The Actors’ Strike Isn’t Just About What We See. It’s About What We Hear.

We’ve all heard that Hollywood actors and writers are hitting the picket lines. And, well, that may raise a hearty ho-hum from many of us who have plenty of streaming entertainment options to choose from.

But did you know that part of the actor’s strike directly hits you outside of your Netflix account?

How so?

Well, you may remember that earlier this year Plugged In posted a blog about the fact that artificial intelligence is being used to create voice hacks and scam the public in various ways. And a form of that same quickly evolving tech is what some of those striking actors are waving a red flag over.

Just recently a panel organized by the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA) got together at the San Diego Comic-Con and noted that this pervasive AI technology can essentially shut them down unless some new restrictions and explicit contractual protections are put in place. Using AI, producers can sample their voices and have them say pretty much whatever they want at this unregulated point.

“As a human voice actor, I can walk into a room and get a script that says something that I didn’t either agree to say or something that I would never say, I personally have that ability to walk out of that room,” NAVA president and founder Tim Friedlander was reported to have said in a Variety article. With AI cloning the voices of actors, however, “We’ve lost control over what our voice could possibly say,” Friedlander declared.

The Variety article also pointed to the fact that it is common for studio contracts to include broad language allowing them to own the actor’s work “in perpetuity … in any technology currently existing or to be developed.”

Now, at this point I should note that, in addition to my work at Plugged In, I regularly write and direct for Focus on the Family’s Adventures in Odyssey. I’ve worked with a number of talented voice actors over the years, and I’ve done a bit of voice work myself. You could say that I have a dog in this fight. But in a way, so do we all. You may not think that sort of contractual squabble impacts your world, but that control issue could impact what you hear, and in turn, what you think.

We already live in a world that’s constantly flooded with news and social media commentary that we don’t …  always … trust. We see deep fake videos of politicians, celebrities, and even religious figures, doing things that make us scratch our heads. And let’s face it, visual and aural AI constructs are only going to be harder to distinguish from reality in the future.

As our Emily Tsiao pointed out in a recent Tech Trends blog, there are pros and cons to AI. And one of the big negatives is that AI is amoral. It doesn’t have a sense of right or wrong. It’s only the human user who has a soul. And some of those folks using it are neither caring nor good.

So, whether you’re a fan of union strikes or not, it’s always a good thing to pay attention to what’s going on in our world. It’s wise to be thinking about the super-fast pace of technology and considering earnest ways to keep it in check. AI and its users are already giddyupping their way through our lives. And only we can take notice and pull back on the reins.