Video game actors are going on strike. Here’s why WHIO TV 7 and WHIO Radio [Video]

LOS ANGELES — (AP) — Hollywood’s video game performers voted to go on strike Thursday after negotiations with game industry giants that began nearly two years ago came to a halt over artificial intelligence protections.

Leaders of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have billed the issues behind the labor dispute — and AI in particular — as an existential crisis for performers. Game voice actors and motion capture artists’ likenesses, they say, could be replicated by AI and used without their consent and without fair compensation.

The union says the unregulated use of AI poses “an equal or even greater threat” to performers in the video game industry than it does in film and television because the capacity to cheaply and easily create convincing digital replicas of performers’ voices is widely available.

“We’re not going to consent to a contract that allows companies to abuse …