Hollywood actors clash over AI voice clones

Hollywood’s voice actors — one of the first groups to wrestle with artificial intelligence replacement — are battling one another over how to deal with AI. Big, established names are using it to make more money. Non-stars say the number of jobs has plummeted and that they are being tricked into training their replacements.

Unions want further restrictions on the technology. Some actors are resisting the urge to create cheap clones to do work, but many nonunion freelancers say they have no choice.

“I’m so afraid,” said Stacey Rivera, 34, a Los Angeles-based voice actor who does voices for commercials, Netflix and others and is resisting the temptation to let her voice be used for AI. “I don’t know if what I’m doing now is going to be an option in the next five years.”

Still, AI voices are imperceptibly taking over screens and speakers. A clone of Sir Michael Caine’s voice narrates the 13-hour audiobook of the “Odyssey.” The British actor has licensed his voice to ElevenLabs, an AI voice company in New York. Matthew McConaughey uses its technology to create a Spanish-language version of his newsletter.

ElevenLabs’ voice marketplace features clones of dozens of personalities — including actress Judy Garland, physicist Richard Feynman and popular characters such as Mr. Potato Head for creators to legally license and get compensated for their use. Well-known actors are getting millions of dollars to allow their voices to be cloned to become a voice assistant, said David Lawrence XVII, a veteran actor who is part of the SAG-AFTRA audiobook steering committee that approves the deals.

Lawrence said actors need to push back for proper compensation and protections to avoid being replaced. He increasingly has to decline gigs when employers don’t respect those rights.

“I am a champion for the human voice, despite the reality of where we are,” Lawrence said. “I’ve always said, ‘Well, what are you offering? What are my guardrails?’ And they’re like, ‘Guardrails? That’s funny.’” Despite pushback, authorized clones are becoming accepted in Hollywood as A-list actors and their estates license their voices for use in films and online platforms. Morgan Freeman, who once took legal action against unauthorized cloning, is open to companies cloning his voice.

But a fissure remains between those actors who stay morally opposed to cloning, and those who embrace this new reality. One of the largest online voice acting communities on Reddit, r/VoiceActing, is full of angst and anger, but few solutions. “On principle I would never do it for any amount,” wrote one voice actor in the forum.

“We hate the loss of livelihood. We hate the art form being taken away from us,” the moderator of the Reddit forum told The Times. Nick Myers, a 26-year-old voice actor based in Los Angeles, previously told The Times he turned down a $100,000 offer last year to record his voice to train AI-replication models, viewing it as an existential risk. “I am not going to sacrifice my morality for a paycheck, no matter how big,” Meyer said last year. For many in the voice business, there are signs of an implosion in jobs. The small gigs to voice things like Instagram content, YouTube explainers, online classes and budget audiobooks are increasingly being absorbed by AI voices.

Hollywood fought hard for protections from AI in the prolonged writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing about 160,000 actors and other performers, has been demanding informed consent, fair compensation, more control and transparency over the use of digital replicas. The latest agreement, signed in June, introduced limits on studios’ use of digital replicas. The contract requires studios to notify actors before using their voices to create a replica. Even after a project is complete, actors must sign off and be paid the equivalent of an in-person performance if their replica is used.

Additionally, studios need to pay residuals to digital replicas used in reruns, and replicas cannot be used during a strike.

Tribune News Service