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As a Guinness world record holder, Hale has lent her voice to several blockbuster projects, and now she’s voicing her support for better regulations around AI.
Everyone invariably makes their mark on society, regardless of whether it’s large or small. For Jennifer Hale, it’s her voice which has allowed her to captivate audiences for more than four decades.
Hale is regarded as the most prolific female video game voice actor in history – attested to that effect by the Guinness World Records. Starting from her teenage years, the Canadian-American artist has managed to lend her voice to more than 500 projects, including the Spider-Man video game from 2000, Baldur’s Gate, X-Men: Evolution, The Powerpuff Girls, and the list goes on (I recommend checking out her IMDB if you want a trip down memory lane!).
However, artificial intelligence (AI) poses an unprecedented threat – even for someone as successful as her – affecting artists’ ability to earn a livelihood like nothing before. “This is the first thing that has presented such an existential, moral and ethical and a societal challenge,” Hale said.
From the looks of it, AI is here to stay. The technology offers businesses and individuals a way to automate workflow and tasks, and act as research assistants – an extra set of brains processing any information you throw into it like a heavy-duty blender, if you will. However, and most importantly, it generally reduces the need for extra human resources and increases profit margins.
So it’s no surprise that AI has massive support – both from government policy, as well as monetary support offered from public coffers and hungry private investors pumping hundreds of billions into the tech, pushing the industry’s valuation to new heights every other month.
And alongside massive investments, the US, the global leader in AI, is tearing down regulations that seek to add guardrails around the development and deployment of the technology. But Hale wants us to look at the larger problem.
“AI is a tool, just like a hammer, and I can build you a house with my hammer, but I can also break your kneecaps and seriously negatively impact your life,” she explained – a comparison she has made several times before.
Fair compensation
The Hollywood Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA for short, has been protesting against the practices employed by production companies when it comes to AI for years. Massive developments in the technology in recent years mean that companies could now use AI to eliminate costs by artificially synthesising voices, modifying already recorded voices and creating digital replicas of actors.
This results in creatives being at the mercy of production companies who could at any point choose to exercise their ability to lower costs by leveraging AI, disproportionately affecting entry level jobs in the industry, sound engineers, voice actors, concept artists and even post-production staff. And in late 2023, the union went on strike in support of writers.
However, in January 2024, SAG-AFTRA struck a deal with voiceover company Replica Studios, setting some terms around AI use in video game productions, including a “fair” and “ethical” way to create digital replicas. Although peace was short-lived as the union led a fresh wave of strikes in July last year after failing to settle on a deal with gaming production companies.
“Functionally, a lot of where these models are used in the industry is in the scratch process – in the iterative process before we get to the actual performance,” Hale explains. Companies often need to hear how a script sounds before they begin recording the final product, and that where most of the cost cutting using AI happens.
“At the end of the day those are humans making choices that other humans are affected by,” she says, “A company is not an entity that can make decisions. A company is a collection of humans. And I don’t care how many structures and legal entities you want to hide it in.” She sounded frustrated that the fact isn’t brought up nearly as much as it should.
In the meanwhile, an interim contract for union members is in place which requires companies to take informed consent from artists over the creation and intended use of their digital replicas, ensuring that artists get paid when their digital replicas are used. Moreover, employers are also required to obtain separate consent from artists over generative AI (GenAI) use in areas other than replicas.
“The video game industry generates billions of dollars in profit annually. The driving force behind that success is the creative people who design and create those games,” SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said last July.
AI can be incorporated into voice acting through transparency, consent and fair compensation, Hale said. However, she believes that improper and unfair use of an artist’s talent through AI constitutes as theft. “Theft is theft, end of discussion,” she told me.
Last September, just a few months after the recent slew of union strikes began, Formosa Interactive, the company which provides voiceover services to popular video game League of Legends, came under fire for allegedly trying to ‘cancel’ one of its struck video games shortly after strikes began.
After the union informed Formosa that the cancellation would not be possible, the company “secretly transferred the game to a shell company and sent out casting notices for non-union talent only”, the union claimed. As a result, League of Legends was added to the union’s ‘struck’ list, and performers have since been barred from providing services to the game.
The future of art
However, not all is bleak. Hale was happy to tell me that there has been an outpouring of support from video game consumers who saw the value in what Hale described as the “indescribable human element” in art.
“The overwhelming majority of feedback I’ve gotten from the world at large is hugely in support of humans – because they’re humans.”
She is steadfast in her belief that technology will never replicate the human soul.
Hale has been in constant communication with those in negotiations and she said that the “disconnect is really the couple of parties involved that have larger corporate interests, because they want to protect the possibility of profits in the future”.
“And that bit of ambiguity leaves actors vulnerable to being taken advantage of and losing their ability to make a living,” she added.
And bar a few individuals with “corporate interests”, Hale is hopeful things will be alright at some point. “I actually have great hope that things will be put in place that preserve people’s ability to make a living.
“And I also have great hope because the people in that room negotiating, many of them do the job [of voice acting] and they want to get back to work.”
Interestingly, with AI taking over the creative industry, perhaps human involvement might be what sets it apart.
“I believe what is coming in the future is a sense that having actual humans in your projects is a mark of distinction.”
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