Video Game Actors Are Officially On Strike Over AI (theverge.com) 52
Members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) are striking against the video game industry due to failed negotiations over AI-related worker protections. "The guild began striking on Friday, July 26th, preventing over 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members from taking new video game projects and impeding games already in development from the biggest publishers to the smallest indie studios," notes The Verge. From the report: Negotiations broke down due to disagreements over worker protections around AI. The actors union, SAG-AFTRA, negotiates the terms of the interactive media agreement, or IMA, with a bargaining committee of video game publishers, including Activision, Take-Two, Insomniac Games, WB Games, and others that represent a total of 30 signatory companies. Though SAG-AFTRA and the video game bargaining group were able to agree on a number of proposals, AI remained the final stumbling block resulting in the strike.
SAG-AFTRA's provisions on AI govern both voice and movement performers with respect to digital replicas -- or using an existing performance as the foundation to create new ones without the original performer -- and the use of generative AI to create performances without any initial input. However, according to SAG-AFTRA, the bargaining companies disagreed about which type of performer should be eligible for AI protections. SAG-AFTRA chief contracts officer Ray Rodriguez said that the bargaining companies initially wanted to offer protections to voice, not motion performers. "So anybody doing a stunt or creature performance, all those folks would have been left unprotected under the employers' offer," Rodriguez said in an interview with Aftermath. Rodriguez said that the companies later extended protections to motion performers, but only if "the performer is identifiable in the output of the AI digital replica."
SAG-AFTRA rejected this proposal as it would potentially exclude a majority of movement performances. "Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn't look and sound identical to me," said Andi Norris, a member of SAG-AFTRA's IMA negotiating committee, during a press conference. "[The proposal] would leave movement specialists, including stunts, entirely out in the cold, to be replaced ... by soulless synthetic performers trained on our actual performances." The bargaining game companies argued that the terms went far enough and would require actors' approval. "Our offer is directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA's concerns and extends meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA. These terms are among the strongest in the entertainment industry," wrote Audrey Cooling, a representative working on behalf of the video game companies on the bargaining committee in a statement to The Verge.
SAG-AFTRA's provisions on AI govern both voice and movement performers with respect to digital replicas -- or using an existing performance as the foundation to create new ones without the original performer -- and the use of generative AI to create performances without any initial input. However, according to SAG-AFTRA, the bargaining companies disagreed about which type of performer should be eligible for AI protections. SAG-AFTRA chief contracts officer Ray Rodriguez said that the bargaining companies initially wanted to offer protections to voice, not motion performers. "So anybody doing a stunt or creature performance, all those folks would have been left unprotected under the employers' offer," Rodriguez said in an interview with Aftermath. Rodriguez said that the companies later extended protections to motion performers, but only if "the performer is identifiable in the output of the AI digital replica."
SAG-AFTRA rejected this proposal as it would potentially exclude a majority of movement performances. "Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn't look and sound identical to me," said Andi Norris, a member of SAG-AFTRA's IMA negotiating committee, during a press conference. "[The proposal] would leave movement specialists, including stunts, entirely out in the cold, to be replaced ... by soulless synthetic performers trained on our actual performances." The bargaining game companies argued that the terms went far enough and would require actors' approval. "Our offer is directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA's concerns and extends meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA. These terms are among the strongest in the entertainment industry," wrote Audrey Cooling, a representative working on behalf of the video game companies on the bargaining committee in a statement to The Verge.
And you'll wonder why we voice it ourselves. (Score:2, Interesting)
I understand where they're coming from, but musicians have been in this boat for decades. You can be in the union, and if you're at the top of the food chain this works well. If you're a couple notches down, you'll have to decide between holding out for Union scale versus getting gigs at all, because the big dogs eat first. That's why AT LEAST 80% of working musicians are not just NOT in the union, but wouldn't join even if invited.
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It's not a matter of "my" coding job, it's a matter of how bad my management is. The way that would most likely happen is that AI takes my manager's job first.
Current AI is a fraud, it can only take jobs that are filled by frauds. To replace an actor with AI still requires skill, just not the "talent".
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Don’t think AI won’t come for your coding job. AI doesn’t have to be better, just cheaper.
Good for all of us. Cheaper coders only result in crap that the company needs to hire much more expensive experts to come in to fix them later.
If AI let more manager generate more cheap code, it only means more code for human programmers to fix and more work for all of us.
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I hope it comes from *all* of our jobs, so we can just relax and leave all development and production to machines.
Until then, Jevon's Paradox will continue to apply. Consumption will increase as everything gets cheaper due to more efficient production (not evenly, of course - e.g. sales of basic foodstuffs may only increase marginally, while sales of yachts would increase greatly, for example), and said jobs that remain that still require humans increasingly require more humans, until you've effectively re
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The real growth advantage will come from having an effectively infinite workforce. No matter how high of wages you offer, there's only so many people you employ -- especially if they need a specific education for it. If you can use an AI to do the job, suddenly your company has the ability to scale to an effectively infinite number of workers -- which I'd think would equate to serious output gains for certain lucky companies and the economy in general.
