Can AI truly replicate the screams of a man on fire? Video game performers want their work protected

LOS ANGELES (AP) — For hours, motion capture sensors tacked onto Noshir Dalal’s body tracked his movements as he unleashed aerial strikes, overhead blows and single-handed attacks that would later show up in a video game. He eventually swung the sledgehammer gripped in his hand so many times that he tore a tendon in his forearm. By the end of the day, he couldn’t pull the handle of his car door open.

The physical strain this type of motion work entails, and the hours put into it, are part of the reason why he believes all video-game performers should be protected equally from the use of unregulated artificial intelligence.

Video game performers say they fear AI could reduce or eliminate job opportunities because the technology could be used to replicate one performance into a number of other movements without their consent. That's a concern that led the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists to go on strike in late July.

“If motion-capture actors, video-game actors in general, only make whatever money they make that day ... that can be a really slippery slope,” said Dalal, who portrayed Bode Akuna in "Star Wars Jedi: Survivor." “Instead of being like, ‘Hey, we’re going to bring you back’ ... they’re just not going to bring me back at all and not tell me at all that they’re doing this. That’s why transparency and compensation are so important to us in AI protections.”