> The AI debate is pretty dumb imo. It’s not a winnable fight. Background actors and stunt people and minor voice actors are ultimately fungible.
That is the power of solidarity: when the high profile actors say they'll go on strike to get AI banned, their voice will be heard. Almost all of those earning many millions of dollars now started as small scale actors or writers themselves, and while there are a few who got completely fucked over from affluenza, most still remember their roots and know who and what was responsible for them being able to rise where they are.
This is something that the IT industry could finally learn... for example, if the AWS Cloud engineers, support staff and all the other high paid employees went on strike in solidarity with their delivery workers who have to piss in bottles, guess how fast Amazon would clean up its act?
There's a reason why so many of the richest people in the world made their riches in tech: because tech workers couldn't be arsed to engage in collective organization, instead preferring hyper-competition with everyone fighting for himself and only himself - while not realizing that they could have enjoyed far more of a share of the profits, had they collaborated!
Anything that relies on the generosity of others is bound to fail. Moreover, if AI generated background/voice actors are actually better than non-AI ones on net, then it stands to reason that studios that use that technology will outcompete studios that don't. The SAG might be able to force all american studios to not use it, but unless they can secure some sort of global agreement, that just means american studios will get out-competed by non-american studio that don't abide by the ban.
> Anything that relies on the generosity of others is bound to fail.
Which is why it is backed and enforced by contracts. Unions in moviemaking, mining or construction have a long (and bloody) tradition... there's a reason why inane-seeming rules such as only members of a specific trade union being allowed to even touch something as a lighting rig, it's to prevent greedy studios from using staff with lower-paying jobs to undercut collective agreements.
Think outside of the box and now you'll realize that as inane as it sounds, what it guarantees is that money ends up as wages in the pockets of the workers instead of profit for the bosses.
> The SAG might be able to force all american studios to not use it, but unless they can secure some sort of global agreement, that just means american studios will get out-competed by non-american studio that don't abide by the ban.
Western audiences generally want Western actors and stories, Hollywood is where the money, connections and expertise is. Many have tried to outcompete American studios and they all failed - it's either survival off of "national production quotas" for TV networks for them or domestic focused/otherwise niche content ("Bollywood", anime).
This relatively simple power balance is what gives the SAG the leverage it has.
Yeah but it's still niche in comparison. Out of the top 20 movies in 2022 [1], 18 were from Western studios, the two others were Chinese of which one was a domestic-only propaganda movie.
Anime are way cheaper than anything on this list to produce and many of them are available on streaming platforms runned by ads, looking at the top 20 movies 2022 do not show how actually impactful anime are in the western world. Nowadays it's even sometimes hard to find an illustrator on Twitter that was not heavily influenced by anime.
Edit: and of course the vast majority of anime are animated series, not movies.
> Western audiences generally want Western actors and stories, Hollywood is where the money, connections and expertise is.
IMO, it feels like hubris to draw linear projections near technological and sociological event horizons.
I am amazed how "television" is rapidly becoming interactive. We now more or less have "ractors" from Stephenson's Diamond Age, and series are being refined by fan feedback as they are being produced.
I feel confident that any pre-covid forms of entertainment are going to become as esoteric as radio plays and news reels are today.
I'm not sure what you mean specifically by esoteric.
Youtube videos today (basically post 2015ish) are mosty radio plays and news reels. The time where innovation happened on that platform has passed, too many youtubers just sit down and read a script to still images or borrowed video.
> if AI generated background/voice actors are actually better than non-AI ones on net
For now there's certainly no risk at all of that, unless you've seen something I haven't?
I disagree with your OP, a union's power isn't derived by its most powerful members, it's derived by solidarity against a large amount of people. If it's strong enough you can force the industry into union only contracts which makes even the powerful members of your profession need to maintain solidarity - SAG-AFTRA is the perfect example.
As for American studios outcompeted, I think that's an oversimplification of the videogame market. People buy terrible games all the time such as all the buggy AAA crap that's been coming out of certain American studios. Not to mention the awful mobile games industry which is worth billions... Quality of voice acting alone doesn't seem like something that could make or break an entire nation's game industry.
> I disagree with your OP, a union's power isn't derived by its most powerful members, it's derived by solidarity against a large amount of people.
Large amounts of people yes, but it needs the high-skilled (or in case of the movie studios, the high-demand) people in the boat, those that a company can't replace on a whim. Walmart, Starbucks and the likes - corporate doesn't care even about closing down an entire location just because there's unionization talks. People dishing out coffees or stocking shelves can be replaced in an instant, corporate doesn't (need to) care.
But the high-skilled labor? Finance, HR, admin in the corporate office... if they were to strike in solidarity with the peasants, corporate would have a much more difficult time to replace them.
> But the high-skilled labor? Finance, HR, admin in the corporate office... if they were to strike in solidarity with the peasants, corporate would have a much more difficult time to replace them.
And they should, while their skills are “high-skilled”.
Every chance there’s the generic executive looking to cut costs, and the hard to quantify losses like reputation; security; maintenance; and longevity get pushed aside.
> And they should, while their skills are “high-skilled”.
They won't however, as anti-union propaganda (and in IT, ungodly amounts of venture capital) has convinced them that they'd have a better chance at salary raises if they could have individual negotiations based on something they can control (i.e. work performance metrics) than if they were to collectively negotiate.
