Like it or not AI is here, and it will only get better. Where does that leave Voice Artists, Podcasters and Content Creators who currently have no protections in terms of owning their voice? Tim Frielander is an award winning, voice actor, studio owner, advocate, and educator. Tim is also the Founder and President of NAVA, The National Association of Voice Actors as well as co-owner and editor of The Voice Over Resource Guide. His work with NAVA puts him at the coal face of negotiations with the like of voices.com and the AI seeding debate. We have him on the show next week to give us an insight into where we might be headed in terms of a compromise, what protections we might be able to put in place, and most troublininly the short amount of time we have to get it done before it may effectively be too late. A big shout out to our sponsors, Austrian Audio and Tri Booth. Both these companies are providers of QUALITY Audio Gear (we wouldn't partner with them unless they were), so please, if you're in the market for some new kit, do us a solid and check out their products, and be sure to tell em "Robbo, George, Robert, and AP sent you"... As a part of their generous support of our show, Tri Booth is offering $200 off a brand-new booth when you use the code TRIPAP200. So get onto their website now and secure your new booth... https://tribooth.com/ And if you're in the market for a new Mic or killer pair of headphones, check out Austrian Audio. They've got a great range of top-shelf gear.. https://austrian.audio/ We have launched a Patreon page in the hopes of being able to pay someone to help us get the show to more people and in turn help them with the same info we're sharing with you. If you aren't familiar with Patreon, it’s an easy way for those interested in our show to get exclusive content and updates before anyone else, along with a whole bunch of other "perks" just by contributing as little as $1 per month. Find out more here.. https://www.patreon.com/proaudiosuite George has created a page strictly for Pro Audio Suite listeners, so check it out for the latest discounts and offers for TPAS listeners. https://georgethe.tech/tpas If you haven't filled out our survey on what you'd like to hear on the show, you can do it here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZWT5BTD Join our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/proaudiopodcast And the FB Group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/357898255543203 For everything else (including joining our mailing list for exclusive previews and other goodies), check out our website https://www.theproaudiosuite.com/ “When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.” Hunter S Thompson
Summary
In this episode of Pro Audio Suite, we explore the controversial topic of AI voices with special guest Tim Friedlander. Voices.com has reportedly promised not to use people's voices from their database without permission, but the potential misuse of audition files by clients remains a concern. We discuss the fairness of voice synthesis, highlighting Nava's call for consent and compensation for voice actors. Listeners will gain insight into the problematic quality of AI voice samples and the potential threat to new voice actors as AI begins to replace human voices in certain sectors. We also delve into the future role of agents as potential AI voice libraries, and the necessity for clear licensing fee structures and strong protections before the end of the year to prevent misuse. #VoiceAIControversy #FairVoicesCampaign #FutureOfVoiceActing
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:00:43) Voices.com's Promise
(00:03:31) Copyright Laws and AI Voices
(00:11:50) Review of AI Voice Samples
(00:12:59) Risks of Recorded Audio
(00:14:25) Dangers of AI
(00:19:57) AI Replacing Human Voices
(00:23:26) AI's Impact on Visual Artists
Transcript
Speaker A: Y'all ready be history.,Speaker B: Get started.,Speaker A: Welcome.,Speaker B: Hi. Hi. Hello, everyone, to the Pro Audio Suite.,Speaker A: These guys are professional and motivated with tech. To the Vo stars George Wittam, founder of Source Elements Robert Marshall, international audio engineer Darren Robbo Robertson and global voice Andrew Peters. Thanks to Triboo Austrian audio making passion heard. Source elements. George the tech. Wittam and robbo and AP's. International demo. To find out more about us, check thepro audiosuite.com.,Speaker B: Learn up learner. Here we go.,Speaker C: And welcome. And don't forget, if you want to get a discount of $200 off your Tribooth trip, 200 is the code you need now, this week. Very topical. Of course, this AI thing will just not go away. And I know that there was a conversation about that place. I don't even like saying it. Anyway, I will say it. Voices.com supposedly have promised not to farm out people's voices from their database. Tim Friedlander has been involved in this and has written an article, which is what I saw. And Tim is joining us. G'day Tim.,: Hello. Hello. I'm here.,Speaker C: So what's the backstory to this and how did you get involved?,: The backstory to the AI voices.com thing goes back to about May when Davidcirellianvoices.com announced that they were releasing Voices AI and for the voice acting community, that was a huge concern, basically for the main part being that many people have been uploading audio to their website through their website for 20 years. So theoretically, Voices.com or either of these sites has 20 years of very high quality data and audio that they could use to synthesize our voices. So through Nava, which is association that I run along with Karen Guilfrey and a board of directors, we reached out to David and Stephanie and had a week of conversations with them to get the assurance that they had never been uploading or using or doing anything with auditions or files that have been uploaded through their website. And out of that came our Fair Voices campaign or the Fair Voices pledge that we launched. And we reached out to the other online casting sites, six other sites, to get the same assurances from them and also to make sure that they had changed their terms of service. So Voices.com at the time changed their terms of service to very explicitly say they would not be using any audio files uploaded through their site for machine learning or synthesized or synthesizing voices.,Speaker C: Was that backdated or is that from that point onward?,: The terms of service were from that point onward, but they publicly at the time and in various blog posts and other written areas have said that they have never used audio files for that. The caveat being is that once the audio files are uploaded and sent to a client, it's possible that the client then could take those audition files and use them. We don't know and haven't seen any companies per se who we know are doing that but over the last ten or so years, a lot of these companies have been working in the AI TTS sphere and very potentially could have been using that audio for training. We haven't seen it yet explicitly that we know of, but the inability to track our audio files and to know where the audio goes once we've emailed it out or uploaded through a website makes that a real possibility.,: So to give this some perspective, is there any sort of copyright law or anything in place at the moment that protects someone from having their voice turned into an AI voice without their permission?,: That's a great question. Short answer is no. We've been working with the Copyright Office. I gave a presentation to the FTC last week at a roundtable. I've spoken with multiple lawyers and people across the country and across the world. We're working with a group in Europe to help with the EU AI act. Most actors, voice actors, we give away our files as a work for hire, and the understanding is that that audio will be used for this very specific project. Unfortunately, that also basically gives the person we've given the audio file to the copyright and the ability to do whatever they want to with that. We're currently looking at the possibility that since most voice actors record from home, if from like a music perspective, we could theoretically be the owners of the master files, because a lot of times there's no contracts that are signed. But that's an early we're in the early stages of of exploring that. But there are copyright law does not currently protect the voice actor. It protects the copyright holder, which 99% of the time is the company who hired us. Wow. The only other thing we could fall back on is right, right of publicity. But those laws are only really in California and New York, where the strongest laws and then there's possibly biometric and privacy laws, but those really are only strongest in Illinois and Texas of all places, privacy rights.,Speaker C: So is there a
