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Anger from voice actors as NSFW mods use AI deepfakes to replicate their voices: 'This is NOT okay'

Puscifer

Member
AI deepfakes are definitely concerning. Not so much in the context of these narcissists freaking out about a few weirdos wanting to make video game porn, though.
I'm just waiting till the first violent crime is committed with it, at this point and I mean this in the nicest ways possible, everything so far isn't different than what people were doing with Photoshop and after effects. Some of the stuff that kids were doing with joke abridged series on YouTube in the early 2000s is amazing when you consider what they're working with.

Till we have a REAL incident which let's us examine the effects of AI all of this is just complaining SO FAR.
 

Varteras

Member
People really need to prepare themselves. We were warned many years ago that automation was going to replace a ton of jobs. Most didn't take it seriously because it either happened slowly or had no impact on their own careers at the time. AI is going to dramatically speed up the process and it's going to impact things many never thought it would in their lifetime. It's not going to stop and it's probably not going to be regulated in the ways some people think it should. The ones who effectively harness it will have a distinct advantage over the ones who try to shut it down or heavily stifle it. Voice actors don't even register as a speed bump for what's coming.
 

LRKD

Member
Honestly, I don't give a shit if fan projects use va's likeness, or voice, or anything else. It's a part of fanculture they have to deal with it. Like honestly who gives a shit. Is it wrong when people make fan art? No, so why is it wrong to mix audio recordings? Any VA's who get upset over this need to go find a different job.

Now I do think it's worth getting upset over when corporations cross that line.
 

MikeM

Gold Member
Everyone wanted AI. Take the good with the bad.

I think the real bad is yet to come tho. This is just the very faint tip of the iceberg.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Honestly, I don't give a shit if fan projects use va's likeness, or voice, or anything else. It's a part of fanculture they have to deal with it. Like honestly who gives a shit. Is it wrong when people make fan art? No, so why is it wrong to mix audio recordings? Any VA's who get upset over this need to go find a different job.

Now I do think it's worth getting upset over when corporations cross that line.

This.

Was gonna mention earlier, did people flip shit over look-alike contests and impersonations before AI took off?

When you choose to become an entertainer, you have to come to terms with the fact that part of the people you attract are going to be fucking weird. Does that make it right or mean I support it? Eh, I'm ambivalent. If it's not the actual person, and so long as it's not done in a way that's profitable or claiming to be official, thus tarnishing brands or public images, well then...

It's essentially like My Chemical Romance slasher lemon fan fics or some shit. Yeah, it's weird as hell, but it's gonna happen until the person creating it matures or is ganged up on enough to stop, OR once you stop being attractive to said weird demographic.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Hilarious IMO.

Hey, the effect of technology has not changed one bit from the first caveman who invented something useful. If you're that good at your job you'll keep it no matter how many Skynets there are. But if a robot or software program is replacing you, it means you arent that good to begin with.

What will probably happen with AI deepfakes when they become really good (that Ukrainian fake video above looks and sounds like shit) is that the highly sought after media people will rake in a shit ton of money licensing their likeness in ads and media. They can literally sit back and do nothing. I dont know if AI stuff will ever be so good to replace a real person (let's face it, no matter how good something is plugged in gaming, characters always looks gamey), but all those media people who are forgettable will be forgotten. No company will give a shit to hire someone to fill a role when Tom Cruise will license his likeness out, or AI programs will generate great sounding fake people. Wages will be funneled to coders, not media people. The people who are VA only will really get burned. At least with people on screen, it's a giant leap to getting AI to also replicate physical likeness too.

