philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Meet the Company Fighting to Make AI Ethical for Voice Actors

... Jones is a co-founder and vice president of strategic partnerships at Morpheme, whose goal, as she describes, is the “ethical coexistence of voiceover and artificial intelligence.” The process, essentially, is to create a “digital double” of an actor with their consent. ...

First, they schedule a recording session with an actor, getting all new data – this, Jones says, is something unique to Morpheme, and ensures the data won’t come into legal disputes later down the line. 

The second part comes in when a client wants to use an actor’s digital double. Here, the actor is informed of the project, and then gets to choose whether or not they’d like to be part of it. Then, when a client utilizes the voice, they pay a generation fee, part of which goes to the actor. 

It’s all part of what Morpheme adviser Scott Mortman calls the three Cs: “compensation, consent – which includes control – and then clarity or transparency.” ...

 it’s important for clients, too, to know they won’t be sued by a voice actor or company over a AI model illegally scraping their voice.  ...

“People are just like, ‘Wow, you actually have coherent statements and you're getting out there. You're talking to lawmakers, you're making statements left, right, and center about how to do this the ethical way,’ “ she says. “People are excited to see that because nobody has done it yet."

See the full story here: https://www.ign.com/articles/meet-the-company-fighting-to-make-ai-ethical-for-voice-actors