SAG-AFTRA captains Iris Liu, left, and Miki Yamashita, center, and SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland lead a cheer for striking actors outside Paramount Pictures studio, Nov. 3, 2023, in Los Angeles. LOS ANGELES — For more than a year and a half, leaders of Hollywood's actors union have been negotiating with video game companies over a new contract that covers the performers who bring their titles to life.
In some cases, the role of an AI voice is often invisible and used to clean up a recording in the later stages of production or to make a character sound older or younger at a different stage of their virtual life. SAG-AFTRA members voted in favor of giving leadership the authority to strike against video game companies in September. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s strikes by the union, which lasted four months.
The bargaining group of top video game producers is willing to put protections in place for voice actors, SAG-AFTRA said, but won’t go as far as including other performers, including stunt workers and motion capture artists. Amid the tense negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a new, separate contract in February that covered indie and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry giants have rejected.