After Hollywood actors, video game actors are also on strike against artificial intelligence

The SAG-AFTRA union launched a movement Friday against several industry giants, demanding safeguards against AI using their voices or movements.

After fighting against American studios, the powerful actors’ union SAG-AFTRA is taking on the video game giants. It launched a strike on Friday, July 26, against several companies in this industry that turns over more than $100 billion per year. The cause is artificial intelligence (AI), as during the strikes that paralyzed Hollywood last year.

The demands of video game actors are similar to those made in 2023: they want to be able to have safeguards guaranteeing that the use of their voices or movements to feed the AI ​​is done with their consent, and against fair compensation.

Conducted with industry heavyweights such as Activision, Disney, Electronic Arts and Warner Bros Games, the negotiations involve around 2,600 artists who provide dubbing for video games, or whose movements are used to animate computer-generated characters.

Video game developers tend to consider actors “like data”Ray Rodriguez, who led the talks for the union, told AFP. “The fact that they see themselves as technology companies” causes in them a “reluctance to see the value of performance” artistic value they enjoy, he added Friday at Comic-Con in San Diego, California. However, “They get nuanced interpretations, informed by the psychology of the character and the circumstances”he recalled.

The industry giants have put an offer on the table but they are trying to exploit “faults” legal and technological, analyzes Sarah Elmaleh, president of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee. Because so-called generative artificial intelligence does not only allow you to copy an existing actor. It can also create new voices or new body movements, from recordings of several actors.