Amazon Games boss says AI won’t take away work, because ‘we don’t really have acting’

Amazon Games boss Christoph Hartmann has said he believes the addition of AI to game development work flows won’t impact jobs, partly because “we don’t really have acting”.

Hartmann made the comments in a new interview with IGN, when he was asked about a major performers strike recently called by the SAG-AFTRA union, after it failed to negotiate acceptable protections around the use of AI for its members.

“I mean, I got to be careful what is here because we are a big company and have to deal with all those organizations, so I don’t really want to get in the middle of it,” he replied. “But when we talk about AI, first of all, hopefully it will help us to have new gameplay ideas, which has nothing to do with taking work away from anyone.

“And especially for games, we don’t really have acting… The majority of the team sits in programming and that’s not going to go away because that’s all about innovation. If it takes something, it will be really the boring parts.”

In an earlier response, Hartmann said he hoped the introduction of artificial intelligence could speed up the development of video games, because it “takes way too long, like five years per game.”

“Ideally we can get it down to three years so we can iterate more, which then will bring the budgets down a little bit. I don’t think they’re really going to get cheaper, but at least you fail faster and then you can go on and go on until you find the right thing.”

SAG-AFTRA’s strike was called last month after the union failed to negotiate acceptable protections around the use of AI for its members, it said.

SAG-AFTRA had been in negotiations with several video game companies and their performance production arms since October 2022, including Activision Productions, Blindlight, Disney Character Voices, EA Productions, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Epic Games, Take 2 Productions, VoiceWorks Productions and WB Games.

Chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said: “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.

“That includes the SAG-AFTRA members who bring memorable and beloved game characters to life, and they deserve and demand the same fundamental protections as performers in film, television, streaming, and music: fair compensation and the right of informed consent for the A.I. use of their faces, voices, and bodies.

“Frankly, it’s stunning that these video game studios haven’t learned anything from the lessons of last year – that our members can and will stand up and demand fair and equitable treatment with respect to A.I., and the public supports us in that.”

A spokesperson for the video game producers party to the Interactive Media Agreement said it was “disappointed” the union had chosen to walk away “when we are so close to a deal”.