We'll all have to see how this AI/Deepfake stuff plays out. At some point something big will shake it all up. Just a matter of when.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
People really need to prepare themselves. We were warned many years ago that automation was going to replace a ton of jobs. Most didn't take it seriously because it either happened slowly or had no impact on their own careers at the time. AI is going to dramatically speed up the process and it's going to impact things many never thought it would in their lifetime. It's not going to stop and it's probably not going to be regulated in the ways some people think it should. The ones who effectively harness it will have a distinct advantage over the ones who try to shut it down or heavily stifle it. Voice actors don't even register as a speed bump for what's coming.
At some point if AI tech really takes off and jobs which tech can latch onto spiral down the toilet, it may lead to the pendulum swinging back to more blue collar jobs. If someone doesn't want to be a coder, then the world may get more trades people.

Looks like AI can deepfake people, help students do homework, and help desk jobbers put together a powerpoint presentation (which a coworker tested out for laughs and he said it put together a decent foundation to build on). But I dont see AI Terminators coming to your house to fix a broken toilet, rotate your tires or do road construction.

For those people who are on the fringe being replaced by AI and automation (which I dont think anyone expected as automation has always been a blue collar fear factor), better brush up your cozy white collar skills because you might be out of a job because a team of coders put you out of work.
 
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Madflavor

Member
There's no stopping it. There's actually a couple mods that fully replace Ada's voice in the RE4 Remake, and it's actually shockingly good:


We're entering completely new territory here.

Check out 3:55 on the first video. It's crazy how good and professional that sounds.
 
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Griffon

Member
AI is an amazing creative tool and fuck those naracissistic divas (and fucking is the right word in this case).

Lawmakers and copyright hoarders trying to destroy our access to AI is one of the worst thing that could possibly happen to humanity.

I say give us all the tools to create a whole new era of infinite artistic and personal expression through AI.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
There's no stopping it. There's actually a couple mods that fully replace Ada's voice in the RE4 Remake, and it's actually shockingly good:


We're entering completely new territory here.

Check out 3:55 on the first video. It's crazy how good and professional that sounds.

I only listened to some snippets here and there in your videos, but from what I heard there is literally zero difference in VA quality between the mod and a human voice actor. In fact, I'd say the mod sounds better than the average video game VA recording their shitty dialogue.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
AI is an amazing creative tool and fuck those naracissistic divas (and fucking is the right word in this case).

Lawmakers and copyright hoarders trying to destroy our access to AI is one of the worst thing that could possibly happen to humanity.

I say give us all the tools to create a whole new era of infinite artistic and personal expression through AI.
I'm all for AI, except for the part were students cheat. It's bad enough the internet can help them do their assignments as they sift through websites, but AI doing it for them is a big no-no. My mobile google app even has on the home page something like "Solve Homework. Upload image". So this shit is already around.

But for general things with good intentions, I'm all for it as long as the quality is good and there isn't corruption/scams. If it means jobs lost, too bad. That's the point of human life and tech. To do more with less. It's like farming. In modern day, a farmer can make a shit load of food with a given amount of machinery, seeds and manpower. If this was 50 years ago, he'd probably need double or triple the resources to do the same yield. Makes sense for any person or company to get as much as they can for as little as possible. That's life. No different than a family buying groceries with coupons and shit on sale. Buy more with less money. Same concept. It's just one is employer/employee and the other one is store/customer.

Even just 20+ years ago at the first company I worked at, you should had seen the huge numbers of paper pushers processing faxes and hand written orders. At my current company, almost all that shit is automated. Only the most archaic store manager still doing orders on a clipboard form gets special manual treatment.

And if that means fictional deepfakes or companies go the AI route to pay Brad Pitt as his 45-year old likeness for a movie in the year 2050, so be it.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
They aren't going to be able to stop it, but they can license their voices and get paid for it when AI uses it
No doubt. The smart ones should already be working on that in preparation.

The laggards will be out of a job. And their only response will be "now what do I do?"

Licensing out likeness and voice will be a giant money boom for the good ones. I see it as no different than a celeb licensing their name for clothing. But this time it's the face or voice. Just sit back and collect the royalty fees. If anyone really thinks a singer or actress sits there 9-5 in a board room discussing pricing and shipment strategies at head office, they dont. It's more like.... Here's my name. I want this payment cut. Dont fuck it up.

