Video game actors strike because they fear an attack of the AI clones

Actors are back on strike for an entirely unsurprising reason: Studios aren't willing to give video game actors enough protection from artificial intelligence.  Video game performers with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) went on strike on Thursday, calling AI protections " …

[mostly average]

You wouldn't download a performer...

I think they would. Why bother with human performers when you can just create an entirely new digital one from scratch? One who's likeness and voice are fully and unconditionally owned by the studio. Who doesn't threaten release schedules with strikes, unions or negotiations, or demand royalties or even wages, who doesn't mouth off on controversial topics on social media. Video game actors are in even more danger of extinction than screen actors. I'm not for it or against it, just reading the writing on the wall. Bean counters gonna count. (Until they're replaced, too.)

[DS999]

Re: You wouldn't download a performer...

Yeah I would think using humans in video games was always going to be a short term thing. They're in that middle section between "not enough power to use anything but computer generated characters" and "enough power to use all computer generated characters".

Other than maybe voiceovers and cutscreens, how long have they used humans? Gotta be under 20 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: You wouldn't download a performer...

"Other than maybe voiceovers and cutscreens, how long have they used humans? Gotta be under 20 years."

Since around 1992, King's Quest V released in 1990 and a "talkie" CD-ROM in 1992 used voice acting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Quest_V

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: You wouldn't download a performer...

I'm not even sure why it's an issue now anyway. Surely the actors saw the writing on the wall many years ago when advertisers started cutting scenes from old films and putting dead actors into adverts. Clearly it's been possible with CGI and clever editing since long before "AI" started creeping into the industry so they should have been having this sort of thing in the contracts for decades now. Carlsberg did a series of them back in the day, the Ice Cold in Alex one being one that has stuck in my memory all these years.

[Anonymous Cowpilot]

Re: You wouldn't download a performer...

Studios use human actors because they bring a level of realism and emotion to the role that AI cannot yet replicate, and is probably still quite far from achieving. If studios (especially smaller ones) want to forgo actors for AI that is fine - its likely they would not have hired actors originally anyway. However, once an actor has done most of the hard work to create a character and make them feel human, its relatively easy for an AI to take that and interpolate additional scenes, which is what the actors are hoping to avoid.

One reasonable analogy is audio books - good text-to-speech has been around for decades and is a built in feature of most e-reader software. However there is still a large (and growning) market for audio books - because actors bring emotion in a way that even the best text-to-speech engines cannot. While AI can do some interesting stuff, I fully expect "created by humans" to be seen as a mark of high-quality products once all the hype has died down. We will be willing to pay more for products where we can feel human emotion and creativity from them.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Hell, you could even offer it as a prize: have your body and voice turned into an AI character in our forthcoming game. Just send a short video clip to us at....

[Jagged]

Cloned By IBM

I know a voice actor (whose case has been on telly a few times). IBM have basically cloned him from an advert he did for them 20 years ago.

His closest friends ring him up and say "I heard you on X advert" but no, its not him. A man that made a long career as a voice actor all over the world has had that stolen by IBM.

Why pay an actor a wage when a machine will do it for you for pennies.

Its outright theft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cloned By IBM

Yeah, it's nauseating. They've made a synthetic clone of you, and enslaved it for their gainful purpose. You spend the rest of your life thinking, there's this clone of me, that I didn't authorize, and they're milking it for all it's worth, and I'm getting nothing but nausea out of it. It's 100% sick! Fucking bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the work, get paid, move on

If I build a wall, do I get residuals every time someone admires it or mounts something to it?

If I build your house, do I get paid for each time you use it?

Why would bit-acting continue to pay?

Why would leading acting continue to pay?

It seems an odd concept.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Do the work, get paid, move on

What is even slightly odd about it?

When they want a second wall they call you or another builder to build it.

Would anyone qualify as a builder, when they would get one job to build one wall, and never get another call?

The obvious result of this is a collapse of recruitment into skilled jobs, as you would be an idiot to spend years training to only get a couple of jobs.

This is already afoot. I strongly advised my son not to make a career in software for this reason - there isn't really going to be a career there, and he bailed.

[cornetman]

Re: Do the work, get paid, move on

The kinda bigger issue I would call "passing-off". It is the misrepresentation that you made a performance that you did not. In a sense it is a kind of fraud.

Personally, I think the pay issue is a bit of a legal non-starter. However, using your image in a performance without your knowledge or permission should be outright legally banned if it isn't already. There are all sorts of issue potentially with doing this:

- Reputational damage to an actor if the performance is something that is controversial such that said actor gets public flak.

- If the studio gets sued for something in the film or video game, could the actor who *didn't* actually perform in it get sued?

- What if the performance advocates for something that the real actor strongly disagrees with?