Of course, the problem is that the owners of said compan
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Ultimately, unless said companies build their own armies, more powerful than national armies, before said nations stop them, then they'll be subject to national governments - whether autocratic or democratic.
We saw what happened before: industrialization made robber barrons wealthy, people got disgruntled at the wealth disparity, and voted for people to crack down on them. Indeed, even very socialism-disinclined politicians felt basically forced to create "socialism-lite" systems for welfare, retirement, h
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You know what it tells me? That not every job calls for a $450-an-hour musician of the highest caliber who is fluent in every genre. In fact, very few jobs call for this. That's why the decision is often between "do I want one gig a month that might pay $450 or $900, or do I want three $100 gigs a week?" Once you factor in expenses like having to drive to those gigs, plus the extra exposure to having all your gear jacked or destroyed, it's not always an obvious decision.
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Depending on the size of the venue, you take those 3 gigs per week because you get a cut of the alcohol sales, which is more then you get paid for performing. I know some guys in the reggae scene that have just started to actually make it big and before they got to those larger venues, they did a ton of small bar venues and that's how they made most their money. That and merchandise sales.
Those kinds of acts don't have anything to worry about regarding AI because people want to go to see the live performanc
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AI just makes their life easier for people like that. AI music tools can function like a drum machine on steroids. You can create whatever backing tracks you need, remix or modify existing content you create, remaster things in ways previously not possible by inpainting over recording errors, etc.
The music industry has generally been much less hostile to incorporating new technology than other arts. Drum machines, vocoders (which then evolved to autotune), prerecorded backing tracks, electronic drum kits
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I have _not even once_ received anything back from the alcohol sales. We were guaranteed a minimum, and if the take at the door went over a certain amount, we'd get a little bit extra -- but we're talking an extra $20-40 each at most. The bigger the venue, the harder it became to hit the level required for the bonus, so small gigs often paid _better_ than bigger ones at the end of the day. Also we'd get paid extra for travel distance, but then we'd reduce expenses by carpooling. These gigs paid well enough
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That's why AT LEAST 80% of working musicians are not just NOT in the union, but wouldn't join even if invited.
That really does depend on where the race to the bottom goes. Sooner or later the larger creature will win.
Re: And you'll wonder why we voice it ourselves. (Score:2)
If there's any race to the bottom here, I think it would be residuals. I think it will probably end up bad enough at some point that pay per view, even for really old stuff, will become the only viable business model. I wouldn't even be surprised at this point if the now digital distribution of games turns into pay-per-play for this exact reason. These guys want to be paid for all eternity for something they were literally already paid for.
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I'm not sure I've seen evidence that not pay per view is viable.
TV was effectively pay per view for its entire history (through ads). Premium channels like HBO weren't pay per view, but they had a lot less new content than a regular channel, and people don't seem to want to pay $15/month for a single channel worth of streaming.
Netflix is the only streaming service showing a profit, but their cash flow is negative, so I less their new content holds long term value they're actually losing money (they'll feel
Re: And you'll wonder why we voice it ourselves. (Score:2)
I don't think it would be necessary without residuals. The whole strike thing was, among other things, over actors being angry that they're not being paid every time somebody watches an episode of some show they were in 20 years ago, even though they were already paid, in many cases more money than most people will ever see in their entire lives, to make it in the first place. I don't remember who, but one of them was saying something like "Netflix customers should pay $5 every time they watch my movie" or
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Were the 5 channels dramatically different content (this is a real question), as I remember it there was a movies only, the main channel (movies and original content), and a Spanish language channel. Basically the equivalent of one channel in the context of on demand/streaming.
As for residuals, that's always been a part of the pay. One could argue that it's a terrible business model, but it is pretty much the one that's been used for a long time (I generally do t like the idea of residuals, but I think it e
Re: And you'll wonder why we voice it ourselves. (Score:2)
I don't recall what all they were but it looks like DirecTV currently has 7, unless you count both east and west variants, but I think they're just time shifted.
https://www.directv.com/inside... [directv.com]
I wouldn't be surprised if you could get basically everything the streaming service has with a decent multi-stream DVR. But apparently the streaming service turns a decent profit anyways.
https://www.investopedia.com/f... [investopedia.com]
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Yes, HBO is my example of making money (though I'm not sure the streaming is).
They have what appears to effectively be 2 channels to me. HBO adult content, and HBO children's content.
Their streaming service throws in a third channel of Discovery trash content.
My point is that the production of that fairly limited amount of content costs $15 or so (in the cable days) and is far more limited than what people in general from a service like Netflix.
HBOs business model was limited content at a high price.
My poin
Re:And you'll wonder why we voice it ourselves. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is about actors losing the ability to act or sell their voice again, because corporations can just create the movement and sounds from AI. Effectively locking an actor out of their profession because their "image created by AI" is cheaper.
Re:And you'll wonder why we voice it ourselves. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yes, musicians have never been faced with a machine recording a performance once and then allowing it to be repeated... wait.
