Voices.com Finally CAVES. NAVA Announces fAIr Voices

PS: And joining us live from Los Angeles, California, this afternoon, the president of NAVA, the National Association of Voice Actors, Tim Frielander, and Tim, I dropped the D in your name. Tim Friedlander. You would think a voice actor would get that right.

First of all, I want to congratulate you and your vice president, Carin Gilfry, on the recent victory that you guys have had for voice actors specifically, and we'll talk… and we'll zoom out and talk about the bigger picture in a minute. But specifically this week, Voices dot com has amended their terms of service to be very explicit about how voice actors’ likenesses, voices may be used in regards to A.I. voices. Congratulations on that. Let's get your reaction first.

TF: That's great. You know, I think it's as much… I'm going to say it's a community victory because it was all of the… conversations that happened on Twitter. All the conversations that happened on Facebook. And Carin and I saw that and just picked up the ball from what the community was doing. And the community was concerned about, rightfully concerned about and went to voices dot com and went to the other pay-to-play sites and just had a conversation with them and this was the result of that conversation. B ut it was a… it's a victory for the whole community of showing the power that we could actually stand up as a community if we have concerns. There are, there are ways to change that.

PS: I think you're right. I think it was and at its core, it was definitely a concern of the entire voice acting community. But you guys now have reached this point with NAVA where it feels like maybe for the first time, certainly the first time for nonunion voice actors, we have some, leverage and a real voice. So, thank you for that. That's a huge victory.

TF: Welcome. It is. It's a huge victory. And it's you know, but again, it you know, it's something for the whole community that that everybody you know, everybody did it. And I think that I'm glad that we were able to kind of spearhead that and be the face of it. But it is it's a substantial victory for the voieover industry.

PS: And it's part of kind of a larger campaign called the fAIr Voices Campaign, which you guys have come out with in the last week or so. Tell us about the fAIr Voices campaign and specifically about the three C's.

TF: You know, our big concern is the fair use, ethical use of AI, synthetic voices, machine learning and the ethical use of the data that we as voice actors are basically providing and had been providing to these tech companies for years. So our, you know, consent, compensation, and control. Those are our three C's.

And specifically, you know, we want to have Consent to know to say yes or no on how our voice can or can't be used. And this is very active consent. We want to be able to say, in my contract, it can be used for this and it cannot be used for this.

Compensation. That's, you know, we'll be paid fairly for the use of our voice. And as we know, as voice actors, part of what we get paid for is the time in the booth.

But the bigger part of this is being paid for the usage of our voice, the usage of our sound to help sell a product, to help train people, to help inform people. There's value every time they get shown. There's value for the for the person who is using that.

And Control to be able to say, “You know what? I want to know where my audio files are going, I want to know who has this data. I want to know what it's being used for. I want to know if I'm looking at something. And, you know, I contracted with a contractor with a company in New York, and all of a sudden I see that my files are in Spain for some reason.

I want to know why. Why are my files being sent somewhere? Where to somebody who, you know, maybe has a third party that we are contracted with then great that I need to know that that's where it's going. It's going to be used in Spain. Is it going to be used, you know, in other contexts?”

And those are our three.

Those are three that we're fighting for and that, you know, ethical sourcing, fair terms and usage so that we know, great, this is not going to be in perpetuity. You can use my voice for this period of time. You get to use it for a year and then after a year, we need to re-up our contract or you get to use it for three years or whatever that term might be.

PS: So, the big victory this week and the early win has been to get the five major voiceover-specific, we'll call them pay-to-plays, casting platforms, to sign the fAIr Voices pledge. That's big. We'll call those folks the big five: Voices dot com, Voice123, Bodalgo, CastVoices, and what am I missing?

TF: VOPlanet.

PS: VOPlanet. Thank you. Sorry, Kevin. So the big five have kind of signed on for this pledge that they will they will abide by the three C's. Are there any plans to, for instance, go after what I call the big four, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple?

TF: That's going to have to be on a national level. That's going to have to be national legislation. I think, you know, we are you know, one of the things that I think we have the ability in this community is that it is such a small community and it is a very personal community.

You know, we know, David, at Voices dot com. We know Rolf at Voice123, we know Liz at CastVoices. We know Kevin at VOPlanet. And we know Armin at Bodalgo. So we can literally reach out to all of them on Facebook Messenger or by text or something else and get that conversation going.

And, you know, to all of their critics, every single one of them said yes right away without any hesitation. They're like, “yes, and we haven't been doing it or we never would do it. And it's not something that that we have even thought about doing in our in our in our terms of service.” So, we just made it clear the community wants to know very explicitly that this isn't going to happen. But, you know, now so we're talking with those… they’re VO people that are in the community, they know this community. So, they are our friends and they're invested in this community as a whole.

Those other tech companies aren't, right? They're not… they don't have any skin in this, whether they use us as professional voice actors or they go and hire somebody, you know, they bring in somebody from the mailroom or they bring in the Uber Eats driver to do something on there. That value to them, there's no difference in that value for a professional voice actor because they don't need professional voice actors, they need voice data. They need the actual just sounds of our voice is the training of this of this technology. And then they can create whatever they want to out of it.