[IceC0ld]

Re: Do the work, get paid, move on

[quote]What if the performance advocates for something that the real actor strongly disagrees with?[/quote]

methinks that the likes of a certain Ms Swift v Trump comes to mind, she is a known supporter of Democrats, yet Trump running AI to show Swifties for Trump at his rallies

she has the funds to take him to the cleaners, and I would imagine her legal advice team are looking into this right now

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Do the work, get paid, move on

> I strongly advised my son

- this is important. Hell yeah, even GP doctors will soon be redundant - I already find ChatGPT better than them. Thus most doctor education will become shorter and cheaper. More nurses instead.

This also means non-manual jobs will become very difficult. Not sure if not mostly extinct.

[TimMaher]

Re: “ non-manual jobs”

That’s Ok, Boston Dynamics, and others, have manual jobs in view.

They will be increasingly rare and difficult as well.

[IceC0ld]

Re: Do the work, get paid, move on

[QUOTE]I strongly advised my son not to make a career in software for this reason[/QUOE]

Daughter graduated last year - 23 - in Video and Gaming Animation, and has already seen the advance of AI into this :o(

and her amigos in the same class, all have found getting work in their preferred field to be next to impossible now

no surprise really, when a Co can get the same work done faster and in some cases, better, why carry a meatsack on the payroll :o(

[Dimmer]

Re: Do the work, get paid, move on

Just to be clear here,

They can copy the actors work as many times as they want - but I can’t copy their game as many times as I want?

[doublelayer]

Re: Do the work, get paid, move on

They don't have to do it that way. They could easily pay actors the same way they pay many other people who do jobs, creative or not. Mine, for instance. I get paid to write some software. They don't pay me each time they run it. We negotiated how much they had to pay to get the software when I was hired. If they do that with an actor, no problem. The reason they don't is usually that they don't have enough money to do that, so they offer to continue paying the actor from money that comes in later instead of paying up front. You could also do software that way: I'll get paid less while writing it, then you give me a portion of the license fees.

Neither has any connection to the AI work. If they buy the software writing from me, they get that piece of software. They don't get other pieces of software I write. They don't even get fixes to that one unless I am still employed. When hiring an actor, you don't get rights to everything about them forever, you get the rights to the performance they just did for you. You want to keep showing that video of them following the script? Great. You want to use their picture in a big machine learning training thing? Get permission to do that or you don't get to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Do the work, get paid, move on

Sure that makes sense. make all films copyright expire as soon as it is released, why should directors or producers get a check every time the film is shown. put the film or play or book in the public domain as soon as it's released publicly. Why should the owners of the copyright happy birthday still be getting checks as recently as 2017 or the owners of the peter pan copyright still be getting checks?

BTW, those checks aren't that much. my brother still occasionally sees checks for past performances, but nothing he could live on. I also once saw an ad he was in on a cable channel that he said he never got paid for. If it had been on broadcast tv I believe he would have gotten a check.

[Khaptain]

How to detect a clone

I don't see how you can detect a clone within a video game ?

Aren't all actors, excepting the FMV stuff, just digital representations of characters. How would one know the difference between a clone and a full on AI generated character ?

[Neil Barnes]

Re: How to detect a clone

Isn't that rather the issue? You can't tell if it's me, a legitimate licensed copy of me, or an illicit copy... but either way I would want paying.

[Khaptain]

Re: How to detect a clone

I understand what you are saying but how do we tell if it's you or just something similar to you..

Actors like De Niro or Morgan Freeman have a very strong identity, if AI were to clone them we would know it was a clone. However B rate actors that have few identifiable or unique characteristics would be impossible to recognize.

In the end AI will be strong enough to be able to create unique characteristics per AI character, with no relation to real world persons, and at this point the real world actors will have no legs to stand on.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: How to detect a clone

I'm not a video game player, and have zero knowledge of them, but the question I ask is whether the games headline the actors playing therein?

If so, will they continue to headline them, even if the actors are AI versions? Or will they declare that the game is actor-free? (And of course, not having to pay those _ridiculously_ expensive actor's fees, the price of the game will be proportionally reduced, no?)

Whether an AI-generated persona is a suitable object to insert into a game is a different question. The question still remains: if it's a copy or an emulation of me, why aren't I getting paid? And is my legion of fans being sufficiently informed that this game may contain simulacra and not the real thing?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: How to detect a clone

"If so, will they continue to headline them, even if the actors are AI versions? Or will they declare that the game is actor-free? (And of course, not having to pay those _ridiculously_ expensive actor's fees, the price of the game will be proportionally reduced, no?)"

