SAG-Aftra Union Performers Call for AI Protections in Video Games, Picket Disney

Actors and performers in the SAG-AFTRA union have been calling for AI protections in the video game industry.

Over the past 20 years, video games have become an increasingly lucrative industry for actors, with voice work often going to high-level stars in mega-blockbuster video game series. With the advancement of AI, actors who have found steady work in that industry fear the work will soon dry up and have called for protections. Per The Hollywood Reporter (THR):

Thursday’s event was the second picket organized by SAG-AFTRA after the union called a strike against video game companies on July 25. Performers first demonstrated outside of Warner Bros. Games on August 1 before setting up shop a little over a mile away in front of the Disney building two weeks later. (Beyond Disney Character Voices and Warner Bros. Games, the union is also currently striking Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and Insomniac Games, among others.)

According to SAG-AFTRA’s negotiators, video game companies only would agree to partial but “dangerously incomplete” AI proposals in the parties’ last formal bargaining session, which would have left stunt and movement performers particularly vulnerable if they had been enacted. A spokesperson for the video game companies has countered that their offer was “directly responsive to SAG-AFTRA’s concerns” and would offer “meaningful AI protections that include requiring consent and fair compensation to all performers working under the IMA,” the Interactive Media Agreement. The spokesperson called this contract language “among the strongest in the entertainment industry.”

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s national executive director and chief negotiator, said that actors fear they will not be able to make a living if they do not fight AI protections.

“Our members correctly believe that, if we don’t have the right [AI] protections in this contract, their ability to make a living in this business can be jeopardized within the term of this contract,” he told THR. “This is not something we can wait for.”

Sarah Elmaleh, the chair of the union’s negotiating committee on this agreement, told the outlet, “We went into this negotiation knowing that this issue is existential and we could not have a deal without it.”