SAG-AFTRA Approves AI Voice Actors, Enrages the VA Community
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.
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?
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Hah, clever and depressing remix of that classic quote.
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..."
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.
So much for labor unions establishing worker's rights.
What should SAG-AFTRA have done differently do you mean?
Represented everyone. When animators were adequately represented yet the CGI techs weren't, Disney just stopped making drawn animated films and resorted to CGI, which is all we get now.
Essentially, however unions fail to provide for the working class gets exploited by the owning class.
And it's fair if labor unions can't fix everything, but then let us admit that our capitalist system is broken beyond what labor can do to fix it. Let's stop pushing unions as a solution, except as a short-term one that is going to leave some people cold and hungry.
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?
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Race to the bottom, race to the bottom, race to the bottom again
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
'Til I get to the bottom and I see you again
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ha-ha-ha!
Opt-in until all the work contracts include the AI permission clause and you sign in or don't get any contract.
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.
I absolutely agree with this take. This isn't something that will just go away. Especially for something like video games it just makes too much sense. The best time to address this topic might have been a long time ago, but they are still in a position where they can shape how things will play out. In the short term it might be better to not do so, but eventually someone else will take the opportunity if they don't.
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.
I have no issue with this. Games don't need to be perfect. I like some jank.
This is a tough subject, because I agree with you.
I'm not sure what a good agreement would look like in this circumstance. I think, even if this sounds outlandish, we need to start preparing for a post-work world.
I don't mean post-work in the sense that no one will work, just that the assumption that everyone should find a job is breaking down. Surplus labor is growing, and it's going to grow more and more, faster and faster, in different industries before others. And it's going to be disruptive.
Currently, I think that labor unions are a critical part of securing worker rights, but this is another example that they're not going to be enough to respond to shifts on the order we're witnessing. We need strong unions, but we need a broad social movement towards guaranteed services as well.
And I'm going to hate it.
Oh great AAA games are going to get even worse... I hope indie devs have better sense to not use AI voices at least.
Well, indie studios aren't known for huge budgets - they generally don't include voice acting at all. Between no voice acting and AI voice acting, which is better?
It's a thorny issue. In the position of an indie dev/studio i get using cheap (or free) art, be it voice, textures, whatever. In a way a properly licensed ai trained voice is no different from using assets from an asset store.
On the other hand, the current crop of ai are less than fair about where they source the data, so good luck getting a morally neutral voice right now, leaving aside the legal aspect.
A big issue beyond that is how it'll completely wreck the industry. If Alice licensed her voice for cheap, and I can get it to say whatever I need with minimal hassle why wouldn't I use that over paying more for a voice actor, where I have to wait on them to actually record and rerecord her lines? I'd be paying more for slower results and more work.
Then you realize this is true not just for me but for most groups needing voice lines. This means that even if an individual voice seems ethically sound, considering the wider context and impact on other voice actors it becomes far less simple.
Sounds like a union leadership shakeup is gonna happen at SAG-AFTRA in the very near future
More than likely the video game performers form a new guild/union because they've been getting skullfucked since the SAG-AFTRA merger repeatedly. More and more VG performances are going non-union because they gaming companies can sit out the labor actions SAG-AFTRA brings and the talent is there.
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.
If there's nothing wrong with people losing jobs, then go on, resign from your job. Be the change you want to see in this world.
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.
Just like typists were enraged by the photocopier, or how human computers were enraged by electric computers etc.
You're right, past tech has never had any legal restrictions on how it can be used. In fact, I'm using a photocopier and electric computer right now to put your face in an ad without paying you a cent. Plus the ad is for a perfume that smells like trumps asshole. Good thing we don't have any laws that you can use to stop me!
More power to you brother.
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