Is Voices LISTENING, AI Legislation, and More w/Carin Gilfry

My guest today is one of two people that I have said if there's ever a Nobel Peace Prize for voiceover, this lady should be eligible for it. She is the founder of Voice Actors of New York City. She is a co-founder of the National Association of Voice Actors. She is a co-creator of Vocation and eVocation, and she just creates and gets after it. And by the way, an illustrious career as a voice actor herself.

Please welcome my dear frien, Carin Gilfry to the VOPro Podcast. God, it's good to see you.

Aw, it's so good to see you, Paul. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

First thing I asked you off mic when we first got together a few minutes ago was, are you recovered? Tell me about vocation. How was it? Because everything I've read, seen, and heard, people are losing their minds over this thing.

It was so much fun. It was like one of the most magical weekends I have been a part of in voiceover in my life. It was just amazing. We, we spent four days, three nights in Costa Rica at an all -inclusive resort in the jungle and on the beach. Jennifer Hale was our keynote speaker and she was just incredible. I mean, the most amazing thing to me about her besides what she presented, which was so great, is that she actually sat in the conference almost the entire time taking notes and learning from people the whole time.

And this is, this is a person who is an absolute legend. Like she holds the Guinness book of world records for the most female video game characters, the actor to voice the most female video game characters. She has done every single genre. She has been in the industry for a long time and she was literally sitting in there just absorbing and learning because there's always more to learn.

The world changes, there's always more to learn.

This is what I keep telling people, right? People say, well, I'm not sure if I need coaching. Even the elite voice actors continue to coach and learn and try to get 1 % better every day. Even the elites. And that's a great example.

And that was, that was kind of the vibe of the whole weekend. The people who were there are all people who, every single attendee could have taught a class. They were so... It was just a group of really wonderful professional voice actors who were there to learn from each other as colleagues. And it was just, it was amazing. There were some beginners as well. And I think if you're a beginner, you also can get a ton, ton of information out of it, but it, but it's a very, it was a very high level conference and all of the attendees there were just amazing.

I don't want to put you on the spot. And what I want maybe is to correct a misperception on my part. I know when vocation started out a couple of years ago, the initial emphasis was on the business side of voiceovers. That's still as true as it used to be?

Yeah. You know, the destination conferences. Well, basically we don't do any performance. So you'll never have a coach go up and say, here's a script, have somebody come up and read a script. And the reason why is that you can get that at a lot of different conferences. Via Atlanta is fantastic. One Voice is fantastic. MaVo is great. And you get that kind of performance coaching.

But for me and Jamie Muffet, my business partner, the reason we created Vocation was because all of us are small business owners and none of us took classes in how to run a small business. And so we made this conference to be able to teach people who studied theater in college or opera singing like me in college or music or whatever you happen to go into. Because most people come into voiceover from other disciplines. We created this conference, to give voice actors better information on how to treat themselves as businesses and run their businesses better.

Yeah, it's a lot like parenting, right? You kind of plopped in the middle of it and you really don't have a manual.

Yes, that's absolutely true. So, but we also thought, you know, a business conference could potentially be kind of dry. So why not have it in a beautiful location so that you're sitting focusing on business during the day and then you get to be in the pool with your friends and chill and relax in the afternoon and hang out with monkeys and go to parties and so that's how it is.

Sounds awful. Are you okay? Do you want to lie down?

What's funny is I, for the entire conference, I think I was inside for 90 % of the time. Wow. Well, yeah, you're one of the organizers. I was running it, yeah. So I had to be there in the morning at like seven to make sure the room was set up and make sure everyone's AV equipment was working and then we would have a break in the evenings from four to eight, but I would be still setting up for the parties in the evenings.

I want for folks that aren't, that don't have their head entirely wrapped around Vocation and eVocation, give me a thumbnail on how they differ.

So, eVocation is completely online. It is, it is the only virtual, only conference, that's completely dedicated to business. Maybe there's one other one now, but we used to be the only, the first, the first, online only.

