Striking video game voice actors and motion-capture artists staged their first picket in front of Warner Bros Games on Thursday, saying artificial intelligence threatens their businesses.
“The models they’re using have been trained on our voices without our permission, without any remuneration for us,” Liana Albanese, a “Persona 5 Tactica” voice actor and video game strike captain, told Reuters at the site of the sit-in.
Video game voice actors and motion-capture artists called for a strike last week to protest failed labor contract negotiations focused on AI-related protections for workers.
It’s the latest strike in Hollywood since union writers and actors staged a sit-in last year, with artificial intelligence also a major concern.
British “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone” actor Jeff Leach said, “I think when you remove the human element from any interactive project, whether it’s a video game or a TV show, animated series, movie, and you put AI in place of the human element, we can tell! I’m a gamer, I’m a digester of this content.”
The decision to strike follows months of negotiations with major videogame companies, including Activision Productions, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Take-Two Interactive, Disney Character Voices and Warner Bros. Discovery’s WB Games.
However, analysts say major video game publishers, including Electronic Arts and Take-Two, would be spared major damage from the strike due to their in-house studios and long development cycles for games.
The strike has also brought a larger call to action in Hollywood, as those in the industry advocate for legislation that would protect them from AI risks as well.
“There’s no major national law to protect us, so the No Fake Act is basically a law designed to protect our identities, and protect our personhood at a national level rather than a state level,” Albanese said.
The bipartisan bill in Congress, the No Fakes Act, has received support from the SAG-AFTRA performers union, the Motion Picture Association, the Recording Academy, and Disney. The bill would make it illegal to create an artificial intelligence (AI) replica of a person’s voice or image without their permission.
From Grammy-winning artist Taylor Swift to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running in the 2024 presidential election, leaders in entertainment and beyond say AI-created deep fakes are an important policy matter.
“Everyone in this country needs protection from the misuse of AI,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator, told Reuters at the protest site.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
