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Taylor Swift Prepares for an Epic Journey to the Super Bowl. Will She Make It?

US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift made history with her fourth Album of the Year Grammy, this time for 'Midnights'. Valerie Macon / AFP
US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift made history with her fourth Album of the Year Grammy, this time for 'Midnights'. Valerie Macon / AFP
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Taylor Swift Prepares for an Epic Journey to the Super Bowl. Will She Make It?

US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift made history with her fourth Album of the Year Grammy, this time for 'Midnights'. Valerie Macon / AFP
US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift made history with her fourth Album of the Year Grammy, this time for 'Midnights'. Valerie Macon / AFP

Will she make it?
Taylor Swift's last song will still be ringing in the ears of thousands of fans at the Tokyo Dome on Saturday night when the singer is expected to rush to a private jet at Haneda airport that will take her on a time-zone-spanning journey to see her boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, play in the Super Bowl in Las Vegas.
The prospect of this race against time, crossing nine time zones and the international date line, has fired imaginations, and speculation, for weeks.
At Saturday night’s concert, there was plenty of evidence of the unique cultural phenomenon that is the Swift-Kelce relationship, a nexus of professional football and the huge star power of Swift. In addition to sequined dresses celebrating Swift in the packed Tokyo Dome, there were Travis Kelce jerseys and hats and other gear celebrating his team, the Kansas City Chiefs. Some in Tokyo spent thousands of dollars to attend the pop superstar’s concerts this week.
To call the worldwide scrutiny of Swift's travels intense is an understatement.
Fans have tracked her jet. The planet-warming carbon emissions of her globe-trotting travels have been criticized. Officials have weighed in on her ability to park her jet in Las Vegas airports.
Even Japanese diplomats have gotten into the act. The Japanese Embassy in Washington posted on social media that she could make the Super Bowl in time, including in their statement three Swift song titles – “Speak Now”, “Fearless” and “Red."
“If she departs Tokyo in the evening after her concert, she should comfortably arrive in Las Vegas before the Super Bowl begins,” it said.
Office worker Hitomi Takahashi, 29, bought matching Taylor Swift sweatshirts along with her friend and was taking photos just outside of the dome on Saturday. “I hope she can return in time. It’s so romantic,” she said.
She is aware of the criticisms Swift is facing about her private jets, but said the singer was being singled out unfairly.
“Many other people are flying on business, and she is here for her work. She faces a bashing because she is famous and stands out,” Takahashi said.
Swift has been crisscrossing the globe this week already.
Before coming to Asia, she attended the Grammys in Los Angeles, winning her 14th Grammy and a record-breaking fourth Album of the Year award for “Midnights.” The show was watched by nearly 17 million people. She also made a surprise announcement that her next album is ready to drop in April.
Then the four concerts in Tokyo, and now apparently a rushed trip to try to make it to Las Vegas to watch Kelce, the tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, play in the Super Bowl. She has followed Kelce for much of the Chiefs’ season.
If it all goes as planned she’s then expected to fly to Australia later this week to continue her tour.
“This week is truly the best kind of chaos,” Swift posted Wednesday on Instagram.

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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)

Hollywood's video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the two sides remained split over the regulation of generative AI. A spokesperson for the video game producers, Audrey Cooling, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a "performer" is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.

"The industry has told us point blank that they do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement," SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical performances are being treated as "data."

Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

"We strike as a matter of last resort. We have given this process absolutely as much time as we responsibly can," Rodriguez told reporters. "We have exhausted the other possibilities, and that is why we’re doing it now."

Cooling said the companies' offer "extends meaningful AI protections."

"We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations," she said.

Andi Norris, an actor and member of the union's negotiating committee, said that those who do stunt work or creature performances would still be at risk under the game companies' offer.

"The performers who bring their body of work to these games create a whole variety of characters, and all of that work must be covered. Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me as I sit here, when, in truth, on any given week I am a zombie, I am a soldier, I am a zombie soldier," Norris said. "We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer giving a full performance on stage next to a voice actor isn’t a performer."

The global video game industry generates well over $100 billion dollars in profit annually, according to game market forecaster Newzoo. The people who design and bring those games to life are the driving force behind that success, SAG-AFTRA said.

Members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the authority to strike. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strikes by the union, which lasted four months.

The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.

The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 "off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers," according to the union.

Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that covered independent and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected. Games signed to an interim interactive media agreement, tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.