The following emerging technology has been perceived to cause high levels of concern among Hollywood animators and video game performers whose jobs are likely to be automated by the technology: As the fight over AI intensifies, these industry specialists need to have legal redress to guard against being displaced by the application they help create.
The controversy around AI building on last year’s lengthy writers and actors strikes that were focused on streaming residual, minimum staffing, and AI regulation. This year, the focus has been moving even more explicitly to what happens when AI is applied. A host of workers behind video games and the animation industry are on the vanguard of this particular struggle as they continue to pull a strike under the unions including SAG-AFTRA together with the Animation Guild. Each side thinks that studios are looking forward to incorporating AI in manners that may severely decrease the market prospects for human authors.
For animators this fear is especially pronounced. However, what is alarming, AI has not progressed to the level of producing an entire Pixar-quality movie, yet sources are concerned that studios might resort to AI to reduce costs in such sensitive areas as CG animation and storyboarding. The Animation Guild’s current contract is due to end this week, and if the negotiations do not produce a positive outcome, the guild will hold a member strike authorization vote to oppose what the union calls ‘uncontrolled use of Artificial Intelligence.
At the same time, the employees of video game studios under SAG-AFTRA are on strike, only 2% of the members refused to support it. Voice acting and motion-capture professionals are concerned that fully-realized replicas of their work resulting from AI could replace them. It needs to be added that the concerns are multiplied by the recent cut in the number of employees – over 11,500 gamers lost their jobs this year.
The rationale behind this call is that unless AI jobs are structural and guarded against the market, AI technology may undermine of commodification of creative work and thus result in massive outsourcing of workers in animation and video games. They both want contracts that restrict AI’s function and protect their jobs to strive towards a future where people’s imagination is core to the narrative in entertainment.
Observing the developments progress, it may the next burning issue of Hollywood labor relations with AI at its core.
