Dubbing actors unite to protest AI in international collective

Citing the observation that Artificial Intelligence threatened their industry, dubbing actors united Thursday in an international collective to raise the issue.

Voices from the film, advertising, and video game industries from ten countries announced that they were joining forces to “protect and preserve this heritage” as Hollywood elites gather in Cannes for the annual film festival.

The collective manifesto

In a manifesto published on Thursday May 25, 21 unions and associations of voice professionals from ten countries raised their voices in the face of artificial intelligence.

The group is calling for “protection of the work of actors and human creativity as a whole” to avoid the “destruction of an artistic heritage.”

The artists argue that work produced by humans is “steeped in creativity and emotion, which no machine can produce.”

The organization of industry workers urged decision-makers to “adapt the system for protecting performers’ rights.”

History repeating itself

The French association Les Voix, which brings together over 210 industry professionals, is a prominent mouthpiece for the group. The organization had already warned of “fraudulent recordings”, in a “voice theft” alert published in April 2023.

“We received recording contracts from some of our members ‘for research purposes’,” Patrick Kuban, actor-performer and co-founder of Les Voix, reminded the public. “We then discovered that they were being used to train the artificial intelligence of a Milan-based start-up.”

Meanwhile, data company Voiseed, who has been suspected of feeding these AI-dubbed voices, defended its work on its website.

“[We are responding] to the growing demand for multilingual expressive speech content by revolutionizing speech synthesis,” the company asserts.