Video-game performers say they fear AI could reduce or eliminate job opportunities because the technology could be used to replicate one performance into a number of other movements without their consent.
Noshir Dalal attends a panel titled “Game Actors on Game Actors” at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 26, 2024. Photo: AP
That is a concern that led the US Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) to go on strike in late July.
“If motion-capture actors, video-game actors in general, only make whatever money they make that day … that can be a really slippery slope,” says Dalal, who portrayed Bode Akuna in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
“Instead of being like, ‘Hey, we’re going to bring you back’ … they’re just not going to bring me back at all and not tell me at all that they’re doing this. That’s why transparency and compensation are so important to us in AI protections.”
Hollywood’s video-game performers announced a work stoppage – their second in a decade – after more than 18 months of negotiations over a new interactive media agreement with game industry giants broke down over artificial intelligence protections.
Members of the union have said they are not anti-AI. The performers are worried, however, the technology could provide studios with a means to displace them.
Some actors argue that AI could strip less-experienced actors of the chance to land smaller background roles, such as non-player characters, where they typically cut their teeth before landing larger jobs.
Video game actors strike outside Warner Bros. Games in Burbank, California, US on August 1, 2024. Photo: AFP
The unchecked use of AI, performers say, could also lead to ethical issues if their voices or likenesses are used to create content that they do not morally agree with. That type of ethical dilemma has recently surfaced with game “mods”, in which fans alter and create new game content.
In 2023, voice actors spoke out against such mods in the role-playing game Skyrim, which used AI to generate actors’ performances and cloned their voices for pornographic content.
In video-game motion capture, actors wear special Lycra or neoprene suits with markers on them. In addition to more involved interactions, actors perform basic movements like walking, running or holding an object. Animators grab from those motion-capture recordings and chain them together to respond to what someone playing the game is doing.
“What AI is allowing game developers to do, or game studios to do, is generate a lot of those animations automatically from past recordings,” says Brian Smith, an assistant professor in the department of computer science at Columbia University, in New York.
“No longer do studios need to gather new recordings for every single game and every type of animation that they would like to create. They can also draw on their archive of past animation.”
If a studio has motion capture banked from a previous game and wants to create a new character, he says, animators could use those stored recordings as training data.
“With generative AI, you can generate new data based on that pattern of prior data,” he says.
The big issue is that someone, somewhere has this massive data, and I now have no control over itBen Prendergast, video game actor
A spokesperson for the video-game producers, Audrey Cooling, says the studios offered “meaningful” AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a “performer” is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.
“We have worked hard to deliver proposals with reasonable terms that protect the rights of performers while ensuring we can continue to use the most advanced technology to create a great gaming experience for fans,” Cooling says.
“We have proposed terms that provide consent and fair compensation for anyone employed under the [contract] if an AI reproduction or digital replica of their performance is used in games.”
The game companies offered wage increases, she said, with an initial 7 per cent increase in scale rates and an additional 7.64 per cent increase effective in November. That is an increase of 14.5 per cent over the life of the contract.
The studios had also agreed to increases in daily allowances, payment for overnight travel, and a boost in overtime rates and bonus payments, she adds.
“Our goal is to reach an agreement with the union that will end this strike,” Cooling says.
SAG-AFTRA member and video game actor Zachary Luna takes part in the SAG-AFTRA video game strike outside Warner Bros. Games on August 1, 2024. Photo: AP
Actor Ben Prendergast says that data points collected for motion capture do not pick up the “essence” of someone’s performance as an actor. The same is true, he says, of AI-generated voices that cannot deliver the nuanced choices that go into big scenes – or smaller, strenuous efforts like screaming for 20 seconds to portray a character’s death by fire.
“The big issue is that someone, somewhere has this massive data, and I now have no control over it,” says Prendergast, who voices Fuse in the game Apex Legends.
“Nefarious or otherwise, someone can pick up that data now and go, ‘We need a character that’s nine feet tall, that sounds like Ben Prendergast and can fight this battle scene.’ And I have no idea that that’s going on until the game comes out.”
