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Hollywood's Video Game Actors Want to Avoid a Strike. The Sticking Point in Their Talks? AI

FILE PHOTO: The iconic Hollywood sign is seen on the 100th birthday of being lit up with lights in Los Angeles, California, US, December 8, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The iconic Hollywood sign is seen on the 100th birthday of being lit up with lights in Los Angeles, California, US, December 8, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
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Hollywood's Video Game Actors Want to Avoid a Strike. The Sticking Point in Their Talks? AI

FILE PHOTO: The iconic Hollywood sign is seen on the 100th birthday of being lit up with lights in Los Angeles, California, US, December 8, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The iconic Hollywood sign is seen on the 100th birthday of being lit up with lights in Los Angeles, California, US, December 8, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

For more than a year and a half, leaders of Hollywood's actors union have been negotiating with video game companies over a new contract that covers the performers who bring their titles to life.
But while negotiators with the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have made gains in bargaining over wages and job safety in their video game contract, or interactive media agreement, leaders say talks have stalled over a key issue: protections over the use of artificial intelligence.
“It is the major obstacle to having an agreement, and this contract area has been for quite some time,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA's executive director. “The fundamental issue is, at this moment, an unwillingness by this bargaining group to provide an equal level of protection from the dangers of AI for all our members.”
Union leaders say they aren't “anti-AI altogether.” But voice actors and other video game performers are worried that unchecked use of AI could provide game makers with a means to displace them — by training an AI to replicate an actor's voice, or to create a digital replica of their likeness without consent.
In some cases, the role of an AI voice is often invisible and used to clean up a recording in the later stages of production or to make a character sound older or younger at a different stage of their virtual life.
“Our concern is the idea that all of this work translates into grist for the mill that displaces us,” said Sarah Elmaleh, chair of the interactive negotiating committee. “They do not have to call us back, you do not have to be informed of what they’ve used your material to create.”
The union has held onto one last option in their battle over a contract: calling a strike. Crabtree-Ireland said that the union hopes to avoid a work stoppage, but will “do what it takes to make sure that our members are treated fairly.”
“Anyone who thinks that we're afraid to go on strike, or that we won't go on strike, clearly hasn't been paying attention,” he added.
SAG-AFTRA members voted in favor of giving leadership the authority to strike against video game companies in September. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s strikes by the union, which lasted four months.
Scott Lambright, an actor who has voiced monsters and non-player characters for games, said AI could threaten jobs by making it cheaper to use a generated voice, while also lowering the quality of vocal performance as an art.
“Emotionally, it’s going to be shallow,” he said.
AI could also strip some actors of the chance to land smaller background roles, like NPCs, where they can hone their craft before landing bigger parts, Lambright said.
“Having those roles gives you the trust in yourself to take a bigger role,” he said. “And if one doesn’t have access to NPC roles, telling a small part of a story... you’re going to have no confidence leading something.”
The last interactive contract, negotiated in 2017, did not provide protections around AI. The 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.
The bargaining group of top video game producers is willing to put protections in place for voice actors, SAG-AFTRA said, but won’t go as far as including other performers, including stunt workers and motion capture artists.
The video game companies covered by the interactive contract include Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc. and WB Games Inc.
Audrey Cooling, a spokesperson for the companies, said they are negotiating in good faith and “have made tremendous progress.”
“We have reached tentative agreements on the vast majority of proposals and remain optimistic that we can reach a deal soon,” Cooling said in an emailed statement.
Amid the tense negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a new, separate contract in February that covered indie and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry giants have rejected.
The union also announced a side deal with AI voice company Replica Studios in January. The agreement, which SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher called a “a great example of AI being done right,” enables major studios to work with unionized actors to create and license a digital replica of their voice. It sets terms that also allow performers to opt out of having their voices used in perpetuity.
That type of agency is why contract protections are important, said Tim Friedlander, president of the National Association of Voice Actors.
The technology doesn't currently exist for them to monitor what happens with actors' audio files, he said — it's unclear whether decades worth of recordings have already been used to train AI models. Performers, he said, essentially send their audio files to the person who recorded them and trust that they will ensure those recordings are "going to be safe.”
Unchecked AI can lead to ethical questions, particularly when it comes to a so-called “synthetic voice” generating voice work that the original actor might not morally agree with.
“If my voice is out there... doing something that I wouldn’t say, now I’m potentially in conflict with myself. Now I’m losing work to my own voice,” Friedlander said.

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Robert Towne, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘Chinatown,’ Dies at 89

Robert Towne, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘Chinatown,’ Dies at 89
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Robert Towne, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘Chinatown,’ Dies at 89

Robert Towne, Oscar-Winning Writer of ‘Chinatown,’ Dies at 89

Robert Towne, the Oscar-winning screenplay writer of "Shampoo," "The Last Detail" and other acclaimed films whose work on "Chinatown" became a model of the art form and helped define the jaded allure of his native Los Angeles.

Towne died Monday surrounded by family at his home in Los Angeles, said publicist Carri McClure. She declined to comment on any cause of death.

In an industry which gave birth to rueful jokes about the writer's status, Towne for a time held prestige comparable to the actors and directors he worked with. Through his friendships with two of the biggest stars of the 1960s and '70s, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, he wrote or co-wrote some of the signature films of an era when artists held an unusual level of creative control. The rare "auteur" among screen writers, Towne managed to bring a highly personal and influential vision of Los Angeles onto the screen.

