An nameless reader quotes a report from the Related Press: Hollywood’s online game performers voted to go on strike Thursday, throwing a part of the leisure trade into one other work stoppage after talks for a brand new contract with main sport studios broke down over synthetic intelligence protections. The strike — the second for online game voice actors and movement seize performers below the Display Actors Guild-American Federation of Tv and Radio Artists — will start at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The transfer comes after almost two years of negotiations with gaming giants, together with divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a brand new interactive media settlement.
SAG-AFTRA negotiators say features have been revamped wages and job security within the online game contract, however that the studios is not going to make a deal over the regulation of generative AI. With out guardrails, sport corporations may prepare AI to copy an actor’s voice, or create a digital duplicate of their likeness with out consent or honest compensation, the union stated. Fran Drescher, the union’s president, stated in a ready assertion that members wouldn’t approve a contract that might enable corporations to “abuse AI.” “Sufficient is sufficient. When these corporations get critical about providing an settlement our members can dwell — and work — with, we can be right here, prepared to barter,” Drescher stated. […]
The final interactive contract, which expired November 2022, didn’t present protections round AI however secured a bonus compensation construction for voice actors and efficiency seize artists after an 11-month strike that started October 2016. That work stoppage marked the primary main labor motion from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012. The online game settlement covers greater than 2,500 “off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (movement seize, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers,” in response to the union. Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that coated indie and lower-budget online game tasks. The tiered-budget unbiased interactive media settlement comprises among the protections on AI that online game trade titans have rejected. “Eighteen months of negotiations have proven us that our employers are usually not considering honest, cheap AI protections, however slightly flagrant exploitation,” stated Interactive Media Settlement Negotiating Committee Chair Sarah Elmaleh. The studios haven’t commented.
