SAG-AFTRA’s AI Voice Acting Deal Was A Powder Keg Waiting To Go Off

This week, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) really stepped in it. The union, best-known for its work in Hollywood – including marshaling last summer’s actors’ strike, the longest in its history – announced on Tuesday that it had struck a deal with a company called Replica, paving the way for “professional voice over artists to safely explore new employment opportunities for their digital voice replicas with industry-leading protections tailored to AI technology” and “allowing AAA video game studios and other companies working with Replica to access top SAG-AFTRA talent.” Voice actors were baffled. They did not agree to this, and they demanded answers.

Numerous well-known voice actors took to Twitter to voice their displeasure. 

"Excuse me?" wrote Steve Blum, best known as the voice of the Toonami guy and Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop, but who has voiced many video game characters over the years. "With all due respect, you state in the article, 'Approved by affected members of the union’s voiceover performer community.'  Nobody in our community approved this that I know of. Games are the bulk of my livelihood and have been for years. Who are you referring to?"

“Wasn't aware of this until just now, and I'm the exact type of member you're talking about,” wrote Shelby Young, a voice and mocap actor who has appeared in games like Spider-Man 2, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and God of War: Ragnarok.

Many, many more expressed similar sentiments, with others coming out against not just this deal but the idea of AI in voice acting regardless of circumstance. That leads us to pain point number one in all of this: Initially, some voice actors were under the mistaken impression that SAG-AFTRA had completed Interactive Media Agreement negotiations with companies like Activision, Electronic Arts, Warner Bros, and Epic Games – over which the union authorized a strike in 2023 – for AI usage across the entire industry. In reality, the triumphantly-touted deal, announced during annual tech fetishist gathering CES, only covered Replica. SAG-AFTRA’s wording failed to convey this in a way that left no room for doubt, which it absolutely needed to when dealing with subject matter that, again, video game performers are prepared to strike over. 

Some voice actors took issue with the decision regardless of its focused scale. “SAG leadership approved this during interactive negotiations,” wrote Allegra Clark, who has voiced characters in Genshin Impact, Apex Legends, and Street Fighter 6. “That’s unbelievably shady. We’ve been limping along on a 1+ year expired contract and they’re not even going to let us vote on our own future? And this applies to the committee too, I’m really disappointed. But I guess waiting for the contract to be finalized wasn’t as cool as that Awesome Marketing Plan of announcing it during CES so we don’t even get the illusion of our voices mattering. What a train wreck.”

On Tuesday, I reached out for clarification to Sarah Elmaleh, voice actor and chair of SAG-AFTRA’s Interactive Media bargaining unit. Her statement much more concisely conveyed what this deal is actually about:

“The finalized deal with Replica is specific to Replica, in building their third-party AI solution. The performer would sign with them and be covered by them, and the license to devs would require the protections and compensation be carried through,” Elmaleh told Aftermath. “In the meantime, we still absolutely need a deal on the collectively bargained Interactive Media Agreement proper. Obviously many developers will want to use the same technology directly themselves. Having clear and binding requirements around the transparency, consent and compensation that Replica is in compliance of, must be included in the fundamental agreement covering this work. That’s why we’re adamant and waiting on a fair deal for the IMA.”

So basically, the deal is with one company, and voice actors can opt-in if they so please – they are not opted in by default – and negotiations and payment occur on a per-game basis. Some voice actors took comfort in this, but others still wanted to see the full terms of the deal between SAG-AFTRA and Replica. 

In the meantime, some decided to do a little investigating of their own, by which I mean they took to poking around Replica’s website. This brings us to pain point number two: Replica’s AI-generated voices are… not very good. In fact, they’re bad, bordering on awful.

"Companies are adamant about seeing what they can do with this technology,” wrote voice actor Torian Brackett, who has appeared in Warframe, World of Warcraft, and Fallout 76, after a deep dive into the selection of voices on Replica’s website. “I just hope it becomes clear as they explore just how critical it is to have real people behind the mic. Your game deserves better than ‘good enough,’ and that’s all these voices can ever hope to be.”

On Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA published another statement, an FAQ, and the full contract with Replica (as well as a summary of that contract). It also hosted a town hall that helped assuage some actors’ concerns. SAG-AFTRA clarified, among other things, that it never hosts a union-wide vote for single-employer agreements and echoed the above sentiment about AI already being out in the wild: “While we understand and respect that some members strongly oppose any use of AI in entertainment, there are other members who are eager to embrace new income streams, and there are also members who would engage with new technologies under the right circumstances,” SAG wrote in its FAQ. “The reality is that this area is already developing, with foreign and non-union companies setting terms and conditions that, at best, are below what our members expect or, at worst, are highly exploitative. The Replica Studios Agreement is an important step toward setting fair terms that will protect our members in this new space into the future.”

