SAG-AFTRA Approves AI Voice Actors, Enrages the VA Community::SAG-AFTRA has approved AI voice actors and partnered with Replica Studios, enraging the voice acting community on a global scale.
… Isn’t sag the one that was just up in arms over AI? Wasn’t that a huge part of the fucking protests?
Yes, but somehow this deal will be okay even though it looks like some pretty big names in the VO/A community were never asked for their opinion or approval.
When it says “SAG-AFTRA Approves” - doesn’t that imply that all union members were given a vote?
In fact, yes, yes it does…
"The agreement between the leading AI voice company and the world’s largest performers’ union will enable Replica to engage SAG-AFTRA members under a fair, ethical agreement to safely create and license a digital replica of their voice. Licensed voices can be used in video game development and other interactive media projects from pre-production to final release.
Approved by affected members of the union’s voiceover performer community, this contract marks an important step towards the ethical use of AI voices…"
I see a lot of union voice actors speaking out on social media that they weren’t even asked about this.
“Approved by affected members” is the critical part of the quote. So no it absolutely wasn’t “all union members”, they evidently cherry picked who voted on this.
Yes, keyword affected members… other members weren’t affected. They didn’t need the whole union vote.
This definitely sounds like a case of the old union saying “Brother brother in the hall. In the field fuck 'em all”.
The SAG protests were pretty transparently about protecting old money. Actors with hundreds to thousands of hours of footage already out there that can be easily turned into AI models.
You only need like an hour of clear voice samples to train an AI VA. More is better, but even a half hour can be enough to be passable.
Here I go again, playing devil’s advocate…
So, this is an opt-in situation. That means that actors still have to give their permission to have their voice used. Furthermore, they must still give their consent on a per-project basis. Further-furthermore, they still get paid when their voice is used this way.
That being said, this seems like a smart move on the side of SAG-AFTRA if for no other reason other than it’s going to happen one way or the other, though it would have been better to do this a decade ago and have more control, but more on that later. AI is a boulder rolling down the mountain, and creatives are the house at the bottom of the mountain. The boulder is going to destroy the house, and there is no stopping it. SAG-AFTRA is taking actions to save what they can from the house and at least make sure that there are protections in place for future houses. This is what happens when no one wants to keep up with tech and has to be reactive instead of pro-active.
We rolled the corpse of TUPAC on stage at Coachella in 2012, 11 years ago. That’s 11 years to sort all of this shit out and set up some protections for using likenesses with the prospect of new tech. That’s 11 years to get your shit together for the future. But everyone was like, “Ha ha, truck drivers, fast food workers, and the rest of the poors will be the first to suffer under the boot of advanced automation. AI won’t come to Hollywood. No one can replicate such masterpieces as Catwoman and Bee Movie. We are invincible.” Well, here we are, and Hollywood and other creatives are caught with their pants down. None of this shit is new. Hell, Hollywood has been making movies about this kind of shit for decades, they were just too busy sniffing their own farts to realize they were the ones in trouble.
So, now, SAG-AFTRA are having to make concessions to stay relevant in an emerging system, instead of making the rules themselves like they should have been doing a decade ago. Is anything going to change? Is anyone going to be looking forward? Or can we expect another strike in 10 years because the policies put in place today were merely stop-gaps and did nothing to shore up for the next boulder the rolls down the mountain?
Race to the bottom, race to the bottom, race to the bottom again
It’s a race to the bottom.
Yes, you can decline to opt in, but the guy next to you (or the guy next to him) will opt in and sell his AI voice package for less than it costs to employ a real person. And unlike a real person, the AI voice package can work 24/7 on 10,000 productions at the same time.
If anyone can opt in, then no one can really opt out.
Is this a good thing? For the bottom line of the people making the games, sure. And maybe 3% of that savings will trickle down to the consumer.
But it’s pretty bad for the voice actors.
I 100% agree with you. That is why SAG-AFTRA needs to step in and make good policies now instead of just plugging the hole in the dam.
This is going to be the future of gaming, AI is going to be heavily involved in many parts of game dev going forward. AI voices aren’t perfect yet, but when they are companies are naturally going to use them.
Companies will use them before they are perfect.
And I’m going to hate it.
If voice actors are represented by the same union as all the film and TV actors then they never had a chance. United Airlines had a similar situation in the 90’s where flight dispatchers were represented by the same union as the mechanics - but were outnumbered probably 10 to 1. So dispatch pay and working conditions were an afterthought to the union and even if every dispatcher voted no, if a contract was good to the mechanics it would still pass.
I’m hoping all jobs are taken by AI and we get UBI.
And yes, I’ve heard all the AI fear mongering talking points. Not interested in the AI will kill us all conversation.
And intelligent debate would be fine.
If UBI isn’t implemented first then we’re fucked. Companies will just use AI to cut costs and discard labor.
No; without unions putting a stop to corporations that idealistic future will never arrive. And that’s pretty simple to prove. Why do corporations do the shitty stuff that they do? Because they can.
That’s the real problem. UBI is often brought up in these discussions as a “maybe someday hopefully” while AI is here, now.
The longer it’s delayed for UBI to be established (if it’s even going to be), the more people will suffer being driven into more precarious jobs or left to misery. It’s already depressing to think of artists being automated out of art to go work on amazon warehouse or something, but it’s not going to stop at that. A lot of service and intellectual work could be automated just as easily, maybe even more so.
If UBI isn’t already here, then opposing AI is the only sane option labor movements have.
That sounds like a dystopia waiting to happen. UBI in many countries will keep you at poverty levels, it isn’t going to be a good way to live.
Can you elaborate? Any sources?
Just like typists were enraged by the photocopier, or how human computers were enraged by electric computers etc.
There is nothing wrong with this news. In fact, it is good news.
We develop technologies, and then we are not supposed to use them? It was obvious that certain jobs had an expiration date, and dubbing is clearly one of them.
If we had to stop progress, we would still be having silent movies, otherwise the person writing the intertitles would lose its job. Or even no movies at all.