Sounds like smooth sailing to me as long as nobody rocks the boat.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I dont listen to audiobooks, but I can see that product line going cheap with fictional AI voices or hiring celebs' AI-likeness voice to narrate for them. See if Mila Kunis will do AI narration for 20 books at a big payoff, and the book maker can promote it's Kunis doing it.

Why pay someone big money waiting for them to finish narrating 100s of pages of text when AI can do it fast. And if something sounds off, a coder tweaks it instead of getting the VA to re-record lines.
 
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Kataploom

Gold Member
That's like mangakas complaining people make hentai art of their characters, that's unavoidable, give people tools and lots of free time and they'll do stuff... I wish they were smarter and use that time and talent into something productive but it's what it is.

In Latinamerica there are countless of memes using imitators or AI generated voices to make popular "voice actors" (because it's not them) say or sing dumb stuff over video footage, most popular ones are game Goku and Vegeta videos, when they get asked in interviews about it, they just made peace with it.

Basically as long as they don't get in trouble and if people don't use their fake voices to earn money, they don't have a problem because they can't do something against it anyway so let fans do memes and jokes, they will do it anyway.
 
I feel like a lot of you are missing the point that you have the rights to your own likeness, including your voice. People aren’t just allowed to use it without your permission. This isn’t just “outrage” from voice actors. It’s a legal problem we’re going to see crop up more and more with continued AI use.
It's not your voice, these programs aren't sampling your voice recordings, they're replicating the way you sound. It's like a comedian doing an impression except it's rapidly approaching the point of being utterly indistinguishable.
 
Technology will not wait you either go with it or get left behind...

A lot of industries will be shake in the next few years...

AI is the best thing to ever happen to "common" people.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I feel like a lot of you are missing the point that you have the rights to your own likeness, including your voice. People aren’t just allowed to use it without your permission. This isn’t just “outrage” from voice actors. It’s a legal problem we’re going to see crop up more and more with continued AI use.
Someone using likeness or copyrighted material to do their own wacky things nobody is going to care about. We all do that in some form. You got peewee hockey teams calling themselves the Rangers with a logo which looks the exact same as the team. Nobody cares.

But reselling it or a company claiming Margot Robbie partnered with them to do a product when she didnt and a coder used an AI voice is not legal. Even in current day, someone cant make the golden arches and call themselves Mick Donald's even if the logo is slightly different and the name is spelt different.

I think the outrage is more about potential job loss. And if a company illegally uses likeness they'll get sued to high heaven.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I would like to record my voice and then use AI to yell at my kids when they are 60 and I am dead.
I dont have kids, but got a slew of nieces and nephews. I want to leave them a heartfelt message from their most fav uncle. Three loving words.....

"You are dumbasses"
 

wipeout364

Member
They probably realize the gravy train is over and going forward companies will stop using voice actors. Just like the artists in China who are being displaced voice actors are next.

AI voice won’t ask for short work days, go on strike, will do retakes in seconds and rewrite dialog when asked.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
Isn’t it scummy they won’t let you utilize AI with their own modding tools? If anything, the industry will use AI to lessen crunch time and it gives them a lot more creativity. That’s at least what I would argue. People aren’t paying for these mods.

All the game developers need to do is write it in their contract and pay them for the job. After that, who really cares?
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
I mean, technically it's not your voice.

But that then begs the question, where are the lines of autonomy drawn in this brave new world?

This.

If someone can imitate your voice with a close impression how is there a line for digital recreation of the voice?

I think people need to be really careful about the careers they're in and how they're able to be replicated or replaced.

I'd be far more concerned with AI-generated voice acting for commercial work than some modder.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
They probably realize the gravy train is over and going forward companies will stop using voice actors. Just like the artists in China who are being displaced voice actors are next.

