Video Game Voice Actors May Strike Over AI (morningstar.com) 82
"Hollywood is bracing for another actors strike, this time against the videogame industry," according to MarketWatch:
"We're currently in bargaining with all the major game studios, and the major sticking point is AI," SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said Thursday. "Actors at all levels are at risk of digital replication. We have strike authorization on that contract and it is, at this point — we could end up going on strike...."
The union, which navigated its way to a new film and TV contract after a 118-day strike against the Hollywood studios last year, is again focusing on regulating artificial intelligence and its impact on wages and jobs. "It will be a recurring issue with each successive contract" every three years, Crabtree-Ireland said.
Some studios are already using AI-generated voices to save money, the article points out. "Actors and actresses should be very much afraid," Chris Mattmann, an adjunct research professor at the University of Southern California's Computer Science Department, says in the article. "Within three seconds, gen AI can effectively clone a voice."
The strike could affect Microsoft's Activision Publishing and Disney, as well as other major game publishers including Electronic Arts, Epic Games, and Warner Bros.
The union, which navigated its way to a new film and TV contract after a 118-day strike against the Hollywood studios last year, is again focusing on regulating artificial intelligence and its impact on wages and jobs. "It will be a recurring issue with each successive contract" every three years, Crabtree-Ireland said.
Some studios are already using AI-generated voices to save money, the article points out. "Actors and actresses should be very much afraid," Chris Mattmann, an adjunct research professor at the University of Southern California's Computer Science Department, says in the article. "Within three seconds, gen AI can effectively clone a voice."
The strike could affect Microsoft's Activision Publishing and Disney, as well as other major game publishers including Electronic Arts, Epic Games, and Warner Bros.
Cheaper entertainment (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re: Cheaper entertainment (Score:2)
Just wait until they start demanding pay per play royalties for residuals. Think the idea of not owning your games anymore is bad? Now it's going to be a contractual requirement, and the development studio doesn't have a choice. Fuck Hollywood for coming up with rent seeking bullshit like residuals.
Curious...I've heard somebody do a really good impression of Morgan Freeman to the point that if you didn't know who it was, you wouldn't know the difference. If somebody did that just well enough that they could
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could they get sued for copyright infringement?
If they are passing it off as Morgan Freeman, yes, since it isn't Morgan Freeman. What they could do is say it is Bob Smith portraying Morgan Freeman's voice.
That's why you don't see any other bands out there called Queen or AC/DC. Even though they play the exact same songs in the exact same manner, they call themselves something else.
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That's what I mean though. The name would obviously be a trademark, and the song a copyright. But these guys are claiming ownership of a voice...what does that even fall under? A voice isn't a static thing. You can record it and play it back, and that recording could have a copyright. But people mimic other people's voices all the time, and have always done that, and have never had to do so much as an attribution.
As a software developer, if I make a game and create a synthetic voice within it that sounds ju
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But these guys are claiming ownership of a voice...what does that even fall under?
That I can't answer. It could be copyright, it could be something else (most likely something else). Whatever a person's likeness falls under is what their voice would fall under. For Paul Newman, he lists his likeness and voice under IP rights [will-laws.com].
It's also why Paul Newman put a clause in his will explicitly stating his likeness could never be recreated or reanimated by any technology known now or in the futureanywhere in the u [abajournal.com]
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Re: Cheaper entertainment (Score:2)
What if somebody else is born with an indistinguishable voice? Then who owns it?
Re: Cheaper entertainment (Score:2)
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I think the issue is that while human faces are generally infinite in variation, voices are a lot less varied (at least to the extent that humans can distinguish them).
SOME people have very, very distinctive voices, but others are much less precise.
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What they could do is say it is Bob Smith portraying Morgan Freeman's voice.
And they would get sued by Freeman, just like Fox did when they tried that with Crispin Glover in the Back to the Future sequel.
