The American Actors Guild accepts that AI reproduces their voices, but only under certain conditions.
This agreement, which was announced during CES 2024 in Las Vegas, was made with Replica Studios, an Artificial Intelligence voice generation company. While the historic strike of American screenwriters and then actors over a good part of last year is still in everyone’s memory, artists and studios have this time decided to come to an agreement before reaching that point- there. But this agreement, concluded with a single company, and limited to the video game industry, remains very limited.
The development of AI, a major concern for cinema professionals
If the development of artificial intelligence has raised concerns about the job security of many professions, often rightly, no one has expressed them as strongly as American screenwriters, closely followed by the country’s actors. The two professions, in fact, obtained agreements from film studios and streaming platforms after strikes lasting 148 and 118 days respectively. The supervision of the use of artificial intelligence in this industry was certainly not the only one of their demands, but it occupied a good place.
After this interminable standoff which paralyzed a large part of American audiovisual production for months, the two professions largely won their case, signing an agreement granting them salary increases and severely limiting the use of AI in their field.
But during CES 2024, the Actors Guild signed a deal with Replica Studios, a company that uses artificial intelligence to reproduce voices. The terms of this agreement authorize this company to use their voices in the development of video games, and create a working basis for other similar deals that could be made in this context.
A very structured agreement
If the actors’ union has accepted that AI enters its territory in this way, it is because the signed agreement is very binding, and that the actors concerned of course also have an interest in it. First, it obviously only concerns the reproduction of the actors’ voices, and not their entire image. Replica Studios must also obtain the explicit consent of the actors whose voices it synthesizes in order to use it, and offer them fair remuneration in exchange. Finally, the studio can only use a voice synthesized in this way a limited number of times before having to pay the actors concerned again. This agreement is valid for active actors, but also for the rights holders of the performances of those who have died.
If it shows that American artists are not blindly opposed to the use of AI in their field, it is especially notable for the fact that the activity of Replica Studios, precisely, was at the heart of the guild’s concerns actors during their 2023 strike.
Source : Mashable
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