Asked about SAG-AFTRA's strike for better AI protections, Amazon Games Boss claims AI 'has nothing to do with taking work away' from actors because 'for games, we don't really have acting'

GamesAsked about SAG-AFTRA’s strike for better AI protections, Amazon Games Boss claims AI ‘has nothing to do with taking work away’ from actors because ‘for games, we don’t really have acting’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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All of which are fair statements, although the extent to which AI will help to solve the problem is highly debatable. In response, IGN asked Hartmann if he had been monitoring theSAG-AFTRA voice actors’ strike, which was called last month for “fair compensation and the right of informed consent for the AI use of [actors’] faces, voices and bodies” in the words of SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.

Hartmann seemed to understand the sensitivity of this topic. “I have got to be careful,” he said. “Because we are a big company and have to deal with all those organisations, so I don’t want to get in the middle of it.” Then he proceeded to state that “When we talk about AI, first of all, hopefully it will help us to have new gameplay ideas, which has nothing to do with taking work away from anyone. And especially for games, we don’t really have acting… The majority of the team sits in programming and that’s not going to go away because that’s all about innovation.”

After voicing his opinion on AI and acting, Hartmann went on to discuss other areas where he thinks AI will “help” game development, which he says is mainly in “the boring parts” such as localisation. “It’s just going to make us translate our games into more languages. Which is great for gamers, because there’s countries which maybe not everyone speaks perfect English and they would love to have [it] in a local language.” Although AI can provide broadly accurate translations quickly, it’s worth noting that localisation is a much more involved process than, for example, finding out how to say “Which way to the library?” in French. It involves translation of a lot of nuanced narrative and dialogue, which may include situationally and culturally contextual jokes and references that require an acute understanding of both languages.

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