Mass Effect and Metal Gear Solid icon Jennifer Hale has warned that “AI is coming for all of us,” and asked that “If you use something that originated in our body or our voices, can we please get paid?”
In a new interview with Variety, Hale, who’s gargantuan acting credits stretch all the way back to 1988, warns of the dangers of AI taking jobs away from not just voice actors, but other games industry professionals well. “AI is coming for all of us. Because the truth is, AI is just a tool like a hammer. If I take my hammer, I could build you a house. I can also take that same hammer and I can smash your skin and destroy who you are,” the veteran actor said.
Video game actors under the SAG-AFTRA union have been on strike since July 26, chiefly striking against protection from AI. “Frankly, it’s stunning that these video game studios haven’t learned anything from the lessons of last year – that our members can and will stand up and demand fair and equitable treatment with respect to AI, and the public supports us in that,” said SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.
Hale explains that the National Association of Voice Actors has gone before Congress with proposed bills, including the ‘No Fakes Act.’ This would protect actor’s voice and visual likeness against generative AI, which can take someone’s voice and physical identity, and create brand new speech and movements from scratch. Hale encourages everyone to call their representatives and ask that they vote in support of bills like this.
“If you use something that originated in our body or our voices, can we please get paid?” Because now you’re using technology to take away our ability to feed our kids,” Hale adds. “What I wish everyone would do was keep asking the actual question, which is, ‘there’s a lot of money being made here. Where is it going?’ And in the current setup, the way our system operates, and this whole idea of shareholder supremacy, it’s flowing to the 1%. If you flow so much money, you can’t even feed the people who made it possible,” the veteran actor explains.
The Variety interview points out that, when recording the role of Naomi Hunter in the iconic Metal Gear Solid in 1998, Hale was paid just $1,200 for two recording sessions, while the game itself went on to gross around $176 million.
Video game actors being woefully underpaid is nothing new, then, but others have been speaking up about monetary issues recently. Late last year for example, Baldur’s Gate 3 actor Samantha Béart pointed out in a YouTube Q&A that around 98% of actors in the UK earn less than £20,000 a year from acting, and game actors, who don’t earn royalties from their work, are in an even more precarious position.
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