The one worry Hollywood writers and actors had concerning artificial intelligence is already coming to pass in India’s Bollywood where producers are replacing human actors with AI generated voices.
While American writers and actors went on strike in 2023 and attempted to force the U.S. entertainment industry to put strong limits on the use of AI, in India there had been no such campaign.
Thus, the Indian entertainment industry is turning to generative AI to help them approximate the voices of actors in its voiceover and dubbing process. Indeed, some past voiceover actors are discovering that their own voices are being replicated by AI computers and they — the real human actors — are being replaced by the AI programs, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
With AI encroaching on their jobs, actors in India have begun organizing to head off the AI boom with several new campaigns by the Association of Voice Artists of India.
“If earlier a voice actor was doing around 15-20 projects a month, now it has come down to maybe six or seven,” said Amarinder Singh Sodhi, the General Secretary of AVA, as well as the Hindi voice of several Marvel superhero characters. “And he or she is probably 40 or 50-plus. It’s not easy to change your profession overnight at that age.”
“If at all you’re going ahead with it, you must understand that your voice is your intellectual property. And it could be misused. And the usage of the voice could be to that extent where your future prospects as a voice artist can be jeopardized,” he added.
These actors are waking up to the fact that a computer can approximate their voice which can then be used to produce a project that the actor does not support.
“Tomorrow if someone sends me a clip of a hate speech with my voice in it, I will be horrified, because I don’t support it. And voice is a part of our personality. It’s our identity,” actor Rakhee Sharma told the Reporter.
Artists in India are now striving to bring their entertainment industry under stricter rules to prevent voice artists from having their voices used without permission. But the effort is meeting strong resistance from Bollywood producers who see AI as an important cost-savings tool and the future of their industry.
While some skirmishes in the AI battle have been won in the U.S., the same cannot be said in many other countries. And the war over the proper and legal use of AI in entertainment is only just beginning.
U.S. actor unions such as SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild, and others celebrated the concessions they won in the wake of their 2023 strikes, but there is still a vast filed of areas that AI can be, will be, and already is being used to replace the efforts of human beings in entertainment.
It may seem to be a losing battle as AI continues to grow in complexity and capability. And many producers are already hailing AI as a way to make the production of entertainment cheaper and even “better.”
Recently, Lionsgate Studios announced that it was moving full speed ahead with the integration of AI into its production processes.
Lionsgate Vice Chairman Michael Burns reportedly said he feels the tool will save “millions and millions of dollars,” as well as time, in film pre-production costs. Lionsgate also said AI will make its productions better.
This is only the beginning. The AI juggernaut won’t be slowing any time soon.
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