The union announced the deal with Replica Studios at CES in Las Vegas, the world's biggest tech show.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union's boss, said the deal means that actors must agree before AI copies their voices and that their digital copies are kept safe.

He said the union wants to use the new technology to help performers, not to fight it.

"These are the kind of terms that producers can agree to without messing up their content," he said.

"This is a step forward. AI technology is not something we can stop. It's not something we can block. That's not a way that's ever worked for workers in the past."

AI was a big issue in the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, when the union walked out over the use of AI to clone actors' faces.

The union finally got a deal with the big studios that set the rules for using AI to copy actors' looks.

The deal did not stop studios from training AI to make fake actors that look nothing like real ones.

SAG-AFTRA is now in talks with a group of big video game studios over the same issue.

The union has got the green light to strike, but the talks are still going on.

Crabtree-Ireland said the deal with Replica Studios could help speed things up. Replica Studios started its AI platform in 2019.

The company sells AI voices to video game makers from its "ethically licensed" library.

Last year, the company launched a new feature of "Smart NPCs" -- characters that you can't play as -- that can chat with video game players using OpenAI or other AI tools.

Crabtree-Ireland said the deal will create new jobs for voiceover actors who want to sell their voices for video games.

The deal only covers "digital replicas" -- using AI to make the voice of a real actor, alive or dead. It does not cover AI training to make fake voices.