Can Bruce Willis Lose the Right to His Own Voice?
... Additionally, the muddle probably ensued because Willis has been diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that impacts speech. In March, he had announced his retirement from acting. AI can theoretically fix this by training itself on older recordings of his voice and synthesizing that into new content. It’s been done for other prominent actors but there’s no plan to do this for Willis. ...
In April, the union launched a campaign to strengthen performers rights amid a “huge growth of AI across the entertainment industry,” Budd said, adding that 93% of voice actors saw AI as a threat to their employment. ...
“We have cases where famous voice actors and big motivational speakers want to scale themselves to different regions,” says Alex Serdiuk, the Chief Executive of Respeecher, a Ukrainian AI firm that de-aged the voices of Mark Hamill and James Earl Jones for recent releases of the Star Wars franchise. Respeecher’s technology can also convert a person’s speech into different languages. ...
One potential resolution: Equity says it plans to reach out to AI firms to try and establish collective bargaining agreements and better terms and conditions for artists who do AI work. The union wouldn’t comment on which companies it is talking to, and didn’t mention any names like Respeecher. For its part, the Ukranian company said it had been talking to unions and was open to having conversations with industry groups about frameworks for payment. ...
See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-11/actors-could-be-signing-away-lucrative-rights-to-their-own-voices