Voice over conferences dedicated to business. And what's great about that is that it's accessible to everyone. It doesn't matter, you know, if you can't afford to travel to a place like VO Atlanta or Costa Rica or Dallas or whatever, you can just be in your home and it's extremely interactive. I really did not realize how much of a community you can create online until the pandemic. And we've kind of, we've kind of just kept it going.

People who have medical conditions that prevent them from traveling can come to this conference. There are all kinds of amazing speakers. We even have parties, Zoom parties, and it's so much fun. Our vocation destination conferences take place in a location. So that's the main difference.

Yeah. And I think the thing that I love about eVocation is, and you kind of touched on this, is that it makes it a little bit more accessible for folks that are just starting out, don't have as much to invest in their business, et cetera, et cetera, because to go to Costa Rica ain't cheap, right? To go to a destination isn't cheap. So this makes it keeps the playing field a little bit more level, which I love.

Absolutely.

Let's get back to the matter, the subject of the day/year, right? Which has been, this chicken-little-esque reaction the industry has had to AI, to even the platform's use of AI.

You and I were there this March at the at Vio Atlanta and the online casting panel and got to meet and actually chat with on stage Jay O'Connor of Voices.com. It's been what? A month and a half since that conference as we record today. It's been about maybe six, seven months, I guess, since Jay took over, correct? Give me your impressions on a report card, how Jay is stacking up to the promises that he made on stage at VO Atlanta. Now, I realize we're only about another 45 days down the road from there, but give me your assessment so far.

Well, one thing I can tell you is that we at NAVA reached out to Jay O'Connor, I think maybe the day they announced him as the new CEO. And he was announced as interim CEO. He was announced as interim CEO. That tag still fits as far as I know. I'm not sure. I haven't seen an update in print. I know that his whole team there, who I've talked to, they really like him. And we at NAVA have been talking to them and trying to work with them and help them understand kind of the plight of the voiceover community since he took over as CEO.

And they have been extremely receptive to meeting with us and hearing more. The thing about Jay O 'Connor is that he does not come from a voiceover background. And this whole business is so intricate. There are so many different facets to how the business operates and how things run and all the different genres and what is important for one is not the same thing that's important for the other. And so.

He has really had to dive in and learn an industry from the ground up. He came out, he came to their company and you know, all of their trust pilot ratings are very high. A lot of the public facing information about how the company is doing is very favorable. So when he came to the company, he had done all of that research and he was like, great, this is a company that everyone loves stepping in as CEO. And it was. Yeah.

I think it was kind of, I think it was kind of a shock to him and also to the staff at Voices.com because they, since everything happened with David Ciccarelli and all of the way that the community was handled under that leadership, Voices.com has largely not been a part of the same voiceover community that we are a part of. So I think, I think everyone over there has been living in their own kind of ecosystem.

And they were not as aware of the feelings toward the company as they could have been. And we at NAVA have been doing our best to just try and tell them the story of how things went south and how things could be better. And to their credit, it seems like they are really working on it. They're meeting with new lawyers and things to update some of their language on the website and they seem to really have a desire to do things.

It's just taking longer than we would hope, but it seems like it's still in process. So that's a good thing.

I feel like that's, you know, when you've got a corporation that big, it takes a little while to turn the battleship. And on one hand, it seems like a very easy thing. And I've even said in recent weeks, it feels like some of the stuff that we're still seeing on voices.com, maybe I'd hope by now we wouldn't be seeing as much and it doesn't seem like that has really decreased so far. But, you know, I want to take a wait and see attitude. The question is how long do we wait? And I'm not sure what the answer to that is right now.

Let's get to a little bit back to AI and some of the hysteria around that. You guys at NAVA are at the center of the fight on behalf of all of us voice actors and even and maybe you can give me your impressions of this car and not only are you guys I feel like fighting for us as voice actors and artists and even on camera folks as as actors and artists but I feel like this AI issue is so pervasive.

All of us, whether we're voice actors, actors or not, we're all vulnerable to this. And do you feel that responsibility when you're in Washington talking to lawmakers or you're at a state Capitol? Do you feel like you're fighting for more than just our little voiceover bubble?

