‘We Need to Be Vigilant’: Voice Actors, SAG-AFTRA Hit Comic-Con to Talk Protections Against AI

This year’s San Diego Comic-Con is still taking place amid the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes, and several voice actors and some major leaders within the actors’ guild, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), took the opportunity to talk about one of the biggest concerns facing the industry right now: AI.

It’s a concern that’s become more public after SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland revealed the Hollywood studios’ shocking proposal regarding AI: that the studios should be able to pay a background actor for one day’s work, scan their likeness, and use it without additional consent or compensation forever. If that sounds like it’s right out of a Black Mirror episode, well, it kind of is the subject of Season 6 premiere Joan Is Awful, and the similarity was not lost on the participants of a Comic-Con panel that took place today.

“I would like to personally thank Netflix for making us a promo video for exactly what we are fighting against,” one of the participants, Mythic Quest and Horizon Zero Dawn’s Ashly Burch, joked.

The panel, titled AI in Entertainment: The Performers’ Perspective, also included Cissy Jones (The Owl House, Transformers Earthrise), Zeke Alton (The Calisto Protocol, SAG/AFTRA negotiating member), Tim Friedlander (Record of Ragnarok, Ace Combat 7, president/founder of the National Association of Voice Actors) and Crabtree-Ireland himself. And although it wasn’t a Hall H billing, the panel itself, taking place in one of the smaller meeting rooms, was completely packed, showing just how top-of-mind it is even at the fan convention. Crabtree-Ireland, in fact, even clarified what cosplayers can do to show their support for the strikes during a press conference yesterday. 

And going back to Joan Is Awful, Crabtree-Ireland referenced it when talking about one of the things they’re fighting for when it comes to AI: the idea of “informed consent.” After all, the issue within the Black Mirror episode was that Annie Murphy and Salma Hayek’s characters inadvertently handed over rights to their likenesses because of stipulations that were buried in contracts and Terms & Conditions. 

“You can’t bury stuff in a 300-page contract and then use that to affect somebody’s life.

“That’s one of the issues that we’re fighting over in our AI proposals, is the issue of real consent,” he said. “Not fake consent, where it’s buried in a contract. Real consent. And if it’s not, then it’s not right and it’s not acceptable… you can’t bury stuff in a 300-page contract and then use that to affect somebody’s life. That’s not okay.” 

Alton broke down the three things they’re fighting for in regards to protections: global laws (he specifically pointed to the AI Disclosure Act of 2023, H.R.3831), provisions in collectively bargained contracts, and “transparent technology”: “We have to have transparent technology so we can see what goes into the machine because they’re making money off of that,” he added.

And while AI is a concern for all actors, it’s particularly important, the participants explained, for voice actors to take an active stance now. When asked by moderator Linsay Rousseau (Transformers: War for Cybertron, God of War Ragnarok) if AI could destroy the entertainment industry, Crabtree-Ireland said “it definitely could; the question is, are we going to let that happen?”

“The truth is, one of the reasons it’s so important that this panel is happening is voice acting is kind of at the tip of the spear in terms of how AI can actually either be used to lift people up and enhance the opportunities that actors and others have, or be used in a negative way, to steal their voices, to crush human creativity,” he said. “And we need to be very vigilant about that.”

Speaking about how it’s been affecting voice actors in particular, Friedlander pointed how some in the mod community have been using synthetic versions of their actual performances. It’s an issue he spoke to IGN about just earlier this month after voice actors discovered there were AI-generated Skyrim mods that were using synthetic versions of their performances in NSFW situations.

“It becomes dangerous for them, it becomes damaging to their families.

“The mod communities and the fans are all part of the group that we love and we work with as well to help share and grow these games that we love,” he said. “But when you start to get to the point of taking these voices, taking these recognizable voices, putting them into an AI to get them to say something that they’ve never, ever said and it then moves into pornographic content, it becomes a big line that a lot of voice actors are not happy having crossed. It becomes dangerous for them, it becomes damaging to their families.”

And as it stands now, there aren’t too many protections that voice actors have when it comes to AI, as Burch explained.

“There is a provision – if you are a voice actor, it is in your contract right now – that they own your voice across the universe for the end of time in perpetuity, in all mediums,” she said.

“In any technology currently existing or to be developed,” Jones added.

“So that means that they are providing for the instance in which they build a studio on Mars and they want to use your voice in 3020,” Burch continued. “Like, that is what is in the contract right now.”

Jones, meanwhile, acknowledged that there’s “no stuffing this genie back inside the bottle” and that we “have to be realistic and figure out a way to work with what’s available.” She went on to say that she’s been working with NAVA to “come up with a framework to within AI in an ethical manner, so that anybody that uses our voice, we have given active consent, we have control over what our voices are being used in, and we have compensation.” 

She said they’re continuing to work on “actor-first” implementation of AI and in the meantime, there’s a free waiver on the NAVA website that any voice actor can use that addresses some of their major concerns.

“It’s the first time I’ve been hopeful about voiceover in a very long time,” she added. 

Overall, the panelists agreed that it’s up to the people to push back against corporations and keep control and consent over their own identities.

“All of us can stand up to the abusive use of technology to really say, ‘we’re gonna say what can be done with our bodies, our voices, our faces, our likenesses,’ “ Crabtree-Ireland said. “And we must do that.”

Thumbnail credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.