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Cheap AI voice clones may wipe out jobs of 5,000 Australian actors

Industry group says rise of vocal technology could upend many creative fields, including audiobooks – the canary in the coalmine for voice actors

In its submission, the group criticised the development as “a disappointing move from a player in an industry that has relied on voice artists to bring quality, credibility and humanity to their medium for over 100 years.” The recently formed association’s president, Simon Kennedy, told Guardian Australia, the advent of AI and its impact on the voice industry was partly the catalyst for setting up the group, but he says they’re “not anti-tech and we’re certainly not anti-AI”. “I don’t think that the endgame was really top of mind for people; that your voice will now exist in the marketplace, as a digital clone of yourself, that will basically take work that you could normally get yourself,” he said.

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