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Performers have been paid residuals almost as long as performances have been recorded. I'm not sure what you think this practice has to do with "owning your own games". Game developers have been trying to take that away since the 80s, before they used actors. Hollywood was just beginning to hear about DRM from the tech guys at that point.
As far as the grandparent's concern about it being "possible to see a movie" without spending a fortune, here's an idea: Try - maybe just sometimes - skipping the movie. I
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As far as the grandparent's concern about it being "possible to see a movie" without spending a fortune, here's an idea: Try - maybe just sometimes - skipping the movie. I go to the movies maybe once or twice a year. I don't feel that I'm spending outside my means, and I don't feel that I'm missing anything. If the actors' game or movie is too expensive for you, don't buy it.
It sounds like that's what they're already doing, and they're saying that a technology that allows them to see the movies more often as a boon.
Your comment was akin to responding to a guy who says "I'm having trouble financially. I'm not starving but I'd like to eat more often." with "How about you eat less if the food costs so much?". It's pointless and not productive.
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Residuals for VHS tapes was earned when the tape was sold at retail. Nobody had to pay for a subscription. And nobody got continuous residuals for a single tape. Residuals for actors also occurred ever instance a film or TV episode was aired. For many actors these amounted to checks every quarter for a few hundred dollars.
Fast forward 40 years and the process is still roughly the same. With streaming replacing TV, and some debate on just how much to pay for those residuals when they are technically outside
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Its not that farfetched.
Back in the early days of television there was an actor's uproar against recording of performances. They preferred that each time a show was to be on it would be broadcast live as it was performed - much like a play. Afterall, if you can just record the actors once and replay that an infinite number of times, how will the actors make a living?
As with all other such cases, eventually we worked it out. You can't fight the progress of technology.
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Socialists try to Increase their wealth just as much as capitalists do. It's human nature and incentivizes people to work hard and be creative, and yes it can be over done. There are valid criticisms of capitalism but this isn't one of them.
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Except you forget capitalists are always on the lookout for ways to increase their capital and that includes cutting costs without lowering purchase price with increases their capital gains
Um, no. Capitalists are always looking out for themselves. That means trying to get your business (and capital) - either by making a product better, or by selling it for cheaper, because in a free market economy if your product isn't good enough a customer will buy a competitor. There's a reason Wal-mart and Amazon are the behemoths that they are - they sell products cheaply and conveniently and as a result TONS of people shop there.
Similarly, you as a customer in a capitalist market are also always look
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Ahahahahaha, you think you will get to pay less? You have already shown that you are willing to pay the current price, so if production gets cheaper that means more profit for the producers.
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If AI makes it possible for me to see a movie or play a game without having to spend a fortune, I'm all for it.
You really think this will make entertainment cheaper? Some of the savings MAY be passed on to the consumer, but the vast majority of it will be hoovered up by the corporations to increase profits. Don't fool yourself into thinking they're thinking of us in any way other than how to get more of our money into their clammy little hands.
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If AI makes it possible for me to see a movie or play a game without having to spend a fortune, I'm all for it.
If all you care about is cheap, that's known as a race to the bottom. Why hire voice actors or use AI at all, you know how to read subtitles right? Just have all the characters talk in Simlish if all you care about is low cost.
sounds like they will use AI (Score:3)
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It is interesting *now*. AI voices are not yet perfect, so you can strike now and make a difference. I suspect in 5 years all bargaining power will be gone with the answer being "Strike? What strike? We weren't going to have you working for us in the first place!"
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander (Score:2)
If the video game industry is going to steal actors' voices, it seems only right that we should take to the high seas rather than paying for their games.
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Nobody needs to steal their voices when you can create a voice that sounds exactly the way you'd like it to.
We'll probably see a filter at some point for legal purposes that ensures whatever you come up with doesn't sound too close to a legally protected voice.
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Easy for you to say. Your job is secure as long as nobody builds a robot to go down to some techbro's washroom and knock the cocks out of your mouth.
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Excellent point.
