cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/gaming/t/354777
Twitter thread in the link
Henry Schrader:So, to anyone who doesn’t know, Hi-Rez Studios, the people behind Paladins and Smite, have stated that they will be using AI to clone voices and refused to add in any words to contracts that would protect actors from it. More info in the thread. Please share to other VAs.
It will be interesting to see how these kind of things develop over the next few years. Of course, it’s very enticing for developers to use AI voices, as they can probably save massive amounts of money through it. Will the voice actors have any options to stop this?
Unionizing. Voice actors’ union can say no work will be done with studios using ai voices. Similarly to what writers guild is doing towards Hollywood.
Collective pressure and bargaining works.
Will it work 100%? Nope. But it will work well enough.
I mean it won’t be too long until they don’t need any human VAs at all, so they could just completely ignore the union.
And lots of non-VAs/amateurs/non-union-VAs will be willing to sell their voice for a day’s work and a shockingly small cheque. You don’t need professional voice actors if you can get a wide enough range of voices to mix to simulate any desired voice. “Voice mixing” will be a new job pretty quickly.