Interview: X-Men '97 Voice Actor Jennifer Hale on AI

Following in the footsteps of the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild strikes of 2023, video game voice actors are on strike after a year of negotiations with big-time video game publishers like Activision and Epic Games. As with those strikes, the central sticking point for video game voice actors is protection against the ever-pervasive use of generative AI technologies.

Among those familiar voices leading the charge in union talks is the stalwart voice actor Jennifer Hale, otherwise known as Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series, Ashe in Overwatch 2, and Jean Grey in X-Men ’97, among many other iconic roles in video games and animation. We spoke with Hale to shed some light on the status of the video game voice actor strike, her thoughts on AI tech, misconceptions about how the industry works (and doesn’t work) with royalties, and her hopes for the future.

Voice Actors’ Strike and Protections Against AI

This isn’t Hale’s first rodeo when striking with her colleagues. She was a part of the committee for the games contract during the 2017 strike. As Hale recalls, the 2017 strike was also the longest strike on record, spanning 11 months. Although actors won some protections in the 2023 strike, many voice actors felt left in the lurch regarding AI protections.

“All of us performers were just the canary in the coal mine because AI is coming for all of us,” Hale said.

This, in turn, led to voice actors going on strike July 25 for new game contracts that would protect them from having their likenesses replicated using AI technology without their consent for profit under the pretense of “greater efficiency.” According to Hale, said efficiency has yielded predictions of 40% unemployment in the next decade and a half for voice actors across various industries because of AI’s wild west integration into business dealings—where money only flows to the top 1%, leaving voice actors in a lurch.

While Hale believes most video game developers would never replicate an actor’s voice using AI, she can’t say the same for the executives who ordain AI use in their work. Key among Hale’s concern with AI is how those in charge of game development routinely prioritize profits over the humans behind the work.

“I think people at the very top in what they call the C-suite lose sight of working people, and they go, ‘Wow, we can generate this much revenue with the thing that we found on the shelf here,’”Hale said.

Negotiation Room Filibusters and Important Language Lost in Translation

One of the main hurdles facing video game voice actor strike negotiations is the formal language being drafted by lawyers on behalf of companies. This not only makes drafting language for a burgeoning precedent like AI protections relatively unexplored territory, but it also leaves room for ambiguous language drafted in contracts that, if signed hastily, would leave loopholes that Hale says will keep voice actors in danger. These loopholes are particularly perilous for voice actors because of how their likeness isn’t interpreted in the same way as it is for on-screen actors.

“One of the things that the theatrical contract accomplished, which was so great, was when it’s your likeness—meaning how you look and how you sound—they’ve got to pay you. That’s just fair. When they create that through AI, you cannot use that same language for voice actors because I can sometimes sound like this or I can sometimes sound like that,” Hale said, changing her voice from a whimsically high-pitched squeak to a gruff rough-and-tumble baritone.

“We are paid to be not our likeness a large percentage of the time. That doesn’t help us. And so you have CEOs trying to keep their options open for the future and actors trying to protect their ability to live in the future. I think some of the CEOs have lost sight of the human beings [and] the actual impact because all this profit gathering, all this profit-maximizing and asset retention is strangling the working people,” Hale continued. “They’re burning the platform we’re standing on and leading us to fall into the abyss without anything. And I don’t know if anybody’s read history, but that doesn’t generally go well, and I don’t want to see that happen.”

The Impact of AI on Voice Actors and Game Dev Contracts

One of the scariest stories Hale heard about AI was about an actor that was hired to do voice-over work for Google, but the company never used it—that is, until someone else at Google came across their voice files and jerry-rigged them into a different project. Because there were no AI protections in that worker’s contract, they were never paid for their likeness being used and had no recourse.

“Now, nobody in that equation had mal intent, but they absolutely cost that actor the ability to feed his family at that particular month,” Hale said. ” And that’s really important, that [AI] qualification is in [contracts] that is not costing the entire ability to feed your family, but when you add up a bunch of transgressions like that, we’re stuck.”

Although a strike would signal to the average person that no voice actors are working on any upcoming video game, the reality is that plenty of games are being produced with union actors while on strike. This is thanks to two union offers: a tiered budget agreement and an interim agreement. According to Hale, the former is for smaller devs—the kind of folks making games in their living rooms; SAG-AFTRA has made an option for them to work with union talent. The latter allows developers to work with SAG’s version of what they want out of their negotiated contracts.

“We currently have 80 games in the first few weeks of the strike that have already signed those agreements and are going into production. What that says is that devs and people who work in this [industry] every day get it.”