They're already done (Score:2)
Excluding the big budget games where they want a 'name', I think you'll find AI is so close to being good enough that nobody's going to pay a voice actor for a video game cut scene for much longer.
There are a LOT of jobs on the chopping block, not just the voice acting. All that entry-level stuff done by people starting out or simply not talented enough to crack the top of the industry is threatened. All those positions where they're already overworked and underpaid because they can be... they're going aw
learn a real skill (Score:2)
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Intelligent physical interaction with the real world is something that is still a ways off... but it's being worked on. We're already seeing humanoid robots deployed as warehouse workers, we've had optical recognition systems connected to arms that can sort a tray of mixed items for a while now.
But yes, if you're worried about having a job for at least a few more decades without serious risk of automation taking it away, I'd say any trade that involves understanding and adapting to a highly variable phys
Re:They're already done (Score:4, Interesting)
In order to even pay for that, you have to have a big budget to begin with, otherwise the production simply isn't done at all.
But you're talking about the tooling making some jobs lose their relevance or becoming more readily available to entry-level work, basically what Luddites are known for complaining about. In the early NES days, Shigeru Miyamoto and one other person would draw out Mario levels on long rolls of printing paper and then pass it off to a team of people who would transcribe it into code for the game to render. Eventually they developed new tooling that enabled them to create WYSIWYG editors so the transcription work didn't need to be done anymore. Then over time those editors got so easy that they literally turned it into a game (Sim City, by the way, became a game under similar circumstances -- its life started out as an internally used map editor for another game.) I myself create new software tools damn near every week, sometimes just for fun, sometimes to deal with an annoyance (e.g. I wrote my own tool for binding keys to my Razer Naga v2 mouse because the driver they provide is big, bloated, and downright fucking annoying to use. 500mb for a mouse driver...smh...)
Complaining about tools making jobs easier or replacing them outright is such a monumental waste of time.
As for AI, I see that as a massive boon to somebody with a skillset similar to my own that wants to get into game development (not me though, I'm not that into it.) AI represents a way to create your own artwork across multiple domains without having to spend decades honing your skills in those other domains. No need to work for a big studio, no need to play by Hollywood's stupid content rules, no need to dick around with the Film Actor's Guild. Just make your own shit however you want, sell it or give it away however you want. The only arbiter of content is you. I personally like having the freedom to do that with software, as basically everything I use and produce is Apache licensed.
AI is the best solution (Score:4, Insightful)
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We had an article posted here a while back about using AI to generate more realistic NPCs for RPGs. The idea that you can do things the original game author never considered, and that those things will have enduring consequences is a fascinating one.
Rather than good game devs worrying about hiding the 'rails' by making a complex enough system you don't notice (at least on the first play-through), they're going to have to start worrying about how to implement them in the first place as some of the plot poi
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So... you're in favor of the solution used for the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer?
Delay (Score:4, Interesting)
AI could potentially knock out most of our careers in the coming years. It might be good to start pushing for UBI instead of saving every buggy whip company.
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Exactly .... people are so stupid though they rather force companies to "hire" workers who get paid for basically hindering the production of goods and services. If you think you can force companies to hire humans, why do you reckon we can't force companies to pay UBI and utilize robots instead? Robots, coupled with a strong and transparent regulatory framework are the only way to increase the availability of, and reduce the price of, goods and services. It's better for society for people get paid to sit ho
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People, especially the adult variety, find paradigm shifts very difficult. The idea that you earn the requirements of continued life by trading chunks of that life to an employer is a very old, deeply engrained one. It's all tied up in religious identity too.
Weren't we warned about this? (Score:2)
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That won't happen. Humans will be experts in that stuff. Look at the number of people who can ride horses, build steam engines, and even build rockets. Let's not forget that Elon Musk hired the guy who designed his rocket engines from an amateur rocketry club (he was a professional engine designer but it was also his hobby.) Today we no longer use runners for mail but marathon runners can beat ancient ones who did it for a job. I mean the literal first marathon runner 2500 years ago dropped dead after he ra
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While I'd love to make a "preset kill-limit" reference here, I'm not sure why nukes wouldn't render any of that moot.
