The videogame union ZeniMax Workers United have come to a “tentative”, “first of its kind” agreement with ZeniMax parent company Microsoft over the company’s usage of the latest “artificial intelligence” tools in the workplace. As part of the agreement, ZeniMax will “provide notice to the union in cases where AI implementation may impact the work of union members” and the union will be able to “bargain those impacts” where they feel it necessary. It seems genuinely historic, to me: a tech company formally giving their workforce a say on the adoption of tools that continue to feel like a pretext for efficiency-minded “restructuring”.

The agreement commits ZeniMax to “human-centered AI implementations” and specifically, implementations that are (drumroll) “Fair”; “Reliable and Safe”; “Private and Secure”; “Inclusive”; “Transparent”; and “Accountable”. Overall, ZeniMax will use AI tools in ways that “augment human ingenuity and capacities” and “enhance worker productivity, growth, and satisfaction without causing workers harm”.

“Coming to this agreement was a high priority for us,” ZeniMax QA tester and ZWU member Dylan Burton comments in a ZWU press release. “It’s hard to say how developments with AI may impact our work, but now we can be more confident that the agreement will help to protect us as we navigate the potential adoption of AI into our workflow.

“It is crucial that all workers have a voice in what role AI plays in their work and can hold their employers accountable for the impacts of its use,” he goes on. “This agreement empowers us to shape the ways we may choose to use AI in our work and also gives us the means to address those impacts before their potential implementation.”

ZeniMax Workers United were founded in January by quality assurance staff, and are part of the umbrella organisation Communications Workers of America. Microsoft voluntarily acknowledged the union where other big publishers have fought similar unionisation efforts, in keeping with the Xbox publisher’s neutrality agreement with the CWA in June 2022, which Graham suggested was a bid to stave off concerns about Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard. Speaking of which, Microsoft have also promised to remain “neutral” as and when people at newly acquired Activision-Blizzard studios express interest in forming a union themselves.

The news comes as Microsoft push ahead with various “AI”-based game development initiatives. In November, the company unveiled a couple of tools created in collaboration with InWorld: an “AI design copilot”, pictured in the article header, “that assists and empowers game designers to explore more creative ideas, turning prompts into detailed scripts, dialogue trees, quests and more”, and an “AI character runtime engine that can be integrated into the game client, enabling entirely new narratives with dynamically-generated stories, quests, and dialogue for players to experience.” I’d be interested to read the ZWU union’s thoughts on these projects.