Absolutely. And that's one of the things that we are doing our best to try and explain to all of the lawmakers that we're talking to.

One of the things we did the first time we went to DC was we created a synthetic version of my six-year-old daughter. And we went around and played it in the offices and played her actual recording and her synthetic voice recording. And they, you know, I think people kind of have an idea of like, AI is getting really advanced and wow, this is like, but they don't, you don't realize just how advanced it is until someone plays a side by side for you of this is this little six -year -old girl's voice and this is her synthetic voice.

Imagine what can be done with her and to her by using that synthetic voice. This is something that needs to be legislated as soon as possible, not just for us, but for everyone. And you think too about the security risks, like, you know, if you are using a banking system that allows you to access your bank by saying my voice is my password, someone could create a synthetic version of your voice and get into your bank right now as it stands. And that's really scary.

I am a really my checking account. My personal checking account is with a really large national bank. I won't mention which one, but every single time I sign on to my website, it wants me to authenticate my voice to use as my password, just as you said. And I'm thinking, how can you as a major national brand and bank be asking that in the last 12 to 14 months. I mean, it just feels tone deaf to me, right?

Yeah. Because that's so easily exploited. We had a, we did a roundtable with the FTC recently, and that was one of the things that we brought up just as like a consumer protection thing that this needed to be taken care of sooner rather than later. And so far, I don't think, I don't think they've made any official, you know, statement or... rules about that kind of thing, but it's definitely on their radar.

Why is it, do you think, and maybe you disagree, but it seems pretty clear to me that the US is so far behind, for example, the European Union in passing these protections?

So, I wouldn't necessarily say the US is so far behind. The place in which we are extremely far behind is data protection in general. GDPR in the EU, is extremely good and important for the people that live there. For us, I feel like there's so much more that can be done. I mean, just having to click a button that says I accept cookies or don't accept cookies. I mean, cookies sound delicious. Half the population doesn't know what they are. So you just click accept. Fine, I want cookies, of course. And people are not really...

You're not wrong.

Is this going to help the site run better? Like what is this? You know, like there's, there just isn't a lot of education about what it is and why you should accept it or decline it. And that's really the only regulation that's in place right now that we're, that we're seeing on the public side. So, you know, data protection is incredibly important. Your voice print is your data and beyond just being data, it's your biometric data.

And owning the rights to your own biometric data is extremely important. And that's one of the things that we are really fighting for. So that's one side of it. The other side is kind of right of publicity laws are much better in the EU and UK than they are in the United States. You can't just take someone's voice, image, name, or likeness and put it up wherever you want and not pay them. In the United States, you kind of can.

There are certain states where your voice, image, name, and likeness are protected a bit more. In Illinois and New York and California and Washington and Tennessee now, Tennessee just passed this new Elvis Act, which kind of helps with right of publicity. Beyond that, in the rest of the country, you have pretty much no protection.

So that's one of the things we're trying to do is to get a federal law passed that would ensure your right of publicity so that people can't just take the thing that you make money from and use it. And that law has been introduced into Congress now. Where are we with that? We're looking at a couple of different bills. The No Fakes Act is one that we are strongly supporting, and we're going to DC next week actually to go to go talk to some lawmakers about supporting that bill.

And so I hope we make some headway. You know, luckily, there seems to be a lot of bipartisan support. There is not a giant group of people who are saying don't regulate AI. That's dumb. Almost everyone is saying.

Yes, this is something that needs to be done quickly.

And as far as a bipartisan issue, I understand that. How formidable is the AI slash tech lobby and how much of an impediment have you found that to be so far?

We, I mean, I don't feel like we've come up against them specifically, anyone from there specifically. But, you know, in the end, I think senators and congresspeople,

They really care about protecting their own voice likeness, name and image. Because if you're running for re -election and somebody can just take your voice and make you say whatever you want, that's very bad for you. It's already been done. It's very bad. So putting some protections in place, I think, is important.