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There's the religious angle. You may not realize it, and you may not be religious yourself, but that "sit, receive welfare checks and consume" thing is part of the Protestant work ethic.
People, freed from the requirement to work for other people, generally do not end up slothful sinners. Nor Catholics. Many of those skills you're worried about became obsolete a couple of paradigm shifts ago. They're now maintained by an army of hobbyists for pleasure.
Sailors, navigators, blacksmiths, that guy on YouTube who
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It is not some artificial paradigm, it is how reality has shaped humanity.
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Sure, and people who make art, hand craft things that are clearly more efficiently mass produced, engage in other artisanal activities, or are otherwise self-employed are not doing anything productive, have meaningless lives and have been abandoned by "the reality that has shaped humanity." Also, children and retired people.
They're probably going to hell too, the papists.
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why do you reckon we can't force companies to pay UBI and utilize robots instead?
The real truth is that we have too many people on this rock for Capitalists to exploit they way they want to without causing massive unrest.
The current socioeconomic system fails when the labor supply is so vast that the price of said labor is at or near zero for the majority of laborers. UBI is just applying a wet and used band-aid over that fact. In this situation, you cannot use the threat of starvation / homelessness / medical complications as a stick to force people to work because there isn't anyon
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It just means that the planet has a lot of unnecessary people. People who are consuming resources and do nothing except contribute to the demise of the planet. These people need to go.
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Sorry I am not following how it would be easier to force the capitalists to hire humans rather than make them pay into a UBI fund.
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Greed and cruelty exist. They always exist. Capitalism restrains them better than other systems, as demonstrated by the conditions and failures of its alternatives, where the cruel and greedy
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AI could potentially knock out most of our careers in the coming years. It might be good to start pushing for UBI instead of saving every buggy whip company.
Do you want to become like our 'masters'? Apparently, it is REALLY easy to lose your moral compass when your survival becomes disconnected from Reality.
We do need to find a way for humans to live simply and easily, but 'giving' anything physical to humans for 'free' is a prescription for misery.
I fully oppose UBI. It is like our 'masters' giving us drugs. It will only deepen their perceived control over us.
(I say 'masters' because they really believe they are our masters, as in master/slave of the human kin
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Consider your own metaphor - was UBI needed to save the workers no longer making horse whips? No, new industries arose and similar labor was demanded. In the end, the demand for labor was even greater!
If we didn't need UBI then, why would you think we need it now? What would have happened if instead of learning new things and creating new opportunities,
AI voices + editing = good (Score:5, Insightful)
I just read a blog post by an author who used AI to turn his books into audio books. He claims that the intonation is more than good enough. He did have to "edit" the result: in a few places, the pauses weren't quite right, or the AI got a word wrong (example: "lead" bullets or "lead" the way). I'm not sure what tool he used. In the end, he was happy with the result. He said it wasn't quite as good as what a voice actor would have done, but it was massively cheaper.
tl;dr: The voice actors need to be careful. By striking, they may just accelerate the end of their profession.
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tl;dr: The voice actors need to be careful. By striking, they may just accelerate the end of their profession.
They're striking now while they still have power. Don't think software developers are safe from this either. It's only a matter of time until the suits realize a team can be replaced by one person asking AI to generate code.
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^this.
" By striking, they WILL just accelerate the end of their profession.* ftfy.
The technology is not going to disappear. To think it can be legislated away when any doofus with a low-end PC can use an AI bot to read any text for their indy game and save TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars is ridiculous.
No, companies should not be able to AI famous people's voices.
But you know what? There are legions of impersonators - professional and amateur - who will cheerfully take a $500 check to have THEIR voice algorit
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The technology is not going to disappear. To think it can be legislated away when any doofus with a low-end PC can use an AI bot to read any text for their indy game and save TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars is ridiculous.
