(Los Angeles) Actors who provide voice and movement to many video games in California will go on strike to demand safeguards on artificial intelligence (AI), the American actors’ union (SAG-AFTRA) announced Thursday.
The strike is scheduled to begin Friday at 12:01 a.m. Los Angeles time, according to a statement from the organization.
It comes after more than a year and a half of fruitless negotiations between the union and several major video game players, including Activision, Disney, Electronic Arts and Warner Bros. Games.
PHOTO FREDERIC J. BROWN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Last week, several hundred Disneyland employees demonstrated outside the Anaheim theme park in the Los Angeles suburbs.
“We will not accept a collective agreement that allows companies to abuse AI to the detriment of our members. Enough is enough,” denounced the president of SAG-AFTRA and former star of the series A Nanny from HellFran Drescher.
“When these companies seriously consider offering a deal that our members can live in – and work in – we will be there, ready to negotiate.”
The renewal of this agreement concerns approximately 2,600 artists who provide dubbing for video games, or whose movements are used to animate computer-generated characters.
They are concerned about the use of AI in the industry, because this technology now makes it possible to reproduce the voice of an actor or create a digital replica of a stuntman, without their consent or without fair compensation.
In the same way as for American actors, who won their case against the studios after a historic strike which largely paralyzed Hollywood last year, SAG-AFTRA is therefore demanding guarantees from the video game industry.
“It’s astonishing that these video game studios have learned nothing from the lessons of the past year,” said the union’s chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.
Faced with the stalled negotiations, video game industry artists authorized the union to call a strike last September. The collective agreement that governs their working conditions expired in November 2022.
“We are disappointed that the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to an agreement, and we remain ready to resume negotiations,” Audrey Cooling, a spokeswoman for the video game producers, said in a statement.
According to her, the employers’ offer includes “historic wage increases” and “significant protections” in terms of artificial intelligence, including “the obligation of consent and fair compensation” for artists.