German Voice Actors vs. Netflix (because of AI)

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

German voice actors are currently protesting against Netflix‘ new contracts that enforce the voice actors to allow Netflix to use their voices to train Netflix‘ „AI“ (of course for free):

https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/synchronsprecher-netflix-ki-100.html

One of the downsides of „AI“: Every company now wants to get as much training material for free before the artists understand what the company is planning with the „AI“-tools. (Of course, the idea is to get rid of certain types of artists.)

[Uli Meyer]

A voice actor friend of mine has no qualms about the fact that he will soon lose out on dubbing jobs as soon as AI re-lipsyncing visually and audibly will be cheaper and easier than hiring humans. 

[Joerg Polzfusz]

The question is: do the voice actors want to be replaced by their own voices that they accidentally gave away for free by not properly reading their new contracts?

[Aristeidis Tyropolis]

The bigger question is whether the general public at large (including voice over artists) is either:

a) Tacitly handing over each and every kind of human expressive capability because "who cares" or 

b) Cynism and inevitability dominates all.

I don't know the answer.

 

 

 

[Jon O'Brien]

Cynicism and inevitability are deceptive feelings. Life will find a way. That's a daggy saying from Jurassic Park of course, but it's true. I did a music recording for a short film the other day with a guy who had a contract with a major Australian tv station for 20 years, doing just about all the voice overs, and just recently they told him they don't need him anymore. So he's getting into recording work I think.

[Max Field]

Headlines like this is why your #1 goal should be to own the company, baby!

[Andy R Hamilton]

I wonder how the monks who wrote out copies of books by hand felt when the printing press started. We may have got more books, but we lost some beautiful works of art. Anyway, probably a bad example still...

Creators - Filmmakers, writers and musicians have always shaped society. I think AI is more about control, but then we are getting into the realms of conspiracy if we (ok, I) is not careful.  Truth is, we don't know how to react yet - it's all happened so fast.

[Gautam Valluri]

I can totally see the EU, or at least France, obliging AI-made content to be labelled as "AI generated" to let the audience know that they're watching, and secure minimum guarantees for industry workers. Maybe oblige the big studios using AI in their films to pay out an "AI compensation fee" to the CNC if they want their films to be shown in cinemas or on TV channels in France, and redirect the fee to the unions? France has already done this in the past obliging TV channels to use a part of their yearly budget to fund theatrical films, which is still in effect today.

Outside of theatrical and TV markets, they can't really control what Netflix et al do on their respective streaming platforms, apart from obliging them to label all content using AI and let the audience decide. A lot of people already spend hours and hours of their attention on AI slop on social media, knowingly or unknowingly. Having a tag that clearly states AI has been used might not help but its better than nothing.