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New Intelligence Report

Editor: Ear Qiao Yang

【New Wisdom Introduction】As AI development continues, a large number of media and radio roles have begun to be replaced by cheap AI clones. The Australian Voice Actors Association even said that an estimated 5,000 voice actors are at risk of losing their jobs.

Recently on various video platforms, AI has become the new traffic code for the secondary innovation track.

From singers to mobile game characters to anime characters, AI dubbing is everywhere on the Internet.

Singers can collaborate across time and space, and your favorite anime characters can sing for you. Comments are in the air: Double chefs are delighted! Hao Ting! Xiao Ba's mother really wants to praise you this time!

The rapid development of AI technology is witnessed by all, and the technology of using AI to intelligently generate sounds, pictures, and videos is also unstoppable.

The use of AI dubbing in the field of video production is not limited to secondary creation. With the advent of a large number of generative AI products, AI dubbing can already meet the needs of simple self-media creation.

In the video production software, there are as many as seventy or eighty kinds of AI dubbing and reading sound effects.

Dubbing work, which has lower requirements on sound quality and shorter time, is gradually being replaced by AI dubbing.

In recent years, it has almost become a general trend for AI to subvert traditional industries. First, Anthropic’s chief of staff admitted that he might only have three years left in his career, and then ChatGPT replaced its 60-person editorial team.

Many work tasks that originally required manpower to complete are gradually being replaced by AI, and now the dubbing industry will also join this ranks.

Faced with new turmoil in the industry, people can't help but ask, where should voice actors go?

The voice actor of "House Never Falls"?

After Sora was launched in February this year, ElevenLabs, a voice startup, used AI to dub Sora's classic videos.

On June 25, ElevenLabs launched the AI ​​reading app without stopping.

Introducing the ElevenLabs Reader App. Listen to any article, PDF, ePub or any text anywhere, anytime, using the highest quality AI voice.

Moreover, after evaluation, this App also received extremely high praise from users.

Hear from a few of our testers: Overall, it's perfect. Pronunciation, intonation, accent, flow are all excellent. We've had the pleasure of using your mobile reader service over the past few weeks and it's been fantastic. It's been great for reviewing documents and drafts, catching up on deadlines, and the recent addition of different voices has been a fantastic experience. Being able to maintain tone and intonation across a large number of articles is a testament to the power of this app and what sets it apart from other similar products on the market.

And when someone questioned whether AI dubbing could truly convey emotions, the comment section also cueed Elevenlabs products and GPT-4o.

I think there will always be a need for human voice actors, especially for voices that require real emotion and nuance. AI voice acting is great for announcements or narration, but I don’t think they can truly capture the soul of a human voice.

I’ve heard samples of Elevenlabs’ work and it’s excellent, and the upcoming GPT-4o’s speech capabilities are even better.

AI dubbing often uses a technology called Deepfake Voice, which can replicate the human voice very accurately in pitch and similarity.

This technology has brought a lot of convenience to dubbing work. On the one hand, it reduces costs, and on the other hand, it can simulate sound to replace the work when the dubbing actors are unable to complete the work.

In this way, the real-life CV, which has high appearance fees and the risk of collapse, has indeed sounded a warning: AI is cheap and good, what about us?

The career crisis of voice actors

Voice actors say their jobs are about to be completely replaced by AI, with commercial voiceovers and radio roles already starting to be replaced by cheap GenAI clone voices.

Ordinary actors working in commercials, audiobooks and video games are worried they risk having their voices cloned, or losing their jobs altogether, thanks to the rise of AI voice cloning.

Cooper Mortlock is an Australian voice actor who began working as a voice actor at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cooper Mortlock says an animation project he was working on cloned his voice and used it without consent after work on it stopped.

He said this would undermine the work of emerging voice actors trying to gain a foothold in the dubbing industry.

“This not only limits the opportunities for the artists themselves, but also the creative scope of the project,” Cooper Mortlock said.

Because AI operating according to fixed procedures has no chance for accidents or surprises, artificial intelligence is taking advantage of things that already exist and repurposing them on this basis, lacking the spark of accidental collision in the dubbing process.

In other words, using AI voices to generate dialogue will lack the creativity that comes with using human voice actors to perform scripted dialogue.

Cooper Mortlock used a vivid metaphor to describe it, "It is as broad as the ocean, but as shallow as a puddle."

"For example, compare some recent video games that have focused a lot on storytelling and character, such as Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Baldur's Gate 3... These games are so carefully crafted."