It's already happing in Youtube videos. Something you could read in 5 minutes or less is being pushed as a video on Youtube with an AI voice reading it, often with a few vaguely related photos slowly sliding around in the "video" to make it seem like there there's actual motion in the "video". Mostly it's obvious not just because of the production style, but frequently because there are huge audio "disconnects" almost from the start where the person creating the video didn't bother to listen back to what the AI "narrator" is saying, and the AI frequently gets things wrong when "reading" the script., in particular peoples names and abbreviations and odd pauses based on punctuation in the script. I heard one just the other day that referred to World War I as "World War Eye" FFS. I can sometimes spot them from the thumbnail and title, and almost always within the first 10 seconds or so of playback and click away immediately.

[doublelayer]

Re: How to detect a clone

I don't care if they make AI-generated images and use them as characters. I do care if they decide they have the right to duplicate people without asking and with no limitation on what they do with them. This doesn't matter whether those people are recognizable, famous, well-paid, or anything else. If they want to do that, they can write a contract that says "We want to record video of you and use it to generate more video of a fake character that will look exactly like you, and that generated video will show you doing anything we want", then ask people how much they have to be paid to agree to it. I don't mind if people do agree to it, and I suspect that you'll find many who don't mind at all. However, don't hide that's what you're doing, don't assume that something else automatically grants you the right to do it, and if you have problems getting people you want to agree to this, consider adding on some extra restrictions.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: How to detect a clone

It already is, SUNO can produce perfect music, lyrics and vocals, including solos, etc. that is virtually indistinguishable from performed music. If they can do this then why not dialog.

Voice acting, unless you want a recognizable celebrity voice, is soon to be a thing of the past! I can see full interactive gaming with NPCs capable if fully interacting with the player. The Union is desperately trying to slow the train that is leaving the station. As much as I detest AI and everything to do with it, we humans are just too stupid to see we are creating our own demise!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How to detect a clone

There are so many things not good about artificial voices. don't mind the train announcing the arrival times on the T, but when they're used for narration or actual dialog they fail on so many levels. Simple example from the early version of google maps saying to turn left on a road that would take me to Hartford court. That would be south on I91 in new England. Another more recent was 5 dash 10 minutes on the platform at a train station. It's more likely that you'll hear cadence that just isn't right or some times slightly different pronunciations of the same word. Of course if I heard really good artificial speech, i wouldn't realize it was artificial, but so far that doesn't seem to have happened. Most recently, today it was a youtube video discussing the starliner's delay on returning to earth. script writer was redundant, repeated the same information more than once, but the voice over was pretty good, but not human. Stopped listening less than half way through.

[Version 1.0]

Re: How to detect a clone

And what's going to happen in the future, with AI starting to replace all the actors and then maybe replacing every singer and musical player. Will AI be "writing" new books for us too? The current intellectual environment will probably make all these changes seem reasonable but how will it proceed? After many years will AI start to make more money by spamming everybody with everything we're watching and listening to?

The icon refers to everything I'm going to describe now ... I guess my "bias" is that I'm still watching the first CATS movie (not the second version) every month with amazing actors and actresses performances, and I'm listing to the Grateful Dead every day while I drive. Calm last night playing The Planets by Gustav Holst (so glorious, it's a record) and I'm always happy reading fully human thoughts from Graham Hancock too. This is all a world that I can't see AI ever imitating in the future.

[TimMaher]

Re: “ The Planets”

And just think, Pluto has come and gone since then.

[Version 1.0]

Re: “ The Planets”

Yes, our opinion of Pluto as a planet has changed, based on research comparing the size of Pluto and the gravitational influence of another unknown planet further away that we still can't see. Human research opinions are always optional and may change when we continue our research, for example we don't KNOW how our solar system was created because we were not here watching it when it was created, we simply have opinions based on our research and, unlike AI opinions, human researchers are always comfortable thinking much deeper about our thoughts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: “ The Planets”

Our opinion?

Opinions are like arseholes, everybody has one.

[Khaptain]

Re: How to detect a clone

"And what's going to happen in the future, with AI starting to replace all the actors and then maybe replacing every singer and musical player. Will AI be "writing" new books for us too? "

The only ones that will be replaced are those that cost too much for the music industry, every one else will just keep jamming. AI and actual musicians are not mutually exclusive.

Real actors will return to the Theatre to see plays that were written by both AI and real world writers. .

It's not a fight for survival, it's merely an evolution...

Did Gutenberg kill of all of the storytellers ?

Did the keyboard put and end to handwriting ?

Did the Internet put an end to buying books ?

Did the media/social media kill of all hope within society.( don't answer that).....

[Ropewash]

Re: How to detect a clone

The answer to all of the above is yes.

Certainly the artforms could be said to have evolved each time, but in each instance something of value was lost.

Killing the storytellers ended our first-person relationship with those who tell stories.

Killing handwriting made written communication more homogenous and devoid of personality.

Killing books, and most of the stores in my city are now gone, ended our concept of ownership of the medium. We now lease our books.

