Blog 1: Ethical Frameworks
Published on:
Llama Production’s AI use for Darth Vader in Fortnite.
News Article:
Fortnite Darth Vader AI voice
James Jones, known for the voice of Darth Vader, has had his voice used, generated by AI, in Fortnite. This caused concern when people were able to abuse the Gemini bot being used for the voice to get Darth Vader to say inappropriate and offensive things. SAG-AFTRA (the union for performers) filed an unfair labor practice against Llama Productions (fortnite). This article was interesting to me as a gamer, and someone who enjoys engaging in the discussion of modern AI usage. The stakeholders of this issue include Llama Productions, the Jones, SAG-AFTRA, Gemini, and the public. The main issue is between Llama Productions and SAG-AFTRA, however the public plays fortnite, Gemini is being used to generate Vader’s lines, and the Jones don’t want to be humiliated by an embarrassing use of James’ voice.
The role of Llama Productions is using Gemini to make AI Darth Vader lines, and their ethical concern is giving proper communication of their changes of terms and conditions to the union. SAG-AFTRA’s role is to keep fair labor practice, and their ethical concern is making sure companies don’t violate rights and give proper notice. Gemini is used to generate the voice lines, and their ethical concern is whether what’s being generated is moral to the public seeing it and the Jones family. The public plays the role of keeping companies in check and their ethical concern is making sure that companies respect performers rights and also don’t expose things like inappropriate language to players.
A few frameworks in this situation are virtue, care, and duty. For virtue, “right” action would be the union holds companies accountable, and “wrong” action would be a company using a loophole to further their unfair use. Secondly, care’s “right” action would be upholding and rethinking performers rights to protect from exploitation, while “wrong” action would be loosening policies to dissolve conflict and allow companies to have more rights. Finally, duty’s “right” action would be companies making sure they are following rules and communicating with performers and the union, while “wrong” action would be secretly breaking rules and justifying it to make the game profit. I think that SAG-AFTRA follows these three ethics well, as they are trying to keep Fortnite accountable.
This exercise went pretty well and required me to think deeper into a situation than I normally would. There are more stakeholders involved than I originally thought, and all of them have some sort of play in the situation. The ethics were more complicated than I originally thought, and I had to think about the reasons for each stakeholders reasoning behind their actions.