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TL;DR: their argument is that using AI trained on an actor, even with said actor's blessing, is unfair because it shuts out other actors who used to get work imitating that voice.
ie. It's Rent Seeking at this point.
A little more than that, actually.
The company says Llama Productions chose to replace human performers' work with AI technology but did so “without providing any notice of their intent to do this and without bargaining with us over appropriate terms.” As such, SAG-AFTRA has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the company with the NLRB.
While I agree it’s better to use real voice actors in most acting & pre-recorded situations, the audio is dynamically generated on the fly in Fortnite Darth, it’s all AI responses, including referring to you by the name of your skin/character you happen to be playing as.
I’m not sure how that could work with a pre-recorded actor, unless they program a whole AI vocal off them which while possible is a much bigger undertaking I believe?
Had a go with it today, & it was quite fun & novel, especially how it refers to you by name & asks some specific questions on things you’re doing in game at that moment, & responds to questions you ask it in a relatively good if simple/limited way. It’s obviously a fairly basic implementation so far, but this is likely the beginning of a lot of in game NPC character content whether we like it or not…
I don't think dynamic generation is the right argument here. They could have an actor literally playing the character, like how character actors at Disney World interact with you. I think the argument here is scale. I'm assuming that there are a ton of instances of Vader and not enough actors to keep up with demand.
From how it sounds, especially with the actor's permission, this seems like my preferred way of using AI-generated voices.
I'd really want to make sure any legal language around actor AI permissions is built to avoid coaxing though - like including it as an "industry standard" clause for infinite use when recording a single audition. Ideally, the voice would always "belong to" the actor it came from, and would only be licensed on specific uses, like "This NPC within this game mode, available for 8 weeks in summer of 2025". No idea if that's what they did here.
Finally, EA Games open worlds will have something interesting for the first 3 days
Also the fact that Epic did this without notifying the union or giving them a chance to bargain
How is there any barganing when the tech is for INFINITE voice lines..
Epic signed a contract with the union stating that they would bargain (and then willfully violated it).
Well ... let me calculate this ... that makes ... Infinite money ... Please!