AI Clash Stalls Labor Talks for Video Game Actors, Producers

Video game makers are in an entrenched standoff with organized labor over the spread of artificial intelligence, with an industry-wide strike entering its second month.

The issue at the center of the dispute—how to protect workers from AI—has touched scores of workplaces, from merchant marine terminals to Hollywood casting couches. But it’s a particular pain point in video game creation, an industry worth $228 billion and growing where workers at almost every level could find their jobs reordered or eliminated.

Gaming workers under SAG-AFTRA walked off the job July 26, criticizing employers for refusing to adopt similar protections that Hollywood studios conceded to when they reached a deal to end a 118-day strike last year. The union wants performers and voice actors in video games to have consent rights—and get paid—when their images and sound samples are used to generate AI creations.

Like their counterparts in TV and film, video game actors run the risk of having their own voices ripped off and repurposed without their consent. Scarlett Johansson confronted OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, earlier this year over an AI voice assistant she said sounded suspiciously like her, even though she had already denied OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s request to use her voice.

“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” Johansson said in a statement in May. Open AI pulled the voice from ChatGPT.

“Performers have the right to say, ‘If you’re going to use AI to digitally replicate me, you have to tell me specifically what you’re going to do with it, and I have the right to say yes or no,’” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director and chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA. “It’s really not fair for a performer to compete against a digital copy of themselves for a job.”

More Than Voices

Actors are increasingly employed on projects using motion capture technology, meaning movements are traced on camera and then morphed into animation. The concept has been around for decades; it was used to make the original “Mortal Kombat” in 1992 and became widely introduced to audiences through the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and James Cameron’s “Avatar” in the 2000s.

As the technology grew more sophisticated, it began to attract big-name actor such as Keanu Reeves, who starred in the 2020 game “Cyberpunk 2077.”

The debate over AI comes at a time of meteoric growth in video game earnings. The industry is forecast to rake in more than $300 billion a year by 2028—nearly double its revenue in 2019, according to a report from PwC.

SAG-AFTRA won actors consent rights to AI replication at the time of use, meaning studios can’t to use stock contract language at the outset to get actors to waive their future rights. The union also sought to guarantee actors would be paid same for AI use as if they had done the work in person.

Game developers so far have refused to agree to similar measures, Crabtree-Ireland said.

“We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations,” Audrey Cooling, a spokeswoman for the video game producers, said in a statement.

“These terms are among the strongest in the entertainment industry,” she said.

Rift in the Industry

It’s not just actors who are worried about AI. More gaming studios have woken up to the idea that AI could also generate scripts, write code, create facial features, textures, and natural features, said Julian Togelius, a computer science professor at New York University who researches AI in video games.

The new technology has created a rift in the industry, some of whom see AI as a threat and others who see it as an asset, Togelius said. The pressures in game development resemble a mix of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, with coders, writers, and designers taking on high-risk creative projects that resemble big-budget films.

Those on the Hollywood side tend to be more skeptical than the coders: “They are afraid of getting replaced,” Togelius said.

Gaming is one of many high-tech industries where workers have historically rejected unions, though that has started to change. Game Workers Unite, a group dedicated to organizing the gaming industry, was launched in 2018. The following year, workers at Riot Games, creator of the online battle game “League of Legends,” staged a walkout over the company’s handling of sexual assault allegations.

Microsoft has voluntary recognized more than 1,700 gaming workers, breaking from other big tech companies that have fought unions at every turn.

How the AI debate is resolved will depend on whether the industry—and society more broadly—comes to see the people behind the products, said Jerry Kaplan, a computer science lecturer at Stanford University who has written two books on AI. It remains to be seen whether they will be treated as artists with intellectual property, like photographers, or set builders with no creative rights, he said.

“It may impact their livelihood, that’s a very legitimate concern,” Kaplan said. “That’s why we need to adjudicate in detail, in every situation, whether the performer has the rights.”