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Yeah this is an old conundrum. The problem is, the refusal of rock musicians to participate in industrial action meant that while classical jazz musicians can make a living off performing, while we are still fighting over the bar tab and scraps off the door. We all wanted exposure, but failed to realise that if we *all* cooperated on this, we'd have exposure AND an income. And now look at us, its lucky if we're getting a weekend gig once in a blue moon, for less pay than the fuel to drive to the damn thing
What if it's not AI? (Score:3)
I don't understand the 'motion capture' aspect of it. (Ignore the fact that nobody is going to be recognized for their motion capture. That's 100% of the reason that stuntmen work in the first place. You can't tell who the person is running around on fire.)
With Mo-Cap, the inputs are taken as 'inputs' and then are manipulated by the animators. Even without AI, the animators can manipulate the inputs and create new motions. Is the problem that 'new motions' are created from the inputs recorded from the actors? Or is the problem that "AI" did it, and not a digital animation artist?
Or does this new agreement extend to any manipulation/extension of the motion capture data? What about simply 'mirroring' it, and playing it "left-handed" instead of "right-handed." The actor didn't get paid for reaching out with his left hand as well.
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Ignore the fact that nobody is going to be recognized for their motion capture.
Andy Serkis has entered the chat.
Re:What if it's not AI? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think what they mean is that if they say mo-cap facial expressions, those can then be consumed by AI and used to generate new performances for different dialogue.
The video game industry is already far too willing to re-use work endlessly, instead of paying artists to do new stuff. Have you noticed how the faces in a lot of games look very similar, and very generic? Not just NPCs, main characters. They all use the same pre-packaged models and motion captured movements as a base, and slap their own skin on
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With Mo-Cap, the inputs are taken as 'inputs' and then are manipulated by the animators. Even without AI, the animators can manipulate the inputs and create new motions.
Yes, and they usually look like shit. You can almost always tell when the motions have been created in the lab like that. If you couldn't, they wouldn't bother doing any mocap, they would already have all they need to remix into new motions.
Work sucks, own/invest instead (Score:2, Insightful)
Work/labor sucks, you're better off getting work done by something or someone else. Instead of doing work, why not own some slaves or AI that will do the work for you? You put some initial capital to purchase the slaves and after that most of their output/product is yours think about it. You can build a huge mansion by doing less work than it takes to put one brick in place.
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And need some more "initial capital"? Steal your sibling's inheritance, then cut off their health care. Make America Slave Holders Again.
Don't forget to reinvest some profits in killing off the competition. Kill them off, plow over their properties, then build hotels and condos and slap your name on it. Someone objects? Genocide.
I noticed it earlier (Score:2)
I noticed this earlier. I tried to play a game just this morning - but all the NPCs were standing around holding picket signs and chanting "Hell, No! AI must Go!"
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Same same but different (Score:3)
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Did you just stick an analogy inside your analogy?
Holding back potential (Score:2)
It's a difficult situation because this could definitely hold back the potential of some games (mostly RPGs) to leverage AI for NPCs, especially for voice acting. Games aren't movies, the player can make decisions and influence how it's going to go, but that means lots of potential conversations and lots of recording sessions.
I imagine the best combination would be the VA recording most of the pivotal scenes to get the best emotions and reactions, then have other conversations filled with generative AI (th
If they succeed (Score:1, Troll)
then they pull the whole industry down with them.
I have said it before, no one can stop technological progress, you can only choose to move on with it or be left behind.
Give them your what they want (Score:2)
Then develop through s subsidiary in a more progressive country.
overrated (Score:2)
I find "full voice acting" in games to be overrated. Still, if a game has to be fully voice acted, then I think it would be better with AI than with actors: with actors you have to pre-record all possible voice lines in all possible languages, resulting in huge data assets. With AI, I imagine you can have all the possible dialogue as text (maybe even dynamically generated) and then a good AI-powered text-to-speech to read them in real time, without the constraint of pre-recording. The only difficult part is
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AI voices < Human voices < Text boxes
Games have lost the brevity that former technical restrictions required. Now for the course of a 2 year development it appears your writers just spend all day filling word documents with overly verbose spraff and nobody goes through it with the red pen deleting all the unnecessary nonsense. And then the voice actors come in and record 10 hours of crap in a slow drawl. So if developers start using AI voices, I don't care. I dislike the humans to start with. Maybe th
Good luck with that. (Score:2)
In the fight between workers and progress, progress always wins. If only by businesses still using workers going under due to competition using automation and being cheaper. For videogames, AI/ML voice-actors are very likely to be good enough if not perfect. Sorry to say, but I think voice-actors are going the way of the photographer and illustrator ... and just about all the rest of us.
I'm just going to say (Score:1)
glances over /. again (Score:2)
Oh, so AI is both useless and inept and it is going to take all of our jobs.
(Can we call them "jerbs" yet? Or is that only cool and hip when they are other people's jobs?)
Backfire in 3 ... 2 .. 1 ... (Score:2)
All they have done is advance the inevitable takeover of the majority of their jobs. They should study up on directing AI and reviewing AI output since those will be the only job left for their skills.