Video game actors fight for AI protections and compensation for their ‘digital replicas’ amid a gaming market slowdown

AI impacts gaming jobs

Not all actors oppose the use of AI. Linsay Rousseau, an actor who has lent her voice to characters in games like “God of War Ragnarök” and “Deathloop,” invested in Ethovox, a voice AI model that sources and compensates actors to create digital replicas. She has also recorded audio so that her voice can be licensed and used for synthetic voice models.

“It’s potentially opening up new avenues of revenue that did not previously exist for voice actors, such as providing scratch work for video games,” Rousseau said.

If new tools are not transparent about their sourcing, unintended consequences could arise. Connor Fogarty, a Los Angeles-based voice actor who has been featured in games such as “Dead by Daylight” and “Fortnite,” said that he had heard AI-generated versions of his voice that he did not grant permission for. For example, a fan used the AI audio generator ElevenLabs to recreate his voice and make a “Dead by Daylight” TikTok video.

“I understand people might have attractions to fictional characters, but to see my iteration of the character and my ‘voice’ flirting with some TikToker I didn’t know, it just made me feel odd,” Fogarty said.

The fan later deleted the videos upon Fogarty’s request.

Debates on Reddit have also surged over the ethics of fans using AI-generated voice tools for “mods“, or alterations of existing video games. The lack of control over these tools can create what Fogarty calls a “whack-a-mole” situation, where actors are “at the mercy of fans who made it.”

“It can be frustrating and heart-wrenching when you are a newer performer in the industry, just trying to make some inroads, and there are forces outside of your control and people carelessly using technology,” Fogarty said.

AI is not fast enough yet

AI relies upon prompt engineering, where a model interprets the text to create the closest output based on the data it is trained on. Actors who spoke with Business Insider said that one of the common misconceptions about AI is that it is faster at interpreting directions and delivering performances that bring a character to life.

“You’re literally prompt engineering a person who is a supercomputer of human experience, association, imagination, rendering all of these variables in our brains,” said Sarah Elmaleh, “Star Wars: Squadrons” and “Fortnite” voiceover actor and director who is a member of the interactive media contracts negotiation committee.

Voice actor Sean Rohani, who has been featured in “Just Cause 4” and “League of Legends,” recounted a time when a director requested a line delivery about bravery in the face of fear. In a recording session, Rohani incorporated a past experience of facing the death of a friend who had cancer.

“There’s so many different subtleties, subtle directions, that it really takes a human to give the direction and a human to interpret the direction,” he said.

Elmaleh warns that studios using AI to replace actors might find themselves with reductive products.

“Having that bespoke, human touch is part of standing out,” she said.