Blizzard's parent company Microsoft began including contract clauses related to AI voice use when contracting voice actors for World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games. In September 2025, a French voice actress publicly refused to sign a new contract over these clauses and gave up a role she had held for seven years. A separate SAG-AFTRA video game performers' strike — which listed Activision Productions as a named party and was explicitly described as being "over AI" — ran from July 2024 to June 2025, resulting in a landmark agreement with new protections for performers' digital likenesses.

The controversy centers on contract language that players and union representatives say could allow companies to use voice actors' recorded performances to create AI-generated voice replicas. French actress Corinne Wellong, who voiced the World of Warcraft character Queen Talanji for over seven years, announced in September 2025 that she refused to sign Microsoft's new contract because of its AI clauses. Players noticed that WoW: Midnight credits only eight French voice actors, compared to 76 for the previous expansion. Blizzard denied using AI-generated voices in Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4, attributing oddly robotic-sounding NPC voices in Diablo 4 to a bug involving temporary placeholder audio. The SAG-AFTRA Interactive Media Agreement, which suspended the strike in June 2025, established provisions requiring transparency, informed consent, and additional compensation when a performer's digital voice replica is created or used — setting an industry precedent directly relevant to Blizzard's practices.