to come up with is astronomical.
There will be games where you'll go to full restaurant and walk around various tables where they're will be dialogue that means nothing to the story but adds to the environment. Or just random people walking down the street.
Then there will be times where a small side character you approach will give you a side mission... those are the ones you'll want live actors for.
Game companies will lose money if they had to pay everyone for what the future holds.
Or the alternative would be... They just wouldn't do it. Same amount of jobs are created. Probably fewer jobs as you wouldn't need to test as much.
Next up writers being replaced by AI, because all that side content is just tedious and expensive to write for being just random stuff.
Good luck with that stance then.
I agree. That will also need to happen. It's impossible for writers to write what will be needed in the future of gaming.
Imagine something like GTA where you are able to enter any building and any room within it and there will be NPCs in most of them. How are you going to write for all of that, never mind act?
Decades ago, Hand drawn animators go on strike because computers make it faster and require less skill.
Decades ago, Hand drawn animators go on strike
Decades hence, you will still messed up tense in your writing.
Timeline, headline.
Correct.
I prefer hand drawn animations over 3d/2d generated slop any day.