AI voice won’t ask for short work days, go on strike, will do retakes in seconds and rewrite dialog when asked.

Remember the saga with Hellena Taylor? Stuff like that doesn't do people in the industry favors.

With CGI and AI, there will be a time when you can bring James Dean back to life for a movie or cast a young Clint Eastwood.

You're only as valuable as the difficulty to replace you.

That's why we have self check out counters. Brick-and-mortar retail is dying and they're looking to cut costs anywhere they can.
 

Mibu no ookami

Demoted Member® Pro™
I'm all for AI, except for the part were students cheat. It's bad enough the internet can help them do their assignments as they sift through websites, but AI doing it for them is a big no-no. My mobile google app even has on the home page something like "Solve Homework. Upload image". So this shit is already around.

But for general things with good intentions, I'm all for it as long as the quality is good and there isn't corruption/scams. If it means jobs lost, too bad. That's the point of human life and tech. To do more with less. It's like farming. In modern day, a farmer can make a shit load of food with a given amount of machinery, seeds and manpower. If this was 50 years ago, he'd probably need double or triple the resources to do the same yield. Makes sense for any person or company to get as much as they can for as little as possible. That's life. No different than a family buying groceries with coupons and shit on sale. Buy more with less money. Same concept. It's just one is employer/employee and the other one is store/customer.

Even just 20+ years ago at the first company I worked at, you should had seen the huge numbers of paper pushers processing faxes and hand written orders. At my current company, almost all that shit is automated. Only the most archaic store manager still doing orders on a clipboard form gets special manual treatment.

And if that means fictional deepfakes or companies go the AI route to pay Brad Pitt as his 45-year old likeness for a movie in the year 2050, so be it.

If we're concerned with people cheating with AI, it just means we need to shift how people learn and execute and incorporate AI into it.

You don't tell someone they can't use a calculator, you make using a calculator part of the test.

By embracing AI, we can advance society further. Either we'll have a post labor society or we'll have a neo labor society.
 

hyperbertha

Member
Technology will not wait you either go with it or get left behind...

A lot of industries will be shake in the next few years...

AI is the best thing to ever happen to "common" people.
'common' people will lose their livelihoods while elites will mostly be unaffected.
 

killatopak

Gold Member
Uhhhh. They should have protested when game characters who had real life models were made nsfw.

When they came for me you did not care
When they came for the others you did not care.
When they came for you, there was nobody left to care.
 

Fess

Member
If we're concerned with people cheating with AI, it just means we need to shift how people learn and execute and incorporate AI into it.

You don't tell someone they can't use a calculator, you make using a calculator part of the test.

By embracing AI, we can advance society further. Either we'll have a post labor society or we'll have a neo labor society.
I agree on this. AI should be like a new tool, we should all learn how to use it, that’s how we all stay relevant. If we’re scared of what AI can do there will only be small closed groups of people who can use AI properly and stay in control, that’s when it’s game over.
 

Disco Dave

Member
i can see lawsuits happening
I don't think lawsuits will happen anytime soon. In the UK for example, data privacy laws are the only legislation that cover AI, and the UK government has stated its desire for light-touch IP regulation that allows AI innovation to prosper.
 

Disco Dave

Member
They aren't going to be able to stop it, but they can license their voices and get paid for it when AI uses it
A good proposal that addresses the current industry standard of signing rights away in perpetuity, where I suspect the Skyrim VAs are fucked regarding legal recourse.
 

the_master

Member
If they make no profit. I think it is ok. If they used their faces, that could be more concerning, but voices that belong to game characters would not worry me too much.
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
Who's going to be the first political candidate to fabricate their opponent saying some monstrous shit with AI? What happens if it's the politician you support? Could you even trust them when they disavow the practice with Super PACs offering deniability?

