Baldur’s Gate 3 actor Samantha Beart, who played Karlach, has spoken out against artificial intelligence technologies being used for short-term gain. Speaking to Edge, Beart said CEOs want to use AI to “save money,” but long-term reputational damage may be coming for those who take this approach.
“In the long term, it’ll destroy their reputation, their company, everything,” Beart said, as reported by GamesRadar.
Beart went on to say that actors are unlikely to back down in the fight against AI because doing so would mean, “You’ve just signed your way out of any sort of job or career.”
“We have an industry of highly artistic people who’ve had a calling to do this stuff, and then you’ve got these people with money, who don’t play games, who see it as an easy way to make a return on investment,” Beart said.
Video game voice actors in the SAG-AFTRA union are currently on strike against video game companies, with issues around AI said to be the final sticking point in the talks.
“The dream of the tech industry is to sell off your company at an overinflated price and retire,” Beart said. “And I feel that’s being done with game studios right now.”
Video game voice actors have been on strike since July 2024, meaning the strike has now stretched beyond seven months. SAG-AFTRA video game performers also went on strike in 2016, with a work stoppage spanning 18 months.
A recent study found that the majority of game developers worldwide use AI technologies to make games, despite workers raising major concerns. AI has been a controversial topic in video games and beyond, in part over fears about job losses with fears about generative AI being used to potentially take jobs. Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson has said the rise in AI will lead to job losses in the short term but will ultimately create more jobs total, just like what happened with previous labor revolutions.
In other news, a recent video showed Horizon’s Aloy in a tech demo for an AI assistant–and people quickly voiced their concerns about this. Even Aloy’s actor, Ashly Burch, spoke out to criticize it.