Hollywood Union Strikes Deal For Advertisers To Replicate Actors' Voices With AI 32
The SAG-AFTRA actors' union has struck a deal with online talent marketplace Narrativ, allowing actors to sell advertisers the rights to replicate their voices using AI. "Not all members will be interested in taking advantage of the opportunities that licensing their digital voice replicas might offer, and that's understandable," SAG-AFTRA official Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said in a statement. "But for those who do, you now have a safe option." Reuters reports: Narrativ connects advertisers and ad agencies with actors to create audio ads using AI. Under the deal, an actor can set the price for an advertiser to digitally replicate their voice, provided it at least equals the SAG-AFTRA minimum pay for audio commercials. Brands must obtain consent from performers for each ad that uses the digital voice replica. The union hailed the pact with Narrativ as setting a standard for the ethical use of AI-generated voice replicas in advertising.
Seems reasonable.... (Score:1)
Honestly, we've been doing impersonations of famous people's voices for as long as I can remember. Many of them are pretty bad, but they're humorous in that you still figure out who they're trying to pretend to be.
If you want the real actor/actress's voice used in your advertising bit or project, you'd normally be stuck paying them for their time to record what you needed in a studio. The AI option might be more cost-effective and flexible for certain situations and might allow an actor or actress to make a
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Given the state of speech generation by AI right now, advertisers could just fine tune parameters so you won't even be able to tell the difference. So, no, not the same as impersonation or imitators at all.
Good point although for imitations where you still know who they pretend to be. That would sadly be lost.
Desperation for precedent (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically this is buggy drivers desperately trying to set a precedent that you can drive a car, as long as you pay minimal buggy driver rates.
Since you don't actually need permission to have similar voice that isn't the same... you don't actually need to pay for this service. But this will give buggy drivers another argument in court that "we have this precedent of a service that does it the way we want it do it, so it should be considered the correct way to do it".
We'll see how it goes, but I suspect it will go nowhere. Both because this sort of extra payment is unnecessary, and because voice actors know that their days are numbered at this point, and will likely be overwhelmingly deathly afraid that granting rights to their voice to this arrangement will accelerate their descent into utter irrelevance further.
Re:Desperation for precedent (Score:4, Interesting)
A beautiful landscape photo is much more beautiful if you know the place exists. Now we will never really know if it does.
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You really see no irony in whining about "defending art from people who cheapen it" and then seriously list and example of... photography?
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You really know nothing of history, do you?
Hint: just a little over century ago, photography was accused of the exact same things you are accusing AI of.
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>No it's people who enjoy art defending it from the people who want to cheapen it.
>A beautiful landscape photo is much more beautiful if you know the place exists. Now we will never really know if it does.
Your analogue a century ago:
>No it's people who enjoy art defending it from the people who want to cheapen it.
>A beautiful landscape portrait is much more beautiful that cheap photograph made by a machine.
Re: Desperation for precedent (Score:2)
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Sure, right after you cite a licensed psychiatrist certifying that you stopped beating your wife and children.
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You asked me to provide a reference for something I never claimed. I agreed to your terms of "demand and escalate" and answered in kind, demanding a citation for something you never claimed and upping the ante even more.
If you want to be serious about the actual subject, my note was "more beautiful". Which is self evident by taking a single look at early photographs and comparing them to contemporary popular paintings. But even if we take your hilarious "I don't get art, it must be lifelike to be good, also
Once they get 20-50 famous ones, they're done. (Score:3)
Re:Once they get 20-50 famous ones, they're done. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Once they get 20-50 famous ones, they're done. (Score:4, Interesting)
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There is definitely a lot of nuance that comes with narrating audiobooks. Often the narrator has to be aware of the action and choose a tone for the mood of the passage, as well as give each character a distinct voice. A good narrator can really draw you in and make listening to the book a great experience. I think an AI will struggle with this, especially with keeping it consistent throughout the book... Yet, there are a lot of awful narrators. Some are so bad they don't even bother to learn how to pronoun
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But this? This strikes me as a way for actors to be paid for doing fuck all, rather than a genuine effort to stop them being put out of work.
Some Perspective (Score:1, Insightful)
As a producer with many years of experience writing for and directing voice actors in projects ranging from audiobooks to video games to cinematics, I can say without hesitation there are good reasons why there is a migration away from talent.
Voice actors by and large are a gigantic pain in the ass. I've worked with both amateurs and pros. They drag their feet, they bitch about the money and without hesitation they raise hell about everything without even listening to proposals that would award them long-te
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Wonder what their opinion of you is like?
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50 years after their death (Score:2)
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You may be joking but it's even dumber than you thought... the actor's "personality rights" expire 70 years after their death. See California's "Celebrities Rights Act."
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You may be joking but it's even dumber than you thought... the actor's "personality rights" expire 70 years after their death. See California's "Celebrities Rights Act."
Government has a habit of extending copyright when pressed to do so because the US exports so much movie, TV, and music business. Don't be surprised if it happens on the Federal level, overruling state regulations on the issue.
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Their voices will be fair game. Isn't that how copyright works?
Beyond simple voice replication, I've long argued that the descendants of famous Golden Age Hollywood stars that control the estates will soon reap large financial benefits from selling image/sound rights to new AI-based production studios. Very soon, we'll probably see "new" black and white movies with AI Humphrey Bogart and AI Rita Hayworth. And if the scripts and production are good, no one will care that it's not really those long dead movie stars. We like the comfort of the familiar. John Wayne's Great
Real place (Score:3)
AI has destroyed my love of photography. I used to look at a photo and think, "wow what a beautiful place". Maybe it was touched up some, but you know it was taken in a real place. Now I ask myself if it is even a real place.
Devil's advocate: This might open an opportunity. (Score:2)
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People will fall for anything (Score:3)
During the Olympics, there was a drug ad featuring Simone Biles and her mother hawking some diabetes drug. The weird part is that the disclaimer on the screen actually said that neither of them use this drug. IIRC, it said that the mother has diabetes but doesn't use this drug. But clueless consumers are going to think that they do. How is this not false advertising? It's going to get worse with AI-duplicated voices. "Hey, I heard James Earl Jones saying that Fukitol is a great drug!"
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