Striking U.S. video game actors say AI threatens their jobs

By Danielle Broadway

BURBANK, California (Reuters) – Striking video game voice actors and motion-capture performers held their first picket on Thursday in front of Warner Bros. Games and said artificial intelligence was a threat to their professions.

“The models that they’re using have been trained on our voices without our consent at all, with no compensation,” “Persona 5 Tactica” voice actor and video game strike captain, Leeanna Albanese, told Reuters on the picket line.

Video game voice actors and motion-capture performers called a strike last week over failed labor contract negotiations focused on AI-related protections for workers.

This marks the latest strike in Hollywood after union writers and actors marched on the picket lines last year with AI also being a major concern.

I think when you remove the human element from any interactive project, whether it be a video game or TV show, an animated series, a movie, and you put AI in replacement for the human element, we can tell! I’m a gamer, I’m a digester of this content,” British “Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare & Warzone” actor Jeff Leach said.

The decision to strike follows months of negotiations with major videogame companies including Activision Productions, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Take-Two Interactive, Disney Character Voices and Warner Bros Discovery’s WB Games.

However, major video game publishers including Electronic Arts and Take-Two will likely stave off a big hit from the strike due to their in-house studios and the lengthy development cycles for games, analysts have said.

The strike also brings with it a larger call to action across Hollywood as people in the industry advocate for a law that can protect them from AI risks as well.

“There’s not a larger national law to protect us, so the NO FAKES Act is basically legislation with the goal of protecting our identities, protecting our personhood on a national scale as opposed to on a state level,” Albanese said.

The NO FAKES Act, a bipartisan bill in Congress which would make it illegal to make an AI replica of someone’s likeness and voice without their permission, has gained support from the SAG-AFTRA performers union, the Motion Picture Association, The Recording Academy and Disney.

From Grammy-winning artist Taylor Swift to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running in the 2024 presidential election, leaders in entertainment and beyond say deep fakes created from AI are a pressing policy matter.

“Everybody in this country needs protection from the abusive use of AI,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director and chief negotiator of SAG-AFTRA told Reuters at the picket line.

(Reporting by Danielle Broadway, Rollo Ross and Zaheer Kachwala; Editing by Mary Milliken and Stephen Coates)