Social media is anything but.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: How to detect a clone

And what happens when we can create realistic holographic images? Then there will be no need for real actors even on stage. Unless it is for the nostalgia of the "theater"!

The music being created by AI is quite good. Better than a lot of the pablum being produces by humans lately. Granted, many of those song writers probably could produce better material but they are being paid well to produce that crap the public wants to consume.AI can produce the same crap!

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: How to detect a clone

"Will AI be "writing" new books for us too?"

It already is. Just look on Amazon or other e-book purveyors and you will easily find large swathes of books from the same "author" who had no published presence and then suddenly has 30 books out, sometimes in such a short span of time no single human could possibly have written them.

[Zibob]

Video Games Developers Are Ruthless

Could be management or push from publishers too but ultimately video game development is cut throat stuff.

They will ABSOLUTELY drop humans for AI if they can get away with it. And judging by the like of Nolan North in the ps3 days and after, they usually only need one person to do the majority of voices for a vast majorituy of big budget games.

As soon as they can make that none, they will.

And what a better time to try it out then when your staff walk out over fears of you trying it out.

[spold]

Re: Video Games Developers Are Ruthless

Indeed, while they are throwing their toys out of their prams they may find they have been replaced by AIs and no-one noticed. We have sampled you to death and combined you with a spotty teenager AI to produce all the incomprehensible gibberish we need - byeeee!

[Zibob]

Re: Video Games Developers Are Ruthless

One really fun example of the "sampled to death" for replication is the *There I Ruined It* YouTube channel that more recently is making great use of voice replication to make voices like Kermit Thee Frog sing Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice, all to the time and rhythm of Rainbow Connection. Its genuinely enjoyable and hilarious but very impressive too.

"It's hard being Snoop F.R.O.G.G."

[man_iii]

AI videos are a thing

Deepfakes and other AI tech is already here. You could hire some no name actor and do it all and plaster with anyone. Imagine having any famous actor in your home movies. Might be not many see it or you get sued for using their likeness. AI could make a 20% different features so it could look almost like RDJ or ScarJo or Chris Evans in your homemade Marv-Els home revengers. :-D

[Phones Sheridan]

I remember a Michael Crichton film that covered this topic in 1981. Looker

Wonder how long it's going to be before the studios go round killing the actors after scanning!

Studio's have got form tho for faking actors. I remember the stink when Universal used Crispin Glover's likeness in Back to the Future part 2. They used a facial cast of Glover to make the new actor, Jeffrey Weissman, a Crispin Glover face mask. I recall that ending up with likeness protections being forced upon the studios to make sure they didn't do it again.

[steviebuk]

Is Tyler Perry one of them?

Considering he "warned" people of the dangers of AI in the industry, by cancelling his studio expansion claiming it wouldn't be needed with all this new AI.

Well you could, I say, could choose to NOT FUCKING USE IT. None of us want to see AI movies, so employ people and make that fucking expansion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who’s even going to watch these movies?

I haven’t been near a cinema in 15 years.

Don’t have Netflix, etc.

These super hero movies of late look stupid.

[steviebuk]

Re: Who’s even going to watch these movies?

You're missing out. We're selective on what we see and Cineworld, despite heading for bankruptcy have a good idea by putting old movies back in the cinema. I still enjoy the feel of going to the movies, we're selective with the seats though and try to avoid when busy.

[TheMaskedMan]

Naturally, studios will cut costs by using AI characters as soon as the results are good enough. Why pay meatsacks if you don't have to? I certainly wouldn't!

From the meatsack's perspective, this is Bad News, but so was the printing press and the spinning Jenny - they happened, and so will AI characters. Rather than stamping their feet and trying to stop the inevitable, the meatsacks need to work with it, try to find a way to make the technology work for them. Maybe they could produce their own models of themselves, in as many variations as possible, and license them for use by studios (or anyone!). Such models would be protected by copyright, so anyone using them, or one that looks suspiciously like them, without permission could be in trouble.

Just as there are asset stores where you can license a handy 3d model, so you could have actor stores where you can license a character, with appropriate rights to modify as needed, and perhaps restrictions on what can be done with it.

[steviebuk]

No. We like the craft of movies and using AI isn't craft. Much like AI art. It might look nice but you know a human hasn't sat for hours and done it, so it doesn't have the same feeling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, the meatballs should definitely own (maybe even produce) the "models of themselves, in as many variations as possible, and license them for use by studios (or anyone!)" they choose to, with enforceable copyright.

steviebuk's craft acting and movie-making can obviously remain, for connoisseurs, competitions, awards, etc ... but video games are likely ok with (copyrighted) licensed models IMHO.

The main thing is to ensure that the people who's likenesses (models) are used, get properly paid each time that likeness is re-used, per their ownership and copyright of it (rather than having the studios own those likenesses, for ever, which is outright theft, fraud, crookery, and coercion).