Voice Actors Push Back As AI Threatens Dubbing Industry

Voice actors and industry associations are sounding the alarm over the growing use of AI in dubbing, calling for increased regulations to protect quality, jobs and artists' back catalogues from being used to create future dubbed work. 'We need legislation: Just as after the car, which replaced the horse-drawn carriage, we need a highway code,' said Boris Rehlinger, a voice actor known as the French voice of Ben Affleck, Joaquin Phoenix, and Puss in Boots. 'I feel threatened even though my voice hasn't been replaced by AI yet,' he said. Reuters reports: In Germany, 12 well-known dubbing actors went viral on TikTok in March, garnering 8.7 million views, for their campaign saying 'Let's protect artistic, not artificial, intelligence.' A petition from the VDS voice actors' association calling on German and EU lawmakers to push AI companies to obtain explicit consent when training the technology on artists' voices and fairly compensate them, as well as transparently label AI-generated content, gained more than 75,500 signatures.

When intellectual property is no longer protected, no one will produce anything anymore 'because they think 'tomorrow it will be stolen from me anyway',' said Cedric Cavatore, a VDS member who has dubbed films and video games including the PlayStation game 'Final Fantasy VII Remake.' VDS collaborates with United Voice Artists, a global network of over 20,000 voice actors advocating for ethical AI use and fair contracts. In the United States, Hollywood video game voice and motion capture actors this month signed a new contract with video game studios focused on AI that SAG-AFTRA said represented important progress on protections against the tech.

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