Hollywood’s video game performers voted to go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections. 

The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the studios will not make a deal over the regulation of generative AI. Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

  • henfredemars
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    4 months ago

    We need humans in the economy, and art is our soul. I don’t want to see our artists replaced by robots.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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      4 months ago

      It’s a process that’s been going on for a long time. It used to be that if you wanted to listen to music you needed a human artist to physically play it for you, but recordings have been normalized for so long that nobody gives it a second thought.

      Heck, this is computer games we’re talking about. Much of the performance is inherently “robotic” on some level already.

          • EleventhHour@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            That was also, in no way at all, even remotely similar to what we’re discussing here.

            But your continued parade of ignorance is somewhat amusing

            • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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              4 months ago

              I wrote:

              It used to be that if you wanted to listen to music you needed a human artist to physically play it for you, but recordings have been normalized for so long that nobody gives it a second thought.

              Yes, this is exactly what we’re talking about.

                • MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zip
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                  4 months ago

                  This is how generations have been, they usually don’t accept new things, be it culture, technology or fashion, because it breaks their routine. AI is not going to disappear, because it is a technology as old as computing, the closest thing is that an AI winter will come (it has happened several times to a greater or lesser extent).

                  But this only affects the US, because in other countries it remains the same without strikes, and I think this will encourage more subcontracting in countries like India, China, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, because they are cheaper. Unless the government starts giving subsidies or updates the Berne Convention.

              • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                Even recorded music had an artist behind it.

                Art is self-expression.

                AI has no self to express so trying to pass off anything it does as art on par with an artist is an insult to all of humanity.

                • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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                  4 months ago

                  Even recorded music had an artist behind it.

                  And yet, as I linked above, there was a hue and cry back when it first came out about how it didn’t have an artist behind it. A quote from one of the anti-recorded-music advertisements at the time:

                  Tho’ the Robot can make no music of himself, he can and does arrest the efforts of those who can.

                  and:

                  300 musicians in Hollywood supply all the “music” offered in thousands of theatres. Can such a tiny reservoir of talent nurture artistic progress?

                  and:

                  We think the public will tire of mechanical music and will want the real thing.

                  It all sounds extremely familiar now. I expect this too shall pass, and a few years from now AI-generated music will be just a routine thing.

                  AI-generated voice over is already pretty common on Youtube already, to link more directly to the subject of this particular thread.

                  • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
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                    4 months ago

                    You’re missing my point intentionally, you have to be. The song was still written and performed by a PERSON somewhere before the recording is distributed.

                    An AI is not a person. It’s not even close to comparable.

      • hightrix@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        The AI luddites don’t want to understand. They just want to be mad at something.