Actors' union SAG-AFTRA strike deal to allow AI voice replicas, and video game stars are understandably pissed

10.01.2024 - 19:11 / rockpapershotgun.com / Ai

Major actors’ union SAG-AFTRA have raised hackles among a number of voice game performers after striking a deal with a company that wants to create AI replicas of actors’ voices for use in games, among other things. While the union claim that their agreement with Replica will allow for a “fair” and “ethical” approach to creating AI voices, it’s clear that a number of actors with credits in games from Baldur’s Gate 3, Mortal Kombat and Starfield to Apex Legends, World of Warcraft and Genshin Impact don’t agree.

The SAG-AFTRA announcement claimed that the “groundbreaking” deal would allow actors to licence their voice to Replica as a digital replica, allowing video game developers and other companies to recreate the vocal performance of an actor as they like for a project. Safeguards against AI - specifically in relation to digital replicas and training models - has been a central point in SAG-AFTRA’s ongoing negotiations with video game studios.

“With this agreement, we have achieved fully informed consent and fair compensation when it comes to the use of our members' voices and performances,” said SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland of the recent deal, with the union saying that the agreement offers “industry-leading protections” to actors in relation to AI.

Those protections include setting a baseline for minimum terms and conditions with regards to AI voice replicas, along with requiring actors to authorise their voice for use in such projects and negotiate around how and where their digital double is used. The agreement also allows performers to opt out of letting their AI voice be used in the future if they decide against it later on.

In other words, rather than opposing the replacement of actors by AI as a whole, the deal looks to try and put control of any AI recreations in the hands of actors through formal licensing - wresting back some power from AI tools that harvest thousands of creators’ work without any kind of credit or compensation. However, what isn’t currently clear - among other things - is how that compensation or crediting will work exactly, along with specifics on how data is stored and shared.

“Our voice actor agreements ensure that game developers using our platform are only accessing licensed talent who have given permission for their voice to be used as a training data set, as opposed to the wild west of AI platforms using unethical data-scraping methods to replicate and synthesise voices without permission,” said Replica’s CEO Shreyas Nivas.

While SAG-AFTRA’s announcement stated that the agreement was “approved by affected members of the union’s voiceover performer community”, it seems that they didn’t speak to a number of