"It's a city that's so illusory," Towne told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview. "It's the westernmost west of America. It's a sort of place of last resort. It's a place where, in a word, people go to make their dreams come true. And they're forever disappointed."

Recognizable around Hollywood for his high forehead and full beard, Towne won an Academy Award for "Chinatown" and was nominated three other times, for "The Last Detail," "Shampoo" and "Greystroke." In 1997, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Writers Guild of America.

His success came after a long stretch of working in television, including "The Man from U.N.C.L.E" and "The Lloyd Bridges Show," and on low-budget movies for "B" producer Roger Corman. In a classic show business story, he owed his breakthrough in part to his psychiatrist, through whom he met Beatty, a fellow patient. As Beatty worked on "Bonnie and Clyde," he brought in Towne for revisions of the Robert Benton-David Newman script and had him on the set while the movie was filmed in Texas.

Towne's contributions were uncredited for "Bonnie and Clyde," the landmark crime film released in 1967, and for years he was a favorite ghost writer. He helped out on "The Godfather" and "Heaven Can Wait" among others and referred to himself as a "relief pitcher who could come in for an inning, not pitch the whole game." But Towne was credited by name for Nicholson's macho "The Last Detail" and Beatty's comedy "Shampoo" and was immortalized by "Chinatown," the 1974 thriller set during the Great Depression.

"Chinatown" was directed by Roman Polanski and starred Nicholson as J.J. “Jake” Gittes, a private detective asked to follow the husband of Evelyn Mulwray (played by Faye Dunaway). The husband is chief engineer the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Gittes finds himself caught in a chaotic spiral of corruption and violence, embodied by Evelyn's ruthless father, Noah Cross (John Huston).

Influenced by the fiction of Raymond Chandler, Towne resurrected the menace and mood of a classic Los Angeles film noir, but cast Gittes' labyrinthine odyssey across a grander and more insidious portrait of Southern California. Clues accumulate into a timeless detective tale, and lead helplessly to tragedy, summed up by the one of the most repeated lines in movie history, words of grim fatalism a devastated Gittes receives from his partner Lawrence Walsh (Joe Mantell): "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown."

Towne's script has been a staple of film writing classes ever since, although it also serves as a lesson in how movies often get made and in the risks of crediting any film to a single viewpoint. He would acknowledge working closely with Polanski as they revised and tightened the story and arguing fiercely with the director over the film’s despairing ending — an ending Polanski pushed for and Towne later agreed was the right choice (No one has officially been credited for writing “Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown”).

But the concept began with Towne, who had turned down the chance to adapt “The Great Gatsby” for the screen so he could work on “Chinatown,” partly inspired by a book published in 1946, Carey McWilliams’ “Southern California: An Island on the Land.”

“In it was a chapter called ‘Water, water, water,’ which was a revelation to me. And I thought ‘Why not do a picture about a crime that’s right out in front of everybody,‘” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2009.

“Instead of a jewel-encrusted falcon, make it something as prevalent as water faucets, and make a conspiracy out of that. And after reading about what they were doing, dumping water and starving the farmers out of their land, I realized the visual and dramatic possibilities were enormous.”

The back story of “Chinatown” has itself become a kind of detective story, explored in producer Robert Evans’ memoir, “The Kid Stays in the Picture”; in Peter Biskind’s “East Riders, Raging Bulls,” a history of 1960s-1970s Hollywood, and in Sam Wasson’s “The Big Goodbye,” dedicated entirely to “Chinatown.” In “The Big Goodbye,” published in 2020, Wasson alleged that Towne was helped extensively by a ghost writer — former college roommate Edward Taylor. According to “The Big Goodbye,” for which Towne declined to be interviewed, Taylor did not ask for credit on the film because his “friendship with Robert” mattered more.

Wasson also wrote that the movie’s famous closing line originated with a vice cop who had told Towne that crimes in Chinatown were seldom prosecuted.

“Robert Towne once said that Chinatown is a state of mind,” Wasson wrote. “Not just a place on the map in Los Angeles, but a condition of total awareness almost indistinguishable from blindness. Dreaming you’re in paradise and waking up in the dark — that’s Chinatown. Thinking you’ve got it figured out and realizing you’re dead — that’s Chinatown.”

The studios assumed more power after the mid-1970s and Towne’s standing declined. His own efforts at directing, including “Personal Best” and “Tequila Sunrise,” had mixed results. “The Two Jakes,” the long-awaited sequel to “Chinatown,” was a commercial and critical disappointment when released in 1990 and led to a temporary estrangement between Towne and Nicholson.

Around the same time, he agreed to work on a movie far removed from the art-house aspirations of the ’70s, the Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer production “Days of Thunder,” starring Tom Cruise as a race car driver and Robert Duvall as his crew chief. The 1990 movie was famously over budget and mostly panned, although its admirers include Quentin Tarantino and countless racing fans.

Towne later worked with Cruise on “The Firm” and the first two “Mission: Impossible” movies. His most recent film was “Ask the Dust,” a Los Angeles story he wrote and directed that came out in 2006. Towne was married twice, the second time to Luisa Gaule, and had two children. His brother, Roger Towne, also wrote screenplays, his credits including “The Natural.”

Towne was born Robert Bertram Schwartz in Los Angeles and moved to San Pedro after his father’s business, a dress shop, closed down because of the Great Depression. (His father changed the family name to Towne). He had always loved to write and was inspired to work in movies by the proximity of the Warner Bros. Theater and from reading the critic James Agee. For a time, Towne worked on a tuna boat and would speak often of its impact.