ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE STOLE MY VOICE

Ellen Dubin 

AI is all over the news these days as the technology rapidly spreads worldwide. 

Performers are the tip of the spear.  While AI presents incredible opportunities, it also carries the potential for severe impacts on our lives as actors.  

To me, AI was Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey or Siri when I needed directions. It was nothing stressful, nothing that ever weighed on me.  

All that changed a couple of months ago, when I found out through a wonderful fan that my voice in a triple A video game had been stolen and used in a deep fake porn site. I had never heard of anything like this!  

My first reaction was shock because I worked on this game 12 years ago playing over 80 characters. As a massively popular game, I also recorded downloadable content over the years – more lines, additional characters in different worlds. 

I had no idea which characters had been modified. 

This fan was very thorough in his research, though. If it wasn’t for him, none of the cast would have discovered that there were over 200 actors compromised in just this game alone. Subsequently, we found out that other titles also had actors’ images or voices stolen.  

I was stunned. I felt like someone had broken into my apartment and literally violated me.  

I discovered that original dialogue in my voice was altered into something pornographic.  They had also changed the images of our characters.  Female characters especially were altered physically and put into compromising positions. So, in these “mods” (game modifications a player can download from the internet), everything was highly oversexed! 

None of that was what I had originally signed up for. I contacted a few of my voice actor friends and we sent a cease and desist to the company who was hosting the mods. The company agreed to take it down. 

But a month later, the fan noticed that someone else had picked it up. This content was out there and out of control. Once it is downloaded, in a second someone in their basement or wherever can download it again. 

We can’t keep up with or control other mods and there are thousands of mods around.  

Performers need guardrails

Let’s say you are a government official giving a speech in front of parliament. They record it.  

A couple of days later you see it online but the words you hear are not the words you prepared or wrote or said. They’re something vile. Something completely against your own political party. Against what you believe in. 

It’s the same thing for an actor. This is our livelihood. This is our heart and soul. 

How can we deal with this? 

A wonderful start is to educate everybody, to emphasize that there must be guardrails against AI: for control, compensation, and consent. We must come together – the actor, the agents, the casting directors, the producers, the creators of video games or any other genre as we are all a part of this vulnerable ecosystem. 

Of course, we want to be compensated for our work.  But I think consent is almost more important because this is about our reputation.  Our careers are built on reputation.  If our characters are out there saying things we didn’t agree on or doing things we had no knowledge of, this not only affects us emotionally but can damage our professional careers.  

Informed consent is crucial

We need the ability to give informed consent before we get on set. We need to examine our contracts well before we sign them in case there are AI clauses we don’t agree with or don’t understand. 

Most of the time, actors must sign an NDA to protect the project, and its content. It would be wonderfully reciprocal if producers of these projects would protect our image and voice just as we protect their content. 

For example, is the vocal content going to be exclusive to that game? Will our voices be used in another game?  Will the content of that game be something we are comfortable with morally?  Will our voices be used to train AI systems? Can we be protected from people downloading and abusing our voices with mods?

These issues have rarely been addressed in a union contract. Fortunately, ACTRA is currently working hard on the AI front.  

Setting the stage for generations to come

I know of a little girl starring in an Emmy nominated animated series. She is nine or ten years old, and her voice and character image have already been compromised. Her voice was available on a database where you could type in anything you want and get this little girl to say it.  

It’s reprehensible. 

Thank goodness the producers of the show had it taken down right away. But the truth is, this little girl’s image and voice is probably still out there.  

The guardrails we create today will set a precedent for the younger generation. AI technology is growing by leaps and bounds so these guardrails must be flexible to reflect that rapid growth.  

If we do this now, we stand a good chance of protecting our ACTRA members in the future. AI may be here to stay but it is our humanity that will stand the test of time!