Young generations thankfully don't drink the koolaid any more, as they see how they live and how their parents lived at the same age.
Unions don't rely on the generosity of others, they rely on shared economic interest.
In any supply chain whoever is able to consolidate and monopolize has economic power over their suppliers and customers. This sets off a chain reaction of consolidation as everyone else has to get bigger in order to protect their margins from being eaten by Amazon and Wal-Mart.
Unions are no different. If your industry is two or three companies you can't leave for a better job. So you have to either collectively negotiate or not negotiate at all.
While I disagree that AI is presently capable of replacing voice actors, I don't think it matters. We already have a global agreement that impacts AI, which is the copyright on the training data used in the models[0]. While you probably can't stop someone from training on public data entirely[1], you definitely can prohibit the use of derived models to generate work that competes in the same market using copyright.
US businesses were able to break the backs of working-class unions like UAW using free trade agreements with countries that don't respect organized labor. Mexico and China[2] are hideously anti-union in ways that would be patently illegal in the US. I'm not entirely sure this process would work for creative talent. It would require Hollywood to completely undermine their cultural hegemony and shut down their own productions in favor of foreign cinema from Japan and the EU - countries that have explicitly been in favor of ML training on public data.
[0] Unless you're worried about the North Korean film industry adopting AI, in which case...
[1] There are some lawsuits attacking generative AI on this basis but I expect fair use to block those cases
The thing is, when "background actors" get replaced by AI, how will acting get new actors? Or what protects even large actors from studios using their face metrics and voice data which they have from CGI work to just use these datasets to "recreate" the actors without their consent?
> The thing is, when "background actors" get replaced by AI, how will acting get new actors?
Actors don’t break out by virtue of their stellar background acting work.
> Or what protects even large actors from studios using their face metrics and voice data which they have from CGI work to just use these datasets to "recreate" the actors without their consent?
Why would you bother recreating someone when you could generate someone better fit for the role?
>Actors don’t break out by virtue of their stellar background acting work.
Indeed. But it's a paying job that gives one the opportunity to learn how a film set works, and gain skills that will be useful later. Think of it as an internship, if you like. That, you'll surely agree, has some value?
>Why would you bother recreating someone when you could generate someone better fit for the role?
But, they're not doing that! They're taking background actors' images, and copy-pasting them into other scenes, and other works. That seems... Unjust? I mean, that's me, isn't it? Fair enough (I suppose), if they create an entirety synthetic person (that's totally been a thing for decades, for massive, anonymous crowds), but if you make something that's based on me, looks like me, moves like me, sounds like me, isn't that partly my creation, and shouldn't I get some credit, and some compensation?
I mean, maybe someday they may create entirely synthetic background actors, and then the point will be moot, but for now they're not quite there, and they're trying to get away with using actual peoples' work in ways that weren't ancicipated, and for which they were not compensated.
> Think of it as an internship, if you like. That, you'll surely agree, has some value?
Sure. I generally agree that the loss of background actors would be harmful to actors, most of whom are poor.
> But, they're not doing that! They're taking background actors' images, and copy-pasting them into other scenes, and other works.
This is not clear. I think what you are saying and what SAG are saying is incorrect because frankly it doesn’t make sense to me. The studios have said those narratives are grossly incorrect, and I am inclined to agree simply because they do not make economic sense. Background actors are cheap and better than trying to “paste” them into future scenes. But I don’t really care because the actual thing we should care about is the near term future where background actors are simply generated entirely, which is the primary threat and completely unchallenged by the current debate being had.
That’s the problem. The argument is the problem. Not the general plight of the small actors. Any belief that they are solving their current problems or future proofing themselves is painfully naive.
> That is the power of solidarity: when the high profile actors say they'll go on strike to get AI banned, their voice will be heard
If you think there is a world possible where there is a working AI generating technology that can produce good results, but it's banned because some high profile actors wanted it so, you are delusional. It's like saying cars would be banned because most prominent stable owners and horse breeders would object to that. It just not something that can happen. If that technology would exist and would be feasible financially, that's what would happen. If that'd require moving production to Mexico or Shanghai or Nauru, that's what would happen. No amount of striking would change that. It may delay it a tiny bit and give some (mostly very rich) people a tiny bit of a longer run, since some big movies rely on star power and need big names to push the marketing, but you can't just pretend the technology doesn't exist if it does.
That is the power of solidarity: when the high profile actors say they'll go on strike to get AI banned, their voice will be heard. Almost all of those earning many millions of dollars now started as small scale actors or writers themselves, and while there are a few who got completely fucked over from affluenza, most still remember their roots and know who and what was responsible for them being able to rise where they are.
This is something that the IT industry could finally learn... for example, if the AWS Cloud engineers, support staff and all the other high paid employees went on strike in solidarity with their delivery workers who have to piss in bottles, guess how fast Amazon would clean up its act?
There's a reason why so many of the richest people in the world made their riches in tech: because tech workers couldn't be arsed to engage in collective organization, instead preferring hyper-competition with everyone fighting for himself and only himself - while not realizing that they could have enjoyed far more of a share of the profits, had they collaborated!