Cheap AI voice clones could wipe out 5,000 Australian acting jobs | Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Voice actors say they are on the verge of seeing their jobs completely replaced by artificial intelligence, with roles in business and on radio already starting to be replaced by cheap generative AI clones.

While a big-name actress like Scarlett Johansson can make the world's largest AI company stop using her voice in its AI products in one day, ordinary actors who work on commercials, audiobooks and Video gamers fear having their own voice cloned or completely botching their work due to the rise of AI voice clones.

The Australian Voice Actors Association (AAVA) has told a parliamentary committee investigating AI that the jobs of around 5,000 local voice actors are already at risk, with the group pointing the finger at a national radio network investing actively in technology to replace human voice actors.

In its brief, the group criticized the move, calling it a disappointing decision by an industry that has relied on voice artists to bring quality, credibility and humanity to its medium for more than 100 years.

The newly formed association’s chair, Simon Kennedy, told Guardian Australia that the advent of AI and its impact on the voice industry was partly the catalyst for the group’s creation, but he says they are not anti-technology and certainly were not anti-AI. The group, he said, simply wants a level playing field for how the technology will be used and protection for citizens’ voices from being misused by AI.

He said the canary in the coal mine for voice actors would be audiobooks.

Audiobooks are at the forefront because of the volume of content and the perceived cost savings that the companies that create them believe they can achieve.

He said companies might come to regret the lack of human connection if the voice reading a book is AI.

When it comes to an AI voice, I think they're going to realize that people won't bother with their audiobooks anymore. They'll just say, “I don't feel anything.”

Kennedy said corporate work and educational materials were also low-hanging fruit for organizations looking to remove human voice work, but advertising would take more time.

Big advertisers want quality and AI won't be available to them for some time.

He said that voice actors who sold their image had not thought about the long-term consequences.

I don't think the end goal was really people's priority; that your voice will now exist in the marketplace, as a digital clone of yourself, which will essentially require work that you could normally get yourself, he said.

Last year, Guardian Australia reported that Australian software developer Replica Studios had licensed 120 voice actors for video game development, which would pay actors a royalty when clones of their voices were used in games. video games. In In January, the company signed an agreement with the Screen Actors Guild in what it says, it is an ethical approach to using AI voice where all content is licensed.

Wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle

Reaction from actors has been mixed. Cooper Mortlock, an Australian actor who began working in voice acting at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, said it would hurt the work of new voice actors trying to break into the industry, especially if they use AI-generated stock voices as a stand-in for the final voice during the production process.

It’s not just things like that, and it not only limits the opportunities for the artists themselves, but also the creative scope of the projects, he said. There’s no possibility of happy accidents or surprises, because AI takes things that already exist and simply repurposes them. [them].

He said using AI voices to generate dialogue will lack the creativity that comes with using a human voice actor on scripted dialogue.

It's as wide as an ocean but as shallow as a puddle, he said.

You compare something like some recent video games that are very narrative and character driven like Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Baldurs Gate 3, those games are so meticulously designed.

Until now, AI voice clones often had difficulty handling non-American accents. Australian voices, for example, often retain an American inflection. Newer services now offer a full range of different accents from Australians at different ages. Kennedy said he hoped the delay was a sign that Australians were resisting giving their vote.

We will hold back until there are ethical frameworks in place that allow us to have our voices knowing that we will be treated and compensated fairly, he said.

But Mortlock said the delay was because Australia was a smaller market, without the large dataset that would allow AI to learn the nuances of Australian voices.

There is more data available now. I think it was [a] very US-centric thing. It's only expanding. I don't necessarily think it has to do with the accent itself.

AAVA has called for laws to govern consent, control and compensation around how AI voices are used, ensuring artists are paid fairly and have full control over how their voices are used. used, under license.

Mortlock said an animation project he was working on cloned his voice and used it without consent after he stopped working, which the company he worked for denies and part of the problem is that there is no transparency when AI is used.

He would like to see AI banned from the creative industry to ensure workers can remain employed, but said a tax on the use of technology to pay workers, as well as greater transparency, would be appropriate.

Actors should be reimbursed and I think there should be disclosure of who each voice they hire is. Because otherwise they could remove that actor from the internet, it's become the Wild West.