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.
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.