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They stole my voice with AI | Jeff Geerling
(www.jeffgeerling.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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You do realize that the vast majority of voice actors are not famous right? These are people working in a highly competitive labor market that has one of the few influential unions in the US outside of trades. Most of these AI companies aren't going after Johansson and the like if they have to pay instead of steal. They're going for those who are less established and trying to get a break, making them easier to exploit.
Yes, that's the point. You are not defending voice actors by demanding likeness rights.
I am not sure why this is so difficult to understand. Maybe there is some confusion about the technology. You only need a few seconds of audio to clone a voice. You don't need hours of audio from a professional. That's why the tech can be used for scams. Likeness rights won't create jobs for voice actors. Only free money for famous people. You can also generate random voices.
Leading AI voice companies like Elevenlabs require you to have permission to clone a voice. But how can they check if their customers are being truthful? In practice, it simply means that famous people, whose voices are known, may not be imitated. Likeness rights, by their nature, can only be enforced, with any kind of effectiveness, for the rich and famous.
OpenAI tried to hire Johansson. When she declined, they hired a different, less famous actress. Maybe they did that to defend against lawsuits, or maybe it gives better results. If they had engineered a nonexistent voice, it would be almost impossible to make the case that they did not imitate Johansson. But still, everyone is talking about that poor famous, rich person who got ripped off. What about the actress who actually provided the voice? I guess she can look for another job, because Johansson owns that voice type.
You mean Ronald Reagan's old outfit? Do you even know who Ronald Reagan was?
Knowing people who are not famous but are SAG-AFTRA actors, I'm going to have to disagree very much on that. A regular contractual battle is the "in perpetuity" clause for one's likeness. This happens at all levels. Essentially, clients often try to sneak a clause in that grants them the exclusive right to use the actor's likeness forever. While this does not mean that the actor does not receive pay, it binds them to the client in a way that prevents them from getting other work and diminishes their bargaining ability.
If the actress was performing in an affectation to impersonate Johansson, she was effectively acting no better than a scab and enabling corpos to violate consent. Knowingly impersonating another loving actor for purposes other than parody is a scummy thing to do and the actress was ethically bound to refuse the job.
Being famous doesn't make someone less of a person. They're just people like the rest of us (though generally more financially lucky). We all have a right to our identity and likeness and to decide how our likeness is used. Legitimatizing the violation of that consent is not a path that benefits any worker.
That's a poor and fallacious argument there. California is Ronnie "Pull Up the Ladder" Reagan's home state does that make all Californians Reaganites by association?
How do likeness rights benefit non-famous people?
Turning likeness into an intellectual property implies the right to sell it. Apparently you want to argue for likeness, so I don't see why you would use such clauses as an argument.
It's not an argument, as you have recognized. I hoped it would make you think.
You know that not everyone in Hollywood is part of SAG-AFTRA, right? Have you ever wondered what happened to them during the strike? I guess they just have to fend for themselves. If the "union" doesn't care about those guys, do you think the leadership cares about the small members?
Actors are a conservative lot. At the bottom, you have the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" and at the top... Well, you know. It's not common on lemmy to cheer for such a system.