Until now, AI voice cloning has often had trouble with non-American accents. Australian voices, for example, often have the inflections of an American accent.

Now, a new voiceover service is available that offers a whole range of different accents from Australians of all ages.

Cooper Mortlock hopes this "late but late" move is a sign that Australians are not giving up their voice.

The Australian Voice Actors Association (AAVA) told a parliamentary committee investigating artificial intelligence that an estimated 5000 local voice actors are at risk of losing their jobs.

The group noted that one national broadcast network is actively investing in technology to replace human voice actors.

In its submission, the group criticised the company for what it called “destroying bridges after crossing them”.

"This is a disappointing move by a participant in an industry that has relied on voice-over artists to bring quality, credibility and humanity to its medium for the past 100 years."

Association president Simon Kennedy told Guardian Australia the emergence of artificial intelligence and its impact on the voice industry was part of the catalyst for the organisation’s creation.

But he said they are "not against technology, and we are certainly not against artificial intelligence." The organization just wants fair rules around the use of technology and to protect people's voices from being abused by artificial intelligence.

For voice actors, audiobooks will be the first dangerous harbinger of the replacement of voice actors' jobs.

Simon Kennedy said, "Audiobooks are a cutting-edge area because of the sheer volume of material, and companies that produce audiobooks see a cost savings in using AI dubbing."

But think about it from another perspective, if the voice reading aloud is artificial intelligence, will the emotional expression of the content be affected?

Simon Kennedy added, “If it’s an AI voice, I think people will find that they don’t bother listening to audiobooks anymore.”

People just say, “I don’t have a problem with machines telling stories.”

Simon Kennedy said that for organizations looking to reduce manual dubbing work, the use of AI dubbing for corporate work and educational materials is just a branch of the tree, but broader areas such as AI dubbing for advertising are difficult to replace.

"Large advertisers want high quality, and AI dubbing will not be considered by advertisers for quite some time."

Last year, The Guardian Australia reported that Australian software developer Replica Studios licensed 120 voices from actors for video game development, and the company will pay the actors when the cloned actors' voices are used in video games.

In January, the company signed an agreement with the Screen Actors Guild saying it was an ethical way to use AI voices and that all content was licensed.

Regarding voice actors who sell their voice licenses, Simon Kennedy said that voice actors who sell their voice licenses do not consider their long-term plans.

“I don’t think they really thought through the ramifications, that the voice now exists in the marketplace as a digital clone of yourself, essentially taking away jobs that you would have gotten yourself.”

Protection of the rights and interests of voice actors

So, while replacement is replacement, whether this replacement is within the legal range is also a question worthy of attention.

On May 16, American voice actor Paul Lehrman and another voice actor Linnea Sage filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence startup Lovo in the New York Federal Court, accusing the company of using AI to illegally copy and use their voices.

Case indictment

In 2020, Lehrman accepted a job to provide a one-off set of voice samples.

A few years later, he could hear his own voice narrating on YouTube videos and podcasts, though he never narrated any of them.

They claim that Lovo sold AI versions of their voices without permission after tricking them into providing voice samples. The two actors are also trying to join forces with other people whose voices were stolen to launch a class-action lawsuit.

In other words, the authorization of a sound recording does not mean the authorization of the AI-ization of the sound. Without the permission of the rights holder, unauthorized use or authorization of others to use the sound in the sound recording may also constitute infringement.

On May 1st Labor Day, the famous voice actor Xia Lei reposted a Weibo post, calling for the use of "sound watermark" technology to protect the legal rights and interests of voice actors.

Xia Lei, a famous voice actor, his representative works include Maomao in Chinese Paladin 3, Yu Wenzhou in The King's Avatar, and Xu Mo in Love and Producer.

Not only in China, the AAVA mentioned above has also called for laws to clearly stipulate consent for the use of AI voices, ensure that artists are paid fairly, and regulate how their voices are used (if permission is obtained).

Voice actors are essentially the "soul givers" of characters in movies, TV shows, games, animation and other works. They interpret and express their self-cognition by empathizing with the fate of the characters, and the fruits of their labor should be respected.

At the same time, voice actors use their grasp of human emotions to resonate with the characters and communicate with the audience through their voices. This is not something that can be completely replaced by simply mechanically imitating human voices, emotions, and language pauses.

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/30/ai-clones-voice-acting-industry-impact-australia