Speak up
Videogame actors explain why they won’t stand for AI
The strike is beginning to bite. In the US, members of the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union downed tools in July 2024, and during the past few months we’ve started to see it having a definite impact. In January, Bungie announced that the Destiny 2 episode Heresy would launch with voiceover lines missing, while Hideo Kojima announced in December that two forthcoming games from Kojima Productions, OD and Physint, would be held up as a result of the strike action.
But why exactly are videogame actors striking? The answer can be condensed to a couple of words, or even just two letters: AI.
Sarah Elmaleh is chair of SAG-AFTRA’s Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Committee, and has starred in games such as Gone Home, Gears 5 and Fortnite. The union has been negotiating with videogame companies since late 2022 over issues such as wages and job safety, but it was the industry’s refusal to budge on the issue of AI that prompted the strike, she explains. “They basically didn’t address our AI proposal until that point.”
The union’s chief concern is that an actor’s voice could be reproduced with AI, in order “to profit based on an imitation of that talent that we have, without getting our permission or paying us properly,” Elmaleh warns. Linsay Rousseau, who has starred in games such as Starfield and God Of War Ragnarök, says this is happening right now: “We’re already seeing cases where actors’ performances are used to train AI without their knowledge, and that’s a direct threat to our careers.” It’s humans being replaced by machines. “I cannot think of a more existential issue to face this profession,” Elmaleh says.
Performance director Kate Saxon’s credits include
Mafia 3
and
Alien: Isolation
GAMING NATIVES
Where once game acting was a sideline to be pursued alongside TV or animation, that’s changed. Sarah Elmaleh was at the forefront of a generation who wanted to work in games above all else. “I am doing other kinds of acting because it’s delightful and fun, but my focus and my passion is games,” she says. But while this shift in attitudes has made celebrities of certain actors, that’s far from the norm, reckons Samantha Béart. “I feel pretty invisible in the games industry,” she says. “If this was film and TV, you’d be sick of me now being in papers and doing interviews. This is a kind of underground movement, in one of the most mainstream art forms.”