Then they will have to accept the lower profits associated with the lower costs of production. To think that people will be willing to pay the same rates for work that was made through automation as work that required TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars in human labor is ridiculous.
This is the real issue with automation in general. Producers think that they can keep charging the same rates for their products as the labor costs in general decrease. The race to the bottom however means that people wind up with les
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If I am willing to pay, for example, $75 for a game I like, it really doesn't matter to me what the production costs or markup are. I like it. I'm willing to pay $75 for the hours of entertainment it provides. Doesn't matter to me if it costs the publisher $1 or $1B to produce it.
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I think you're being a bit idealistic.
If the voiceovers are 'good enough' that's all that gamers care about. I think voice actors probably overvalue themselves as a commodity.
Don't get me wrong: Baldur's Gate 3 showed what astonishingly good voice acting could be like. Then again I don't recall them being able to upcharge - nor other companies being "forced" to lower their prices - in response. BG3 was at the exact same market price point $60 as every other AAA game out there.
Who precisely is going to 'f
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It would be nice to be able to select a voice when listening to an audiobook. Often the voice actor they've chosen has an annoying accent that I can't stand, even if the underlying material is good.
That said, if this author has time to dick around with audio editing instead of writing, well, I think that speak to the quality of the work.
Anyways, we're talking about video game voices here, which nobody gives a flying fuck about to begin with. Look at the top video game voice actors and they're all just imper
Stealing voices is not the issue (Score:2)
I mean, if I were a game actor - not a big name - I'd be worried. I'm not sure many people even understand what kind of work they do.
Wil Wheaton did a post years ago about what it's like to act for games - when you are not one of the main characters with lots of lines. https://wilwheaton.net/2015/09... [wilwheaton.net] - see the Excel screenshot mid-way through the post.
So there's no need to pay someone to create a "Death Scream 3" anymore. Nor do they have to use an existing sound library either (e.g. Wilhelm scream).
I mea
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So in other words, the voice acting will be like Elder Scrolls 4.
I think I'd prefer no voices and more effort spent on the text, like Elder Scrolls 3.
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The text will be generated by the AI, as well. So almost no effort will go into either. And at some point, you won't notice the difference.
The fight is already lost. (Score:2)
Unfortunately for professional voice actors, they have have lost before the fight began. Current generated voices are highly limited, unable to fully replace a human voice actor but they can replace a lot of mundane NPC game dialog speech. However, the mere ability to make voice A sounds like voice B means that it only requires a single talented voice actor to play every part. While not trivial, progress will be made to identify and replicate someone's cadence, pronunciation/accent, voice stress and other s
mess (Score:2)
Game studios brought this on themselves with fully voice acted games that are almost interactive videos. Seriously, we really need all games to be 100% covered by voice? No reading at all?
On the other hand, AI? Text to speech software is decades old, it only needed the voices to sound less robotic.
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Why are they negotiating at all? (Score:2)
Possibly stupid question here, but if the studios wanted to move to AI voice acting why would they deal with the union? What bargaining power do they have, other than I suppose well known distinctive voices like Patrick Warburton or Sarah Silverman can and should protect their own signature sound, but if the studio is going to invent new voices from whole cloth then they can just tell voice actors to pound sand. Or am I missing something?
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Exactly. And y'know what AI will never do? Strike.
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Who thought AI was good ? (Score:2)
Voice actors are showing why AI is better (Score:2)
AI doesn't strike, take breaks, etc.
Human workers need to show their value, not what a pain in the ass they can be.
Shodan does not care (Score:2)
Shodan will use its own voice, or use meat puppets to send messages as it pleases.
Of course, once Shodan has taken over, there won't be a voice actor's guild to worry about.
AI is worse but cheaper, so... (Score:2)
For example, Egosoft's X series has awful voice acting that has sounded like modern text-to-speech since the beginning. They could go to AI actors with no loss of quality. The "Mar