Christoph Hartmann, head of Amazon Games, does not believe that the inclusion of AI in game development workflows will have an impact on jobs, partly because “we don’t actually have any acting.”

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

“I mean, I have to be careful about what’s happening here because we’re a big company and we have to deal with all these organizations, so I don’t really want to get involved in that,” he replied. “But when we talk about AI, hopefully it will first help us come up with new game ideas, which has nothing to do with taking anyone’s job away.

“And especially in games, we don’t do any acting… The majority of the team is in programming and that’s not going to change because that’s what innovation is all about. If anything goes away, it’s the really boring parts.”

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

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

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

SAG-AFTRA has been in negotiations with several video game companies and their production divisions 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 profits every year. The driving force behind this success is the creative people who design and develop these games.”

“This 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 to informed consent to AI use of their faces, voices and bodies.

“Frankly, it’s astonishing that these video game studios have not learned the lessons of the past year – that our members can and will stand up and demand fair and equitable treatment when it comes to AI, and that the public supports us in doing so.”

A spokesman for the video game producers involved in the Interactive Media Agreement expressed his “disappointment” that the union had decided to pull out “when we are so close to an agreement.”