This is starting to sound eerily similar to that BoJack Horseman plotline, where he won an Oscar for a movie he never acted in, because he signed away his likeness and the director just used a 3d model of him because he was always too drunk to be on set.
But in all honesty though, this could be great news - imagine not needing to do recall shoots because the dialogue was bad, and you can fill in a few sentences with this technology instead. Of course, it will be abused and used to not compensate actors for their work properly.
But if it develops rapidly I could imagine games and animation using "stock voices" in their productions, just like designers often use stock imagery. I'm sure someone is happy to sign away their voice for a few grand, and provide it to a stock voice library.
I sure hope not. That is equal to a few pennies in the grand scheme of things. Someone signing away their voice (not that I agree anyone ever should, for any reason) should require enormous compensation in return at a minimum.
How is signing away your "voiceprint" to be used for automatic speech generation any different than people recording lines for national transport systems, for example? They spend a couple of weeks in a recording booth, recording every number "one/two/three..." and every placename on the map, as well as dozens of announcements.
Imagine if instead of having to record every number, placename, announcement, she could just read a short script, and then every possible message could be autogenerated from that. the end result would be the same for her, but much less work.
Now think about models who do photoshoots. They get paid for individual photoshoots, just like Emma got paid for providing her voice for that one particular customer (the TFL). But if you can't afford custom model photos for your website/brochure, you can go to a stock image bank and just find some decent photos.
You may not have heard of András István Arató but I'm sure you know his face:
Extend these two concepts to voiceover, and you arrive at the fact that "voiceprint stock libraries" are a guaranteed eventuality. Emma and Andras were both willing to sell their voice and image to someone. In Andras' case, he doesn't even know who the end-user is. Instead of just choosing from a set of Andras stock photographs, you might also purchase a license to his voice, and use it to overdub your advertisement. - because someone, maybe not you, but someone, will be happy to take a few grand and let people use their voice, just like people sell their photos to stock libraries.
I'm not sure how the likeness rights work here. What if the studio hired a human doing a really good impression of the actor?
And while popular existing actors might be able to demand enourmous compensation right now, I'm not really sure what level of compensation they deserve. In the end, we are probably moving towards entirely fictional actors for most movies anyway.
I suppose I'm looking at it from a more distant, human perspective, just in that, for any human to sign over rights to their voice or likeness is to fundamentally sever a significant level of autonomy / agency from themselves- which gives me chills for multiple reasons, but from a work perspective, essentially puts themselves out of certain forms of work / voluntarily obsoletes others' need for their work.
I just kind of shudder at the thought of a voice actor signing over rights to their voice without appropriate compensation and their career just vanishing (assuming AI gets good enough to outright replace them completely)
In my view, any human that signs over such rights deserves to be well-compensated upfront and should ensure they have a contract that pays them significant royalties for each subsequent use. I suppose maybe the most important part of all of this work-wise is just to have a reasonable contract so one retains some control.
Of course, all of this I say with the disclaimer that I'm not certain I think anyone should sign over such rights. I freely admit I come at this from a perspective that is biased against audio/visual/text-generating (and potentially other forms of) AI, unless it is significantly reigned in through restrictions/regulations. I do not look forward to an AI-dominated future of soulless pseudo-art generated by entertainment corporations.
I wouldn't mind my voice being used, but I would want ongoing royalties with a copyright ownership of my voice, so that 70 years after my death my voice might still be making my family money.
We are hitting the awkward transition period between the actor being the person performing the script in front of a microphone and/or camera and someone doing the performance at a keyboard, directing computers to create an emotive performance. It seems only a matter of time before actors are only walking the boards in live performances or in retro media. Not surprised they are pissed.
Actors are much more than just talents, by which I mean being able to carry emotions, being charismatic and delivering lines in the way a director wants it.
There is an undeniable human aspect to it that AI won't ever be able to replace. Sure, it'll probably be an important part of the industry, but saying all future media is going to be 24/7 AI generated content like that Seinfeld twitch stream is a pretty bleak view of the future.
We watch movies because we try to connect with people and share our feelings with humans. I can't relate to an AI.
Humanity is recent in the cosmos, modern computing and AI are not 100 years old. You think your statement will hold in 1000 or 10000 years? You obviously believe the human brain is something supernatural which I do not (in fact, the past 10 years of AI boosts kind of convinced me our brain mechanism is vastly simpler than we thought; it’s just a complex, overarchitected implementation), but even believing that, we are just beginning to scratch the surface. I think it can do a convincing simile within years, at max decades from now. Something you cannot tell apart on the screen or audio. You might not even be told it is an AI.
>You obviously believe the human brain is something supernatural... convinced me our brain mechanism is vastly simpler than we thought; it’s just a complex, overarchitected implementation)
Cults can often convince all kinds of people of all kinds of things. Long ago LaPlace asserted a clockwork universe; that didn't hold water for too long. Too simplistic.
Just kidding, but really, anecdotes don't constitute evidence that the mind is a 'brain mechanism'. Yep, many of our voluntary and involuntary routine behaviors are quite robot-like .. breathing, eating, sleeping, sexing. That said, some of us are less content with the routine.
The expert systems now being referred to as 'artificial intelligence' are limp P.T. Barnum simulations of true intelligence, and of course there is little substantial evidence to support -any- model of creativity or consciousness ... let alone a mechanical one. In the face of that lack of evidence, a supernatural theory is no worse than a mechanical one.