And I can't imagine that they would go against their own self -interest to kind of like... I don't know.

When it dawned on me that, you know, nobody really cares, arguably so, for the plight of the lowly voice actor. When it dawned on me that the general public was going to be affected and even more so, lawmakers themselves could be scammed and could be parodied and spoofed and, you know, deepfakes, right? When that dawned on me, I thought, well, this legislation is going to move along a little bit quicker than I originally thought.

Let's go back to voice actors for a minute. I feel like this is an opportunity. When I say this, these new laws, these new protections, it feels like voice has been the redheaded stepchild out of the group you just named, which is name, image, likeness, and voice. I feel like now it's an opportunity for voice to get caught up with the other three siblings, right?

Yeah, I agree. And, you know, part of the reason why NAVA exists is because SAG-AFTRA is awesome, but they're made up primarily of on-camera talent. And so the needs of voice actors are not front and center for SAG-AFTRA. We are kind of in the same group as like, I would say like stunt performers or singers or dancers who are also SAG-AFTRA members, but not necessarily like the core, the core group of people who make up SAG-AFTRA. And so we just wanted to form an association that could help guide SAG-AFTRA, help them, help highlight the things that we think are really important so that they can better look at the situation and go, there's this group of people that also are really vulnerable to this issue. And let's see what we can do specifically for them because they make up a part of our membership as well. And it's so much easier to clone just a voice believably.

It's a lot harder to do voice and image together and so we are more vulnerable than any other type of actor that is part of the union or that exists out in the world. and so, yeah, that's, that's, we're catching up. We're catching up. People are seeing us now.

Speaking of NAVA specifically, Tim, your co-founder, Tim Friedlander and president of NAVA has said to me many times, you know, we are pro voice actor, we are union agnostic. Is that a tricky balance for NAVA as an organization to stay union agnostic when you're working so closely with SAG -AFTRA or do you have their cooperation and collaboration in that sort of work ethic?

I think if we... So I would say all of the things we do at NAVA elevate voice actors in general including people in the union. Nothing we do at NAVA goes against what SAG-AFTRA is trying to do. So I think they are, you know, we want to work with them as much as possible. Being union agnostic has mostly to do with the fact that the voiceover, the reality of the voiceover industry, which is that most voice actors out there are non -union or they're FICOR. or their union and they sometimes do non -union work.

That is a reality of the industry that we live in. And so the more we can do to protect people on the non -union side, the better all of us are going to be. The more we can set the standards on the non -union side, the easier it will be for SAG-AFTRA to negotiate contracts that are equal to the standards that are outside of the union and make them better.

And if we kind of just make sure that everything non-union aligns with what SAG-AFTRA is trying to do on the union side, the whole industry will be better. So that's, that's been our stance and it hasn't really been tricky. Sometimes, sometimes we have to think, we have to think about what we say and do and make sure that it kind of aligns with, with what's good for everybody. But beyond that, it really hasn't been very difficult. We found a lot of support with.

SAG-AFTRA and hopefully we're supporting them as well.

That's really good to hear. Turning the page a little bit because for the last 12, 14, 16 months, the AI issue has been the issue that's eaten voiceover pretty much. Pretty much anybody talks about. There are other issues that NAVA is dealing with and fighting for, et cetera. What are they? Because I think we've lost touch of, by the way, the world exists outside of artificial intelligence as well.

Yeah. There is a lot that we're working on all the time. One of the things that came from the kind of unfortunate situation with the coach, Lisa Biggs, which we can talk about also later if you want, but we created a demos best practices page that has been shared pretty widely. It's just a good source of information. So that's one thing. We have an incredible diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility team. Our committee for DEIA is amazing. And they have been working for months putting together a best practices for casting page, which hopefully will go up soon. We're launching a campaign about authentic representation and authentic casting soon. But they are just, I am in awe of what they have done and I can't wait for everybody to see it because it's just, it's so thoughtful. I'm in awe of what they've done. It's so thoughtful. It's so, it's just so well-articulated.