Even voice actors who find the idea of AI voices off-putting agree that the genie is, to an extent, already out of the bottle.

“My voice is already being stolen all the time, and AI skills are rapidly getting pretty great,” Tara Strong, who has voiced too many cartoon and video game characters to count, told Aftermath. “There are sites that say, ‘Choose Tara Strong as Bubbles for your new show’ or  ‘Choose Tara Strong as Raven,’ and we have to send them cease-and-desists, but there’s probably no way to keep track of all of them. … Not sure we can stop it, so solutions must be worked on.”  

Those who negotiated the Replica deal on SAG-AFTRA’s behalf, like Elmaleh and SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, believe solving the problem means convincing a critical mass of companies to do it right – to provide informed consent and fair compensation in all circumstances where AI doubles of voice actors are used. 

"The industry will continue to evolve and implement transformative tools that enhance our creativity,” the two wrote in a joint statement. “Agreements like these help hold the tech companies and employers to account and ensure members have control over their voices and images, and provide a roadmap for the achievement of these gold-standard protections with other employers."

But there are downsides to this approach. For one, despite prevailing conventional wisdom to the contrary, creating new mechanisms by which some people can get paid is not the same as creating opportunities. If a well-known actor can be in more places at once – potentially infinite places – what happens to opportunities that would have otherwise gone to lesser-known talents? If you can synthesize voices to handle NPC barks and background chatter in populated areas, where do small timers cut their teeth? 

Some companies will look at, for example, the incredible improvisation work done by Spider-Man 2 voice actors and decide to spend the money to put a bunch of human beings in a room, but others – strapped for resources as is – will opt for the quick and dirty AI-powered version. The downstream impacts of that, over time, will likely lead to fewer opportunities for voice actors and worse, less human games. This mirrors Hollywood actors’ concerns around body scans and AI background doubles, another area in which some union members feel that SAG-AFTRA may not have secured sufficient protections for performers.

This will make an already competitive industry even more so, which does not bode well for performers who’ve yet to achieve big-name status. Caroline Kwan, an actor, Twitch streamer, and SAG-AFTRA member, explained that despite assurances from SAG-AFTRA that actors will be able to engage with AI as they please – or not at all – smaller-time actors don’t feel that way.

“Most actors do not have the leverage to say no to their likenesses being replicated digitally; they fear that they will not be hired for that job and will also be potentially shut out of future opportunities,” Kwan told Aftermath. “The overall attitude that I have been seeing is that there is no choice in handing over your likeness, with huge potential to be exploited via the loopholes in the contract’s language. Which is why so many are existentially concerned that AI will replace more and more human actors in the next few years.”

With AI usage on an obvious upswing, even unions can only do so much – and even then, that’s largely for the voice actors who are in unions at all. Some actors and organizations are looking to the law for backup. 

“Our larger approach is for legislation and laws to protect everybody who has recorded audio out there,” Tim Friedlander, the president of the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA), a nonprofit that advocates for voice actors, told Aftermath. “A contract is great, but it's only going to go so far. We need those laws and legislation, which we are currently seeing in the works in the House and Senate, which would protect people.”

In terms of specific laws, NAVA is currently backing the No Fakes Act, a bill in Congress that aims to establish guardrails around the creation and use of digital recreations of faces, as well as "a couple of new ones that are coming out tomorrow or early next week that put laws around image voice and likeness" and a new bill in Tennessee that would "protect voice image and likeness as well."  

"One of the great things that we're seeing in a lot of these discussions is that voice is included in the conversation,” said Friedlander, “and protections are being put in place to protect it as well.”

But when it comes to technology-related matters, the government has traditionally moved at a glacial pace. This is why actors are so wary of SAG-AFTRA making even one misstep and setting off an entire minefield: They don’t have many options. If things don’t work out here, it’s game over. Or at least, it’s a new kind of game, one that doesn’t have room for many winners. 

“We’ll see what happens, but I can’t help but feel like we’re selling our souls because someone told us that we can’t prevent the reaping,” wrote Clark. “Maybe I’m being overdramatic, but that’s my job. I’m an actor.”