“Unfortunately, it’s your high-budget, high-level, corporate-level [publishers] that are given a sticking point. Some of those corporations oversee smaller companies that are the actual devs. And so those actual devs may want to work with us, but the overlords have said, ‘No, you can’t find that because it doesn’t align with our corporate perspective on this.’” Hale continued. “Everybody wants to get that work. Everybody appreciates and respects each other. We just have to get past the lawyers and the high-level CEOs who may not understand how the work is actually done on the ground.”

The Real Reality of Royalties and Residuals for Voice Actors

Contrary to popular belief, voice actors—even prominent actors like Hale—aren’t sitting in the lap of luxury, providing their dulcet ones for various roles and laughing all the way to the bank with piles of video games, animation, and anime royalties.

“We’re not fancy high-price actors,” Hale said. “We’re workaday actors who work for set scale, and we depend on our volume and our regularity of work to feed our families and feed ourselves and keep a roof over our heads.”

Video game and animation voice-over work under a block rate where actors earn between $900 and $1,000 per session. While that rate sounds impressive, actors are lucky to get booked several times a month. And that’s not even considering taxes, splits between agencies, booking rates, and the cost of continually training and honing one’s craft.

“People forget we don’t make that every hour. The average booking rate is, we’ll say, 10 percent, 15 percent if you’re on a roll, 20% if you’re on a real roll. You’re working for free 80 to 90% of the time, and some of that working for free costs,” Hale said. “You continually train. You make promotional materials, go out, meet people, and engage in activities where you’re staying connected to the community and in front of people’s minds. You’re running a business, and you have a cost of running a business, that factors in as well.”

While actors in animation receive residuals, those rates have decreased with the age of streaming. Now, the rate of work that would once feed an actor’s family for a year would maybe feed them for a month. The same can’t be said for video game voice actors because they have no residuals under their current contracts. Even Hale, who has worked on multi-billion dollar franchises like Metal Gear Solid, has to live frugally because she’s never received a penny in residual pay.

Residuals for actors are significantly smaller than they ever were, which affects an actor’s bottom line and makes earning health insurance challenging. It’s no longer possible for actors to make the money that they used to earn by working once or twice a month to gain insurance because minimum earning requirements have doubled. All the while, Hale said, “It would be fine and understandable if times everywhere were hard through all economic sectors, but this has happened at times with unprecedented profits by large corporations. It just doesn’t seem right, and it certainly doesn’t seem humane, and it absolutely is not sustainable.”

The Correlation Between Voice Actors and AI with Gaming Industry Layoffs

Although actors are fighting on the front lines for protection against AI, one of Hale’s greatest concerns is that the same train is also barreling its way through the video game industry. While Hale stresses that actors have no implicit problem with AI being used as a tool—as it often already is in video game development—at the end of the day, actors want protections set in place to

“AI is a tool like a hammer’s a tool. I can take my hammer, and I can shatter your kneecaps and kill your ability to make your living, or I can build you a house,” Hale said. “And the decision point is a human being holding the tool. We’re not helpless in this by any stretch. This is a sequence of human decisions so humans have to choose to do what’s best for not just the 1%.”

As Hale points out, it’s not just the fact that executives in both sectors are holding steady; they’re also receiving unprecedented bonuses and profits while the everyday worker has the threat of mass layoffs and shuttering of their studio regardless of how successful their games were. All the while, C-suite execs will tout record-making profits and reassure shareholders that AI implementations will be essential tools for their future projects.

“We shifted from caring about employees to caring about shareholders, and suddenly it became okay to dispose of the human beings working for your company in favor of greater profits and greater prestige,” Hale said. “It used to be the definition of a good CEO was somebody who took care of the whole company, including human beings who worked and made those profits possible.”

She’s Commander Shepard, And She’s Optimistic About the Future

While it would be easy to be swept up in the doom and gloom of how AI technology continues to invade creative mediums, such as comic books and journalistic writing, Hale remains optimistic that the video game industry and actors will reach a positive outcome for everyone. She also hopes that they will set a precedent for other avenues of the arts against AI.

Hale also hopes fans join in on the cause by calling their representatives in Congress and asking them to support the No Fakes Act, supporting the National Association of Voice Actors—which is actively lobbying Congress for laws to circumvent the gridlock the union is currently facing with defining language at the negotiation table with game publications and their lawyers. Hale also encourages fans to make their voices heard by not supporting AI-generated content in their daily digital lives. That includes not reposting AI content on social media, even talking about how terrible something is, because it will inversely raise the profile of said piece of AI-generated content. Or, as Hale eloquently put it, spend your attention wisely by not supporting “stolen things and be vocal about your preference for human things.”

“What we’re simply seeking control of how our voices are used. We want to be able to consent and say, ‘Yes, you have my permission [to use my voice]’ and we need to be paid, because this is our skill,” Hale said. “I have complete faith. We just have to hold fast and get through this.”

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