And yeah, I just can't wait for everybody to see it.

Let me ask you this. We have, we're working on best casting practices in terms of DEIA. The flip side of that is best auditioning practices. In other words, guiding the voice actor when and what to audition for ethically, because we've had those issues in our business. Is that something that the DEIA committee is working on as well? Is that going to be a flip side to the casting practices?

Yeah. Yeah, I think it will kind of roll in altogether. So if you read the casting practices, it will apply to actors as well. And you get really an idea of what is appropriate and what's not appropriate. There have been lots of issues in the voiceover community with people pretending to be from a certain ethnic group that they are not. There have been people who created entire websites of a persona that was a person of a different ethnicity. And that that is extremely hurtful to the people who are part of that group.

And so I'm really, really glad to see that we are moving away from that. And I hope that everyone who has ever done that in the past has learned from what they, from all of us who are trying to fight for authentic representation in casting. It's really important. It absolutely is.

Let's get down to Carin Gilfry. What's going on with you these days? Because every time I go to a conference, I'd love to see you. I'd love to get a big hug from you. And then I look at the award sheet and it's nominated Carin Gilfry. Carin Gilfry. Carin Gilfry. I mean, you get more nominations and more awards than I think anybody I can think of off the top of my head. I don't know. And it speaks to your skill and talent as a voice actor. Where do you at where you are right now in your career? Obviously you're very accomplished. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to grow in the yet in the next year to five?

That is such a great question. I'm so, I love my job so much. Every like even stupid auditions. I just love to do them. I love my clients. Even the ones that annoy me. I love them. and a little less.

I love them a little less than some. There's some that are great. There's some that are medium good. But I, I, I feel like, I truly feel like each and every one of us in this business has limitless potential. Anything is possible. There is no income ceiling. There is no ceiling for what you can do in this job. And I'm just excited to see everything that comes next. I feel like I haven't done as much.

in video games and animation as I could. And that's, those are genres that are exciting to me. And I'm, and I'm looking forward to exploring those a little bit more. I love everything that I'm doing in commercials. I love doing, in show narration. I've been narrating a lot of true crime shows lately, which is really fun. And then also I feel so professionally fulfilled by all of the organizations that I've started and all of the organizations that I'm part of.

And all of the different events and conferences and all kinds of things that, that I have been putting together. because it just feels like, you know, you, you like imagine this thing, like let's have a conference in Costa Rica. And it seems like a totally crazy idea and dream. And then you just take one step toward it and another one, another one, and it kind of starts to flesh out and you get more and more excited. And then one day you open up Facebook and people are on a plane.

coming to the thing that you just had the idea about. And the next thing you know, monkeys are stealing your food. And the next thing you know, monkeys are stealing your food and Jennifer Hale is singing with you in a piano bar. And, and, and it just feels so awesome. But the thing that I would love for anyone listening to take away from this is that I am not special. There's nothing like crazy weird about me. I just love doing it. And I just keep doing it every day. And if you find something that you love doing and you just keep doing it every day, little by little, you're going to get better and better and better and achieve the thing that you want to achieve. So just keep that in mind, keep working and just go for the thing that you want.

I can't think of a better way to end this podcast. And it's always a pleasure talking to you. I will see you in Dallas.

Yes. Yes, I will be there.

Yeah. And maybe we'll check in later in the year to find out where things like legislation are and those are the issues that we talked about today. I'd love to have you back on if you're game.

Absolutely. I'd love to anytime.

Notice how I put you on the spot while we're still in the podcast episode.

It's like planning a second date on your first date.

Exactly. It's the salesman is me. You always get the next appointment before you get off the first appointment. Carin Gilfry, the wonderful founder of Voice Actors of New York City, the co-founder of NAVA, the creator of Vocation, eVocation, and the pillar, one of the true pillars of our voiceover community.

We would not be where we are today as a group, as individuals, union, non -union, it doesn't matter. If it weren't for the work of you and Tim and the NAVA board, we are all indebted to you and we can't thank you enough and we'll see you soon.

Thank you.