At SXSW, SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator says smaller game studios are ready to play ball on rules governing the use of AI. ‚The only people saying we can’t are the big game companies.‘
AUSTIN—Months after his union wrestled major concessions from Hollywood studios and video-streaming services over their uses of AI, SAG-AFTRA’s chief negotiator advised big video-game studios to learn from that experience.
“We are not going to make deals with these companies that do not prevent our members from abusive or exploitative uses of AI,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and chief negotiator of Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, said during a Saturday talk at SXSW here.
The odds of a video-game strike are “at least 50-50, or more likely,” Crabtree-Ireland told his onstage interviewer, Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan. “I really hope that we are able to avoid that.”
The basic issues here are parallel to those that led SAG-AFTRA to go on strike last year after studios and streamers put forth proposals that would have allowed open-ended use of AI clones of actors for minimal compensation: How can actors and performers control and benefit from how a studio uses AI to replicate their voices, faces, or bodies?
Crabtree-Ireland observed that smaller game studios are already signing an agreement SAG-AFTRA announced in February. „They’re all saying we can work with this,” he said. “The only people saying we can’t are the big game companies.”
Vaughan opened the hour-long session by having Crabtree-Ireland recap the history of the union’s bargaining and strike.
