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.
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.
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:
and:
and:
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.