By Danielle Broadway
SAN DIEGO (Reuters) – While pop culture fans from around the world eagerly returned for the first San Diego Comic-Con since last year’s dual writers and actors strikes, video game actors arrived to air their grievances about artificial intelligence.
“After 18 months and still getting proposals back as recently as this past week that do not cover all our members and protect all their performances from the unethical use of artificial intelligence,” the chief contracts officer of SAG-AFTRA, Ray Rodriguez, told Reuters at San Diego Comic-Con.
“You know, at a certain point, you can’t just keep doing what hasn’t been working up until now. And we’ve reached that point where it was time to take this action,” he said.
Videogame voice actors and motion-capture performers called a strike starting on Friday over failed contract negotiations focused around AI-related protections for workers, bringing about another work stoppage in Hollywood.
The SAG-AFTRA strike of the Interactive Media Agreement follows months of negotiations with major videogame companies, including Activision Productions, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Take-Two Interactive, Disney, Character Voices and Warner Bros Discovery’s and WB Games.
Fans at the convention, meanwhile, celebrated a restored Comic-Con brimming with A-list stars and writers once again.
“I’m really happy because now Hall H is back, exhibitions are back, so it’s going to be great this year and I hope I’m going to see somebody – I don’t know – famous or something,” said Paola Guerrero from Mexico.
SAG-AFTRA and the National Association of Voice Actors hosted panels at the convention to discuss the urgency of the issues they face with AI.
“When you bring a performer in to render a performance, you take their data, you take their likeness, you take their voice and you use a computer to then be able to digitally replicate that to generate new performance that that performer would have otherwise been brought in to do,” Rodriguez said.
“You are taking their career away. You are alienating from them something that is essential to their personhood and something that is irreplaceable from a career perspective,” he added.
Despite the dispute, major video game companies proceeded with their convention panels. Notably, EA Games announced the voice cast for the next installment of the popular “Dragon Age” videogame franchise “Dragon Age: The Voices of the Vanguard.”
The panel, held the day before the strike began, included voice actors Ali Hillis and Ike Amadi, both known for “Mass Effect 3,” Nick Boraine, known for “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,” and others.
(Reporting by Danielle Broadway and Rollo Ross; Editing by William Mallard)
