Despite claims by the SAG-AFTRA that members have approved the terms of its agreement with Replica Studio of the voiceover performer community, many actors, like Starfield talents Damian Haas and Elias Toufexis, have claimed that the union has not approached their community about the deal.
Toufexis was supposed to provide the male voice for the Space Explorer but was switched to Sam Coe after the team decided that the main character in Starfield would be voiceless instead. Haas, on the other hand, provides the voice for Heller.
According to Variety, the deal will cover the terms of using artificial intelligence in, among other things, providing voice talent for the video games industry. However, the most crucial terms in this context include obtaining the consent of existing talent for AI-generated voice replicas.
In response to the SAG-AFTRA announcement, Elias Toufexis posted on X that nobody from the union approached him or his peers for an opinion on the deal. Haas, on the other hand, was more straightforward, accusing the union of failing their industry again.
Roger Clark, the voice of Red Dead Redemption 2’s Arthur Morgan, said that less popular voice actors in the industry stand to lose much from this deal instead of the more established talents.
Clark explained that the agreement would give studios less incentive to hire lesser-known actors if the big names agreed to have their voices replicated by AI “for a fraction of their rate.”
AI was a pivotal issue in the SAG-AFTRA strike that concluded last month with a deal laying out consent and compensation requirements for major studios that use AI to duplicate an actor’s visage, as observed in the Star Wars films and TV shows.