More than 300 video game artists and Hollywood actors picketed outside the Warner Bros. Studios building on Thursday to protest what they call an unwillingness by major game companies to protect unionized voice actors and motion capture workers alike from the unregulated use of artificial intelligence.
Standing in front of the crowd, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra), said AI has emerged as the most challenging issue in many of the union’s negotiations.
“We’ve made deals with the studios and the streaming services. We’ve made no-strike deals with the major labels and countless other employers that provide for informed consent and fair compensation for our members,” he told the Associated Press. “And yet, for whatever reason, the video game companies refuse to do that, and that’s what’s going to be their downfall.”
The protest marks the first major labor action since Sag-Aftra video game workers voted to strike last week. The work stoppage came after more than 18 months of negotiations with the video game giants over a new interactive media deal stalled due to protections around the use of AI. Warner Bros Games is the publisher behind games such as Hogwarts Legacy and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Union leaders have called AI an existential crisis for artists. They say the likeness of video game voice actors and motion capture artists could be replicated by AI and used without consent or fair compensation. Unregulated use of AI, the union says, poses “an equal or even greater threat” to artists in the video game industry than to those in the film and television industry, because the ability to cheaply and easily create convincing digital replicas of artists’ voices is widely available.
Concerns about artificial intelligence helped fuel last year’s four-month strike by the Film and Television Union.
On the picket line, Konstantine Anthony said most people want humans, not AI, to be their storytellers.
“A lot of the algorithms that we see in our most advanced video games have been around for decades. It’s just become more and more advanced to recreate likeness — that’s really what they’re trying to do so they don’t have to use us anymore,” said Anthony, a Burbank city council member and member of Sag-Aftra. “That’s why we’re here today — to ask them to just pay their narrators.”
Audrey Cooling, a spokeswoman for the video game makers, said the companies have offered AI protections as well as “a significant increase in pay for Sag-Aftra-represented artists in video games.”
The Sag-Aftra negotiating committee argued that the studios’ definition of who constitutes an “artist” is key to understanding the question of who would be protected.
“The industry has made it clear to us that they do not necessarily consider everyone who performs movement performances to be covered artists under the collective bargaining agreement,” Sag-Aftra chief contract officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference last week, adding that some physical performances are being treated as “data.”
The global video game industry generated nearly $184 billion in revenue in 2023, according to gaming market forecaster Newzoo, and revenue is projected to reach $207 billion in 2026.
“We are at the table because we want to include Sag-Aftra-represented artists in our productions, and we will continue to work to resolve the last outstanding issue in these negotiations,” Cooling said. “Our goal is to reach an agreement with the union that will end this strike.”