Video game voice actors represented by SAG-AFTRA — one of the largest actors’ unions in America — are on strike. After more than a year of negotiations with major Western publishers, including Activision Blizzard, EA, and Take Two, the talks have stalled over one of the more controversial points of the debate: AI.
AI has emerged as a groundbreaking technical development for the industry in voice acting. New AI software is able to train on existing performances and employ that pool of acting work to derive its own lines. For video game companies, this offers the possibility of having a quick and effortless solution for voice acting, but for actors themselves, it is an existential threat. One that not only uses their own copyrighted performances as building blocks, but also threatens their jobs.
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As for the studios that will be affected, here are the ones: Take Two (Grand Theft Auto 6), Activision (Call of Duty: Black Ops 6), Insomniac (Marvel’s Spider-Man 2), Electronic Arts (FIFA), and third-party voice acting studio Formosa Interactive. The extent of the impact on each company remains unclear, but the facts are that all union voice actors working with these companies will no longer be doing so until SAG-AFTRA says otherwise or a deal is reached.
Hopefully, the excellent voice actors will be able to strike a proper deal regarding the employ of AI in the coming months.