There's a shit-storm on the horizon.
That and, how can you trust digital evidence of anything again? "We have footage of you stealing from the security cameras" "I wasn't even there!"
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
They aren't going to be able to stop it, but they can license their voices and get paid for it when AI uses it
More likely that Ai will be trained on existing performances, the timbre changed just enough to not be deemed identical and nobody gets paid at all. Aside from the AI company, I guess.

It's fair enough that they're fighting for their job, their income and the life they've built, but ultimately if nobody gives a shit about the viability of people keeping a career they've built, then it doesn't matter.

What's interesting, is that nobody gives a shit unless it's happening to them. It's all "meh! You can't hold back progress, dumbass." Until you're the one wondering what 20 years of learning an obsolete skill is worth.

The problem is that AI looks to affect so many industries, and the change is coming along fast.

All the recent AI stuff that has been in the news for the past 3 months came about when chat GPT4 was launched.

When the previous model (GPT3) was around, this stuff was harder to achieve, less accessible and some things were just not possible so the mainstream just was not all that interested. Gpt4 represents a giant leap in what can be achieved. GPT3 launched in 2020.

By the time GPT5 launches, maybe in 2025 will things see a jump to the next level again? When GPT4 launched, people couldn't believe what was possible - after 3 years of not being all that interested in the predecessor. If the jump to GPT5 is as significant (or greater!) It's possible that it'll be capable of things that we genuinely wouldn't think possible today, even with the knowledge of what GPT4 has brought.

So, with that all said, I think my stance is that perhaps we ought to start working out what's going to happen to millions of unemployed people, and perhaps work out what we want our response to be when people say "I'm worried about losing my job to AI" when even if you don't have any empathy for them, the likelihood is that your employment could be significantly impacted by AI. A fun experiment is to try thinking of jobs that AI couldn't take in some level. It seems to me that there are relatively few.

One of the things I see touted is people thinking THEIR creative industry couldn't be taken over by AI, while people in other industries say the same thing about theirs. Let's say it's voiceovers and script writers. The kicker is that both of industries are happy to cut out the other in other to get the budget down.

Sorry to go on, one last thing, plenty of people think that any job that values human thought, feeling, creativity or emotion is safe. This is demonstrably wrong when you consider Ai is writing music, acting, writing plays, articles and stories that people are responding to emotionally. Ironically, I wonder if it's only the most robotic and least "human" jobs that will survive. Can you work out which safe industry to get into by 2025 when GPT5 arrives and your boss realises they can save a fortune by closing your department?

I'm not saying that's definitely going to happen, of course, but it's worth thinking about.
 
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MaskedSwan

Neo Member
Truly a troubling future for VAs. If you don't agree to have your voice used, what grounds do you have?

It's horrible that AI can emulate a person's voice without consent, but what anyone can do is my main concern for the future...
 

Red5

Member
Hopefully this is something that can be legislated, the idea that anyone can use a recording of your voice and synthesize it using AI should concern anyone, framing someone for something they didn't commit for example, not to mention the breach of privacy.
 

Sybrix

Member
breaking-bad-walter-white.gif
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
Truly a troubling future for VAs.
For anyone who does anything for money that can be done by AI, more like.

As I said in a post a minute ago, this is coming for almost everyone, just so happens that these are some of the more visible, earlier cases and they're speaking out about it.
 
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There was already deep fakes of the Ukranian president surrending and telling the troops to lay down they weapons. As the tech evolves it will reach a point where it will fool most of the ppl.


One can clearly tell this a fake..
AI fuked up here.
 
'common' people will lose their livelihoods while elites will mostly be unaffected.
No we will not, open source AI is force and is where the real future lies in.

You will be able to do things you never ever thought you were capable of.

AI will change how you interact with everything because it can improve your knowledge exponentially...

Look I'm a Data Engineer and I know for certain that my job is already obsolete, what I'm doing know is learn how to use AI in may places as I can In my life and I'm already seeing dozens of different possibilities.
 
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