Artificial intelligence capable of producing artificial voices that differ little from human voices threatens the jobs of announcers, voice actors and narrators.
The association created a body to encourage legislation harmonizing artificial intelligence and human creation. (Photo: Freepik)
The advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which is capable of creating synthetic voices that differ little from humans, threatens the jobs of voiceovers, voiceovers, and audiobook narrators who, ironically, promoted this technology. which can end their livelihood every day.
“We’re fighting a huge monster,” says voice actor and announcer Mario Filio. Who voices characters such as Will Smith and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars), Winnie the Pooh and Miss Piggy (Muppets) This Mexican claims that he never received royalties for the successful dubbing of the animation Madagascar in Spanish. But this is a minor issue given the challenge posed by generative AI, which creates text, images, video and voice using existing content without human intervention.
To face this fight, under the motto “Don’t steal our voice”, about 20 federations and unions from Europe, the Americas and Latin America created the United Voice Organization (OVU), which is a global organization for artificial intelligence (AI) and human creation. Encourages harmonizing bills between ,
OVU warns that the “indiscriminate and unregulated” use of AI could destroy “the artistic legacy of creativity that machines cannot create”. Voice artists already compete with text-to-speech (TTS) tools, which do a voiceover of text, but with robotic diction, used in assistants like Alexa and Siri.
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But AI has added ‘machine learning’, with which software can compare voice samples with millions of others, identifying patterns that generate clones. “It feeds on the sounds we’ve been recording over the years,” explains Mexican Desiree Hernandez. “We speak of the human right to use voice and interpretation without your consent.”
They advocate for the creation of laws that prevent recordings of their voices from being used to train AI without their approval and the imposition of “human labor quotas”, a description by Colombian broadcaster Daniel Soler de la Prada.
But AI opens up endless possibilities. For example, in the future, Will Smith’s real voice could be heard in multiple languages, but with the intonation of a single voice actor, Filio explains. It wouldn’t be bad if it created jobs and benefited the public, “but we need to get at it fairly”, Filio explains, denouncing the “lack of protection” of the independent working union .
Art Dubbing, where Christian material is dubbed, also raised alarm when four customers asked for quotes for using synthetic voices. Its founder, Mexican Anuar López de la Peña, now faces a dilemma: “Either I adapt or disappear”, although he is not willing to sacrifice human genius.
Filio stopped recording for several clients because they refused to give up “everything”. “It’s time to support my colleagues”, he says, certain that AI “cannot” replace people because it “has no soul”.
