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.

  • FaceDeer
    -7•5 months ago

    I wrote:

    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.

    Yes, this is exactly what we’re talking about.

    • EleventhHour
      6•5 months ago

      Thank you for confirming my previous comments

      • @[email protected]English
        -3•5 months ago

        This is how generations have been, they usually don’t accept new things, be it culture, technology or fashion, because it breaks their routine. AI is not going to disappear, because it is a technology as old as computing, the closest thing is that an AI winter will come (it has happened several times to a greater or lesser extent).

        But this only affects the US, because in other countries it remains the same without strikes, and I think this will encourage more subcontracting in countries like India, China, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, because they are cheaper. Unless the government starts giving subsidies or updates the Berne Convention.

    • @RedAggroBest
      5•5 months ago

      Even recorded music had an artist behind it.

      Art is self-expression.

      AI has no self to express so trying to pass off anything it does as art on par with an artist is an insult to all of humanity.

      • FaceDeer
        0•5 months ago

        Even recorded music had an artist behind it.

        And yet, as I linked above, there was a hue and cry back when it first came out about how it didn’t have an artist behind it. A quote from one of the anti-recorded-music advertisements at the time:

        Tho’ the Robot can make no music of himself, he can and does arrest the efforts of those who can.

        and:

        300 musicians in Hollywood supply all the “music” offered in thousands of theatres. Can such a tiny reservoir of talent nurture artistic progress?

        and:

        We think the public will tire of mechanical music and will want the real thing.

        It all sounds extremely familiar now. I expect this too shall pass, and a few years from now AI-generated music will be just a routine thing.

        AI-generated voice over is already pretty common on Youtube already, to link more directly to the subject of this particular thread.

        • @RedAggroBest
          3•5 months ago

          You’re missing my point intentionally, you have to be. The song was still written and performed by a PERSON somewhere before the recording is distributed.

          An AI is not a person. It’s not even close to comparable.

          • FaceDeer
            -2•5 months ago

            I’m not missing your point. I’m just talking about something other than that specific point you’re making. I’m not talking about what specific involvement humans had in any of this. I know that a recording of a human playing an instrument is a recording of a human playing an instrument whereas an AI-generated piece of music was not played by a human.

            I’m just describing what people at the time were saying. People at the time were decrying the soulless nature of “canned music”, complaining about how it was going to destroy creativity and jobs and all that. And then it didn’t, life moved on, and nobody complains about “canned music” any more. It was just their opinion and opinions changed under the weight of pragmatism.

            I expect it’ll be the same with AI-generated stuff. Whether AI is a person, whether a human played it originally or not, that’s not going to matter. This is a question of popular opinion.

            • @pum
              4•5 months ago

              The complains about Recordings and AI aren’t the same thing, why bother discussing it here? You’re comparing two different situations.

              Recordings didn’t destroy creativity and jobs, because recordings are recordings. Not AI.

              • FaceDeer
                0•5 months ago

                If you go back up the thread a bit, you’ll find that I started talking about recordings long before you or RedAggroBest came into it. You are the one who’s trying to compare things to the subject that was not being talked about.

                And recordings certainly did destroy jobs. Did you not know that theatres had live performers playing music for shows?

                • @pum
                  3•5 months ago

                  I am here because of your reply to the parent comment.

                  What im trying to say is, a recording is a mean to capture or create art, which is being done by tools humans use. It can be a creative process, like photography. There are jobs surrounding this field.

                  Live performings are still in the game and still generates a lot of money, its not destroyed. Its just that people have more options to choose from nowadays.

                  Meanwhile AI is the new possible “human” that can replace the many of us and conflict with our creativity/art. While recordings cant create things by itself, AI can. Theres the difference.

                  So you are discussing a topic that doesn’t really correspond to what we are talking about, while thinking its the same situation…

                  • FaceDeer
                    0•5 months ago

                    I was talking about how music recordings used to be perceived. You came in and responded by talking about something unrelated, and then got upset at me because what I was talking about wasn’t what you were talking about.

                    All of that stuff you just said right now is irrelevant to the things I was talking about. I know that a recording is meant to capture art that a human made. What does that have to do with how they were perceived back in the 1930s?

                    I’m fine with changing topics, but I’m not so fine with being berated for not having been talking about the thing you wanted to talk about in the first place.