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Video game voice and motion actors announce second strike over AI concerns

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Hollywood’s video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

The strike — the second walkout for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the two sides remained split over the regulation of generative AI. A spokesperson for the video game producers, Audrey Cooling, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a “performer” is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.

“The industry has told us point blank that they do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement,” SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical performances are being treated as “data.”

Beyond Capture Motion Capture Studio
Actors have their motion capture suits calibrated at Beyond Capture Studios. The Canadian studio  provides motion capture services for the film and video game industries across North America. 

James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty Images


Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

“We strike as a matter of last resort. We have given this process absolutely as much time as we responsibly can,” Rodriguez told reporters. “We have exhausted the other possibilities, and that is why we’re doing it now.”

Cooling said the companies’ offer “extends meaningful AI protections.”

“We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations,” she said.

Andi Norris, an actor and member of the union’s negotiating committee, said that those who do stunt work or creature performances would still be at risk under the game companies’ offer.

“The performers who bring their body of work to these games create a whole variety of characters, and all of that work must be covered. Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me as I sit here, when, in truth, on any given week I am a zombie, I am a soldier, I am a zombie soldier,” Norris said. “We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer giving a full performance on stage next to a voice actor isn’t a performer.”

The global video game industry generates well over $100 billion dollars in profit annually, according to game market forecaster Newzoo. The people who design and bring those games to life are the driving force behind that success, SAG-AFTRA said.

Members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the authority to strike. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strikes by the union, which lasted four months.

The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.

Beyond Capture Motion Capture Studio
Actors rehearse movements in motion capture suits in front of a live feed of the scene at Beyond Capture Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 

James MacDonald/Bloomberg via Getty Images


The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 “off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers and background performers,” according to the union.

Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that covered independent and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected. Games signed to an interim interactive media agreement, tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.



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“All hands on deck” for Idaho’s annual potato harvest

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“All hands on deck” for Idaho’s annual potato harvest – CBS News


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In Idaho, harvest season means some high schools offer students a two-week “spud break,” when they help farmers get their potatoes out of the ground and into the cellar. And in some cases, their teachers join in. Correspondent Conor Knighton reports.

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Taste-testing “Sandwiches of History” – CBS News

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Taste-testing “Sandwiches of History” – CBS News


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Every week on his blog, “Sandwiches of History,” Barry Enderwick rescues sandwich recipes from the dustbin of history. Some of the unlikeliest (and even amazing) historical recipes are now collected in a cookbook. Enderwick is even traveling the country, workshopping sandwiches in front of a live audience. Correspondent Luke Burbank gets a taste.

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“Sandwiches of History”: Resurrecting sandwich recipes that time forgot

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Barry Enderwick is eating his way through history, one sandwich at a time. Every day from his home in San Jose, California, Enderwick posts a cooking video from a recipe that time forgot. From the 1905 British book “Salads, Sandwiches and Savouries,” Enderwick prepared the New York Sandwich.

The recipe called for 24 oysters, minced and mixed with mayonnaise, seasoned with lemon juice and pepper, and spread over buttered day-old French bread.

Rescuing recipes from the dustbin of history doesn’t always lead to culinary success. Sampling his New York Sandwich, Enderwick decried it as “a textural wasteland. No, thank you.”  Into the trash bin it went!

But Enderwick’s efforts have yielded his own cookbook, a collection of some of the strangest – and sometimes unexpectedly delicious – historical recipes you’ve never heard of. 

sandwiches-of-history-harvard-common-press.jpg

Harvard Common Press


He even has a traveling stage show: “Sandwiches of History Live.”

From the condiments to the sliced bread, this former Netflix executive has become something of a sandwich celebrity. “You can put just about anything in-between two slices of bread,” he said. “And it’s portable! In general, a sandwich is pretty easy fare. And so, they just have universal appeal.”

Though the sandwich gets its name famously from the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, the earliest sandwich Enderwick has eaten dates from 200 B.C.E. China, a seared beef sandwich called Rou Jia Mo.

He declared it delicious. “Between the onions, and all those spices and the soy sauce … oh my God! Oh man, this is so good!”


Rou Jia Mo Sandwich (200ish B.C. /International) by
Sandwiches of History on
YouTube

While Elvis was famous for his peanut butter and banana concoction, Enderwick says there’s another celebrity who should be more famous for his sandwich: Gene Kelly, who he says had “the greatest man sandwich in the world, which was basically mashed potatoes on bread. And it was delicious.”

Whether it’s a peanut and sardine sandwich (from “Blondie’s Cook Book” from 1947), or the parmesian radish sandwich (from 1909’s “The Up-To-Date Sandwich Book”), Enderwick tries to get a taste of who we were – good or gross – one recipe at a time.


RECIPE: A sophisticated club sandwich
Blogger Barry Enderwick, of Sandwiches of History, offers “Sunday Morning” viewers a 1958 recipe for a club sandwich that, he says, shouldn’t work, but actually does, really well! 

MORE: “Sunday Morning” 2024 “Food Issue” recipe index
Delicious menu suggestions from top chefs, cookbook authors, food writers, restaurateurs, and the editors of Food & Wine magazine.  


     
For more info:

      
Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Chad Cardin.



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