The Medium identifies a few key trends each fiscal quarter that reveal the most important tensions and seismic shifts in the rapidly and dramatically changing media marketplace. The key trends help you answer a simple question: "What's next for media, and where's it all going? How are the pieces lining up for business models to evolve, succeed, or fail?"
Read the three key trends The Medium will be focused on in Q3 2023. This essay focuses on "Artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing applications and services are increasingly dictating content consumption."
A short essay today. No essay on Monday because of the holiday. I may curate some articles and send out those, only, as I catch up over the weekend on articles the past two weeks. When I was at Viacom, Labor Day was always when the big management changes were announced. So it's a reasonable bet a major management change will be announced somewhere in the media industry.
The use of Artificial intelligence (AI) is a dicey topic in the Hollywood strikes. There are two angles on it.
First, the Writers Guild of America initially proposed banning AI-produced work from being considered “source” or “literary” material and to prevent any writing covered under its contract from being used to train AI.
Second, as Variety recently reported:
Hollywood actors’ union SAG-AFTRA is not trying to ban AI outright, as some high-profile members stand to profit from licensing their likeness rights. But the union is insisting that performers must give “informed consent” and that the right to use AI on additional projects must be separately bargained.
We have not heard much about AI's threat to Hollywood actors in video games, for which 2,500 performers are represented by a separate SAG-AFTRA contract for interactive work (for comparison, there are over 170,000 dues-paying members of SAG-AFTRA). That contract was negotiated in 2017 and AI poses its own set of threats there, as a recent Los Angeles Times article highlighted:
“Although the technology to reuse a likeness or modify a voice has existed for years, actors say that AI ups the ante because it can scrape more information more efficiently and potentially turn it into a plausible clone of an actor, combine actors’ work or pass as a new, ersatz artist.”
The recent passing of actor Lance Reddick this past March reflected the complicated dynamics around this issue. Reddick was well-known for roles in “The Wire”,“John Wick”, and “Bosch.
In the gaming world, Lance Reddick was well-known as the voice of Commander Zavala in the Destiny franchise, both in the console and live-action versions. Reddick’s success as Zavala highlighted the best of what Hollywood voice actors can expect from opportunities in the growing gaming industry. But, AI and the gaming industry's competitiveness pose a threat to that legacy.
Key Takeaway
Gamers' poignant tributes to the passing of actor Lance Reddick's in Destiny 2 suggested live-action gaming may be compelling for actors as an opportunity after Peak TV's demise. But in practice, Reddick's gaming fandom also captures the sum of all fears of striking WGA and SAG-AFTRA members.
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Actors' opportunities in games
Striking actors can still do voice work for games at a time when video games are growing in popularity. As I wrote in “Imagining An EA Sports-ESPN Partnership”, a recent Bloomberg survey which found men aged 15 to 24 were spending the most time gaming ever on average. Also, and recent research from NewZoo which found 9 in 10 Gen Alpha and Gen Z are game enthusiasts, but stream movies and series equally as much.
NewZoo projects the number of players worldwide will reach 3.38 billion in 2023, growing 6.3% over last year. Payers — those who have spent money to play games on a PC, console, mobile device or cloud gaming service in the past six months — will grow by 7.3% globally to 1.47 billion. Mobile is expected to contribute to most of the growth in the marketplace.
With the backdrop of Hollywood cost-cutting and more expensive productions likely to emerge after the strike, there will be fewer opportunities for actors on screen. There may be more opportunities in games. This is especially true in the live-service games, like Fortnite or Destiny 2, which are constantly updated and expanded, and regularly add new content. Digital likenesses of celebrities are a big draw: hip hop artists Nicki Minaj and Snoop Dogg were recently added as characters in multiplayer games Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0.
Likenesses are one issue, but voice is another. The LA Times reported that “Voice actors have recently noticed audio from video games being stripped and modified, and placed on websites to either be put into other games or to perform lines that the actor wouldn’t say.” In other words, game developers have been able to use AI to clone voices of SAG-AFTRA actors.
Lance Reddick & Voice Actors
I think Reddick highlights a particular problem facing Hollywood actors who may see gaming as as an opportunity after Peak TV's demise. Video game news site VGC reported that, after Lance Reddick’s death:
Destiny 2 players have gathered around Reddick’s character, Commander Zavala, in-game as a way to pay tribute to the late actors. Since news broke of his death, dozens of videos and screenshots have appeared online of players making their way to the character’s in-game location. Players have been emoting or kneeling in front of Zavala to pay tribute to the actor who passed away on Friday, aged 60.
It’s a fascinating mix of the coldness of avatars clumsily expressing human emotion why manipulated by a handheld controller, and the humanity reflected in the act of kneeling. The voice of Zavala was always a recording of Reddick speaking. There was never a live interaction between players and Reddick. And yet, Destiny players were able to engage with the actor in a way that made them feel like they had a connection.
The moment highlights why Hollywood talent may move into gaming so that their legacy and connection with audiences may be far more lasting and poignant than a single role in a single show or movie.
On the other hand, the video game industry is a hit-driven business, and everyone is constantly looking for that technological secret sauce. Amoral self-interest seems to be a core dynamic among developers, as the LA Times piece noted: “actors spoke out against game “mods” — in which players or fans of a game alter content — in the popular role-playing game “Skyrim,” which used AI-generated voices based on actors’ performances, cloning them for pornographic purposes.”
Voice actor Brock Powell, described to the LA Times one use of AI to create new performances without the actor’s permission or compensation:
“I’m not just talking about they lift an edit and then pitch it down,” said Powell, who has worked on such titles as “Minecraft Legends” and “Genshin Impact.” “I’m talking about sounds are elongated or manipulated in a way that is not performed initially.”
Hollywood & Gaming
As dicey as the topic of AI and “informed consent” is in Hollywood, it seems highly problematic in gaming because “informed consent” may mean little against the forces of the video game medium, especially in live action.
Do we know if Reddick’s voice is being cloned right now? Yes. Can we identify those use cases in games? AI creates end-arounds that seem increasingly difficult to prove came from a specific actor.
That’s the tragedy lurking in the background of gaming’s growth and Hollywood’s content cutting trends: gamers' tributes to the passing of actor Lance Reddick's passing in online game may have made live-action gaming more compelling as a creative medium. But in practice, the growing medium may be the sum of all fears that striking WGA and SAG-AFTRA members have for the future of Hollywood.