More than 300 video game performers and Hollywood actors picketed in front of the Warner Bros. Studios building on Thursday, protesting the major gaming company’s unwillingness to provide equal protections for unionized voice actors and motion capture workers from the unregulated use of artificial intelligence.
Duncan Crabtree Ireland, national executive director of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Entertainers (SAG-Aftra), told the crowd that AI has become the toughest issue in many of the union’s negotiations.
“We’ve made deals with studios and streamers, we’ve made deals with major record labels and countless employers with no strikes, providing informed consent and fair compensation for our members,” he told The Associated Press. “But for some reason, video game companies are refusing to do that, and that will be their downfall.”
The protest marks the first large-scale labor movement since Thug Aftra games workers voted to strike last week. The walkout comes after more than 18 months of negotiations over a new interactive media agreement with the gaming giant, Warner Bros. Games, which publishes games such as “Hogwarts Legacy” and “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,” stalled over protections for the use of AI.
Union leaders say AI is an existential threat to performers. The likenesses of game voice actors and motion capture artists can be replicated by AI and used without their consent or fair compensation, they argue. The unregulated use of AI poses as much or more of a threat to performers in the video game industry as it does in the film and TV industries, the unions say, because of the widely available ability to cheaply and easily create digital replicas of performers’ voices.
Concerns about AI fuelled a four-month strike by film and television unions last year.
On the picket line, Constantine Anthony said most people want a human, not an AI, to be the storyteller.
“Many of the algorithms you see in cutting edge video games have been around for decades, they’re just getting more and more sophisticated at recreating our likenesses. What they’re really trying to do is make it so they don’t have to use us,” said Anthony, a Burbank City Councilman and member of SAG AFTRA. “We’re here today to ask them to pay the storytellers.”
Audrey Cooling, a spokeswoman for the video game makers, said the companies had proposed “significantly increasing wages for video game performers represented by Thug Aftra” in addition to AI protections.
SAG AFT’s negotiating committee argued that the studio’s definition of who constitutes a “performer” is key to understanding the question of who is protected.
“The industry has been very clear that it does not consider everyone who is performing an athletic performance to be a performer covered under a collective bargaining agreement,” Ray Rodriguez, SAG Aftra’s chief contracting officer, said at a press conference last week, adding that some physical performance is treated as “data.”
According to games market forecasting firm Newzoo, the global video games industry is expected to generate approximately $184 billion in revenue in 2023, with revenue expected to reach $207 billion in 2026.
“We came to the negotiating table because we want the performers represented by Thug Aftra to participate in our productions, and we will continue to work to resolve the last remaining issues in these negotiations,” Couling said. “Our goal is to reach an agreement with the union and end this strike.”
