Arts

Video game performers are on strike — and AI is the sticking point

If you're not entrenched in the world of video games, you might not realize how much real actors have to do with modern gaming.

They provide everything from lines of dialogue, to portraying heroes and villains, to performing stunts – all of this bringing video games characters to life.

Some of the biggest game studios rely on voice and performance capture artists, and all this adds up to big bucks. The video game industry made close to $185 billion last year.

But video game performers whose human performances become computer data, are especially vulnerable to being replaced by generative AI.

Which is why they're now on strike.

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M. Night Shyamalan lays his own parent 'Trap,' and it's truly bonkers

M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller Trap stars Josh Hartnett as a father attending a pop concert with his teenage daughter. But all is not as it appears. It quickly turns out that the entire concert is surrounded by police who are trying to catch a dangerous serial killer in the most difficult way possible. There is a lot going on in this bonkers movie: lots of pop songs, and lots of strange decision-making.

The misunderstood humor of political memes

From the attempted assassination of former President Trump, to President Biden dropping out of the election, and VP Kamala Harris stepping up... The news these past few weeks has been buck wild. And the energy online is similarly unhinged. But what do most people get wrong when they try to interpret the latest explosion of political memes? And what do these posts actually say about how people are processing major events? And are there consequences to just posting through it? Host Brittany Luse is joined by Tatum Hunter, consumer tech reporter at The Washington Post, and Kyle Chayka, staff writer at The New Yorker, to discuss what meaning could possibly be gleaned from the meme madness.