Sun, Jul 28, 2024 page12

• Actors on strike again, this time against gaming giants

  While SAG-AFTRA is again tackling the issue of artificial intelligence, the nature of video game actors’ jobs poses unique challenges for the union

  • By Andrew Marszal / AFP, SAN DIEGO, California
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  Artificial intelligence (AI) was key to last year’s Hollywood strikes, and it has sparked a second walkout by those actors who work in a far larger industry, at the heart of advancing technology — video games.

  The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) on Friday began its second strike in nine months, this time against gaming giants that dominate an industry that grosses well more than US$100 billion each year.

  While many demands are the same — consent and compensation for actors, whose voices and movements are used by AI to build game characters — the latest talks are posing unique challenges, union negotiators said.

  

  From left, actress Shannon Woodward, writer and actress Ashly Burch, voice actor Noshir Dalal, and voice actor Sarah Elmaleh, who is chair of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists negotiating committee, attend a panel titled “Game Actors on Game Actors” during Comic-Con International in San Diego, California, on Friday, the same day Hollywood’s video game performers went on strike

  Photo: AP

  Technology firms, by their nature, tend to view actors simply “as data,” said SAG-AFTRA chief contracts officer Ray Rodriguez, lead negotiator for the video game contract.

  “They’re getting performances that are nuanced, that are informed by the psychology of the character and the circumstance,” he said. “That’s what makes it compelling.”

  Yet “the fact that they see themselves as technology companies” is directly connected to “their unwillingness to perceive the performance value,” Rodriguez said.

  The work stoppage began immediately after midnight on Friday.

  The struck deal concerns about 2,600 artists who provide voice dubbing services for video games or whose physical movements are recorded to animate computer-generated characters.

  The strike followed more than a year and a half of fruitless negotiations between the union and the likes of Activision Publishing Inc, the Walt Disney Co, Electronic Arts Inc and Warner Bros Games.

  Talks have been sporadic, as video game companies have not appointed dedicated full-time negotiators, and are “absolutely obsessed with secrecy,” Rodriguez said.

  There are other complicating factors.

  Video game characters often fuse multiple human performers — for example, one person might voice a hero whose movements are motion-captured by another actor.

  It is “a really joyful, cool” way to collaborate, said Sarah Elmaleh, chair of SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee.

  However, video game companies have tried to exploit that ambiguity to create “loopholes” in their counteroffers, she said.

  This is because video game companies can use AI not just to replicate a specific actor, but to create “new” voices or body movements from a composite of human performers.

  Such use of generative AI can make it far harder for actors to trace their work, and therefore to deny consent or get paid.

  “There are a lot of ways that you could try to be evasive around this,” Elmaleh said at this week’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, California.

  Picket lines outside iconic Hollywood studios, often attended by A-list stars, helped draw attention to last summer’s strikes.

  The video game walkout might call for a more “surprising and diverse” approach, Elmaleh said.

  Strike strategies could focus on “streamers and the online arena, as well as the in-person arena,” she said without elaborating.

  For video game voice actors such as Lindsay Rousseau, any industrial action cannot come soon enough, as AI rapidly encroaches on her job.

  “I do ancillary characters, those NPCs [non-player characters] that give you side quests, characters that you fight and die, a lot of creature voices,” she said. “That’s the first work that’s going to go away.”

  Without AI protections, only a few famous voice actors at the top of the video game industry would make a living, while those starting out or scraping by would be left behind, Rousseau said.

  For vulnerable actors, still reeling from the impact of the Hollywood strikes, the idea of more time out of work is challenging.

  However, “the way that strike went last year really demonstrated to us that we are right about the issue,” Rodriguez said. “It did not make us reluctant to go into another fight about AI. In fact, it underscored the righteousness of fighting this fight, and the need to fight it now.”
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