I prefer and will continue to prefer real intelligence and creativity of the human kind because it is substantially superior to limp simulations ... and because I am a human. I'll resist lowering my standards. Those who've tried to teach machines the mechanics of music have learned from continued failure that great music is beyond any of our so-called 'music theory'. I'll confidently assert that the same is true of dramatic performances.
> You obviously believe the human brain is something supernatural which I do not
This deserves zooming in on. There seem to be only two options.
1. There are supernatural forces, and we have magical things like a human soul
2. There are no supernatural forces, and our brains are a series of chemical and electrical states, and nothing else
If it is option 2, then you must accept that it is plausible that a machine could be made which could also have those those states, and navigate them like our biological machine. Which path of development leads to this is unknown, but it is illogical to me to say things like "won't ever be able to replace" humans.
I am only repeating and expanding on what you said because this is a realization which I only came to relatively recently and thought it is worth sharing.
> You obviously believe the human brain is something supernatural which I do not (in fact, the past 10 years of AI boosts kind of convinced me our brain mechanism is vastly simpler than we thought
It's entirely possible that this statement applies to your brain specifically, but not necessarily to all brains
Celebrity culture, the ability to refuse a job, character traits suggested by or shared with the actor… can't wait until cookie-cutter AI slaves replicate all of that.
Actors are only pigeonholed because of the whims of the industry. They are usually unimaginable wells of deep creativity and anyone who disagrees is incredibly ignorant of what's possible. AI as currently implemented, literally, and by definition, just produces average mediocre junk that is easily branded and controlled. This is fundamentally incompatible with any progress or meaningful novelty. Buyer beware.
If you took a raw script and fed it to an AI, sure, you will get rubbish and I don't see that changing any time soon. However, if someone carefully choreographed the performance like a puppeteer... I think someone will still be needed to add that spark of life to performances, but I don't see that being an 'actor', chosen as much for their physical attributes and stage presence as their ability to breath life into a script. Script writers, directors, cinematographers, choreographers, and yes, perhaps even actors, keep tweaking the AI performance with details until they get it right. You already see this with animations, except with existing technology they still need voice actors and often find motion capture less cumbersome than manually animating characters.
For now yes, but I think the important point is that in the near future, machine learning will likely make the actors replaceable even if machine learning cannot itself replace the actors. You don't see animators or any of the countless people other people working in the entertainment industry manage to gain nearly as much fame as actors, mostly because replacing them is a lot less noticeable to the average consumer. That is what actors are facing.
This may be true today, but the rate of progress on these tools is hitting a curve. Text and image generation are already basically indiscernible from human creations, and the entire space is now turning its attention to audio in tandem.
No you don't understand my comment. The AI only knows, and therefore can average from, what the actor has published. It cannot produce what the actor has not.
Ugh I'm not going to keep fighting off the goon squad of people desperate to invest in something, anything, that will hedge against the recession. We desperately need a hero for art.
Years ago, in a thread about copyright, I left a grumpy comment on how RIAA would copyright your voice and then charge you for using it. The grumpy oracle in me was right. Now imagine the future where all employment contracts are plagued with a "voice & image" clause that tells you to grant a perpetual, non-revokable, transferrable, sub-licenseable and royalty-free right to your your voice and image.
The concerning issue here isn't the AI technology because that's not what's being bought/sold. If that was the case they could use anyone's voice or create a synthetic one.
Pay close attention that what's going on is that technology is used to take control of a person's identity and their likeness, that's where the value in actors voices is. People are required to hand over their own identity to even obtain a job.
This is actually nothing less than servitude. Imagine if it was someone's body instead of their likeness that needed to be handed over to an employer. A voice actor selling the rights to their voice to a company is akin to a laborer selling rights to their hands. I'd honestly say we very quickly need an inalienable right to one's own likeness.
Yep, they did it with Darth Vader. It was an AI voice.
Then you have them using CGI mark hamil as Luke.
Actors need to all get together and never sign away their image and voice rights unless they get paid handsomely each time someone consumes the content. It cannot be a one time payment.
Looks like we're halfway to fully selling rights to the whole image of an actor predicted in the move "The Congress" [0] (Do yourself a favor though and watch first half only.)
It's theft of ability to make income by training their replacement.
Unionize (SAG?) and lobby to pass laws against it. Hollywood actors still have money for lobbyists as long as they don't knifenose themselves by letting control over their likeness and IP rights slip away.
> theft of ability to make income by training their replacement
This happens to software developers on a regular basis, doesn't it ? Tired: replacing you with a lower-paid intern. Wired: replacing you with a lower-paid intern who got pretty handy with A.I. at university.
It's going to happen a lot more as automation continues. But the destruction of certain trades is only a problem when it means that the profits from the more effecient production are captured by a few while the people made redundant are left in the cold - but that is not how things will have to work. I only hope that sooner rather than later the response will be societal reform instead of just more bullshit jobs that only exist because we have made it so that people need jobs to survive. At some point we will have to realize that making sure everyone has a 40 hour job is not reasonable or needed.
something about “narrated by Morgan freeman” makes movies a lot more compelling. a clone of his voice with AI would not have the same effect on me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But in all honesty though, this could be great news - imagine not needing to do recall shoots because the dialogue was bad, and you can fill in a few sentences with this technology instead. Of course, it will be abused and used to not compensate actors for their work properly.
But if it develops rapidly I could imagine games and animation using "stock voices" in their productions, just like designers often use stock imagery. I'm sure someone is happy to sign away their voice for a few grand, and provide it to a stock voice library.