LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood video game performers said they would strike Thursday, bringing another round of walkouts across the entertainment industry after talks for new contracts with major game studios collapsed over protections for artificial intelligence.
The walkout, the second by video game voice and motion-capture performers under the jurisdiction of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Entertainers, begins at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations over a new interactive media contract with gaming giants that include Activision, Warner Bros. and a division of Walt Disney.
SAG-AFTRA negotiators said that while the video game contract reached agreement on wages and job security, the two sides disagree on regulating generative AI. Audrey Cooling, a spokeswoman for video game production companies, said the studios proposed the AI protections, but the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee said the studios’ definition of who constitutes a “performer” is key to understanding who gets protected.
“The industry has been very clear that we do not consider everyone who performs a physical act to be a performer covered under a collective bargaining agreement,” Ray Rodriguez, SAG-AFTRA’s chief contracts officer, said at a press conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical acts are treated as “data.”
Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to imitate actors’ voices or create digital replicas of their likenesses without their consent or fair compensation, the union said.
“We are going on strike as a last resort. We have been responsible and have given this process as much time as possible,” Rodriguez told reporters. “All other possibilities have been exhausted, that’s why we are going on strike now.”
Couling said the companies’ proposal would “meaningfully expand AI protections.”
“We are disappointed that we were so close to an agreement and the union chose to walk away. We are ready to resume negotiations,” she said.
Andy Norris, an actor and union negotiating committee member, said the games companies’ proposal would still put stunt performers and monster actors at risk.
“The performers who bring their work to these games are creating a wide variety of characters, and all of that work has to be covered. Their proposal would be to cut out anything that doesn’t look or sound exactly like how I look and sound as I sit here, when in fact I am a zombie, a soldier, a zombie soldier, any given week,” Norris said. “We do not and will not accept that a stuntman or movement performer performing a full performance onstage next to a voice actor is not a performer.”
The global video game industry generates more than $100 billion a year in revenue, according to games market forecasting firm Newzoo, and SAG-AFTRA said the people who design and bring these games to life are what drive their success.
Union members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the power to strike. Concerns about how studios might use AI were the driving force behind a four-month strike by the film and TV industry last year.
The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, offered no protections regarding AI but did secure a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. The strike marked the first major labor dispute by SAG-AFTRA since the merger of Hollywood’s two major actors unions in 2012.
According to the union, the video game contract covers more than 2,500 “off-camera (voice-over) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers and background performers.”
Amid tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA crafted a separate contract in February aimed at independent and low-budget video game projects. The Tiered Budget Independent Interactive Media Contract includes some of the AI protections rejected by the video game industry giants. Games that have signed the Interim Interactive Media Contract, the Tiered Budget Independent Interactive Contract or the Interim Interactive Localization Contract are not subject to the strike, the union said.
