As part of an interview sampled in the 2026 GDC Trends Report, prolific voice actor Jennifer Hale once again spoke on the subject of generative AI and its effect on performers, with a particular emphasis on how the future is still in human hands, even as the controversial technology takes the games industry by storm.
“AI is not going anywhere. It’s part of our reality, and I believe that one must accept what it is,” said Hale. “But we are also responsible for it. AI is not yet an independent intelligence. It’s a tool. And the tool does what the human holding the tool tells it to.”
Hale argued that creative professions like acting are “the canaries in the coal mine” for how generative AI technology will affect the wider workforce, meaning game developers and artists have an opportunity to set the tone for how AI will change work moving forward, for good or ill.
“As actors, what we’re asking for is consent,” said Hale, who contrasted her work being used as training data with the conscious way actors imitate each other to grow as performers. “I don’t want it used in some situations,” Hale said. “I don’t want an AI to do a performance I could have done, because I can inform it with my human soul that is however-many days or years more informed, intelligent, and experienced than it was the last time I worked on that project.
“Control, consent, and then compensation. You can’t take away someone’s ability to make a living and not pay them for it. It is wrong. It is wrong. Ain’t nobody making you do it. You do it, or you don’t.”
Hale has been outspoken about the threat generative AI poses to voice actors and workers in general, previously arguing that “AI is coming for all of us” during the SAG-AFTRA interactive media strike in 2024. So far, distaste on the part of the gaming public has largely kept generated assets out of final games.
If you took a shot every time a developer had to issue one of those jpeg text apologies saying “We used it in the concept/prototype phase and it accidentally slipped into the finished game,” you would already be dead by now. There is one notable exception in last year’s explosively popular Arc Raiders, but even then, its AI voice overs have only been ignored or begrudgingly tolerated, not celebrated.
