I sure hope not. That is equal to a few pennies in the grand scheme of things. Someone signing away their voice (not that I agree anyone ever should, for any reason) should require enormous compensation in return at a minimum.
I sure hope not. That is equal to a few pennies in the grand scheme of things. Someone signing away their voice (not that I agree anyone ever should, for any reason) should require enormous compensation in return at a minimum.
you may have never heard of Emma Clarke, but if you live in the UK you've heard her voice a thousand times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Clarke
Imagine if instead of having to record every number, placename, announcement, she could just read a short script, and then every possible message could be autogenerated from that. the end result would be the same for her, but much less work.
Now think about models who do photoshoots. They get paid for individual photoshoots, just like Emma got paid for providing her voice for that one particular customer (the TFL). But if you can't afford custom model photos for your website/brochure, you can go to a stock image bank and just find some decent photos.
You may not have heard of András István Arató but I'm sure you know his face:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hide_the_Pain_Harold
Extend these two concepts to voiceover, and you arrive at the fact that "voiceprint stock libraries" are a guaranteed eventuality. Emma and Andras were both willing to sell their voice and image to someone. In Andras' case, he doesn't even know who the end-user is. Instead of just choosing from a set of Andras stock photographs, you might also purchase a license to his voice, and use it to overdub your advertisement. - because someone, maybe not you, but someone, will be happy to take a few grand and let people use their voice, just like people sell their photos to stock libraries.
And while popular existing actors might be able to demand enourmous compensation right now, I'm not really sure what level of compensation they deserve. In the end, we are probably moving towards entirely fictional actors for most movies anyway.
They already do this regularly in movies, it's part of the ADR process [0]. You've probably heard it many times and not even noticed.
I just kind of shudder at the thought of a voice actor signing over rights to their voice without appropriate compensation and their career just vanishing (assuming AI gets good enough to outright replace them completely)
In my view, any human that signs over such rights deserves to be well-compensated upfront and should ensure they have a contract that pays them significant royalties for each subsequent use. I suppose maybe the most important part of all of this work-wise is just to have a reasonable contract so one retains some control.
Of course, all of this I say with the disclaimer that I'm not certain I think anyone should sign over such rights. I freely admit I come at this from a perspective that is biased against audio/visual/text-generating (and potentially other forms of) AI, unless it is significantly reigned in through restrictions/regulations. I do not look forward to an AI-dominated future of soulless pseudo-art generated by entertainment corporations.