But, you know, that's going to be that's a larger concern. And that's a global concern. I mean, those entities are global, right? Whatever they do is going to have impacts around the world. There's legislation in the EU right now. The EU has, you know, very strict privacy data protection laws. So hopefully if that legislation that goes through, we as the rest in the United States, the rest of the world, can piggyback or use that as a model of some kind to hopefully get something happening here.

You know, but the technology moves so quickly that by the time legislation maybe even gets written or into place, it's going to be irrelevant, too late or, you know, you know, way, way too past the mark by the time that happens.

PS: Well, we've talked about that a lot here on this platform. My lawyer, Ashley Brooks, famously said, you know, the law is never going to catch up to the technology. We understand that. But we still have to catch the laws up to, you know, we got to keep fighting the fight, right? So what legislation are you aware of? Or maybe that NAVA might be helping to move along here in the U.S. that might give voice actors some protection?

TF: Nothing that I know of currently that's in… there's things that are in talks, but that's, you know, that's out of our purview, unfortunately. I mean, you know, we've been around for six months. Oh, we are. You know, we jumped full force into this. I think we've done a lot in six months, you know, But, you know, I've presented this speak in front of the Copyright Office on behalf of voice actors.

We have presented, we've already spoken with Ted Lieu's office here in California, Representative in California. We've had a chance to present to AOC in New York. So, we've had a chance to speak, you know, at least present in front of some people who hopefully could possibly help out. But, you know, beyond that, any legislation that I think is going to that's going to impact voice actors is going to have to come from the top down in regards to celebrities and politicians.

And but I think, as Carin has said, you know, voice, VO , the voice in general is probably maybe the first to be legislated because it is something that can be so easily duplicated, replicated and copied and changed, that it has to very quickly be implemented in some capacity to stave off, you know, especially coming in the election next year or which is going to be starting at the end of this year.

So, you know what? What's going to happen if that those laws aren't in place to handle that in time for the election, which trickles down to what we've seen with scam phone calls, with fake kidnapings, with the doxing of voice actors and other people, with fake 911 calls using synthetic voices, using fake voices.

It's very simple. It's very easy to do. And anybody who has recorded audio on the Internet is at risk of having their audio taken to sound like them. And that that that is a huge concern outside of professionally, as voice actors, just on a very basic safety stance for just the community and people in general.

PS: Let's bring it back for a minute to the to the fAIr Voices pledge. I s that, I struggle to articulate this Tim, but is that more or less an open pledge that other, maybe corporations, maybe, you know, a Fortune 500 corporations that have in-house video production or media production… Can they sign on to that pledge?

TF: Everybody is welcome. We started with, you know, the big five that impact our industry and were being discussed very, you know, very clearly for the last couple of weeks with the launch of Voice doe ai, Voices dot ai. But you know, we're reaching out to production companies. The audio travels through so many different chains in this process when it leaves the voice actor to what it finally shows up, you know, in on air or in whatever capacity it's going to be in. The production goes through so many steps.

So we want to make sure that that all those steps in that process are handled, handled fairly and safely as well. Yeah, I mean, we're open to everybody. You know, our next step is to reach out to production companies and video game companies and other things along those lines. This is not, you know, an anti-AI stance and there's nothing… you know NAVA is not, never been...

We are, you know, we are not anti-technology, or anti-AI, we're pro voice actor.

And this technology, you know, Pandora's box is open, as we've said, it's out there. I don't believe that it's inevitable. I don't believe that we are on… that there is an inevitable conclusion to where this is going to go. But I do think that we need to be involved in this conversation now because we are the literal voices that are creating, the voices that people are going to be hearing down the line.

So, and that has to be handled ethically and fairly for voice actors.

PS: I agree. I think one of the biggest parts of this victory, specifically now with the big five signing on, specifically Voices dot com, who David's been saying for years that “we haven't used your voices in AI. We won't use your voice as an AI.” But he had, until this week, yet to change the terms of service. Talk about the fact that they've taken that step and what that means.

PS: I think it's a great step. You know, I have… I believe David fully. I don't have any reason to doubt that they have never used, nor would any of the sites. I don't think that anybody has then using the data on their sites to train AI, synthetic voices. It's been a concern, obviously, because we haven't had a clear answers. And specifically, Voices dot come was the one a lot of people were concerned about. You know, they’ve got 20-some years of data traveling through their through their servers, right, through their site.

You know, we have seen voices being taken and stolen, but nothing that we nothing ever through Voices dot com or any of the pay-to-play sites that we have seen.

But to make that clear is really important. It just adds a layer of safety and security to voice actors to feel safe using these sites. And it's one step in this component. But what we need to make sure… people understand is that this is only the pay-to-play sites are agreeing to this. That if you send something through CastVoices, CastVoices is not going to use that to create a synthetic voice or machine learning or AI.

The next step in this, though, is what do we do with the producer, the client who's hiring us, right? So we as voice actors, have to have some say in this, got to be educated so that we can say, “Great, I book this job through Voices dot com and now we know the communication through Voices dot com is all handled on platform but you can have that communication, “Great, I book this job. I would like to ensure that in writing you're not going to use this for AI, synthetic voices, with the clients.”

Now there could be some potential for the platforms to step up and say, you know, you have to… you have to very clearly, cannot use AI or create synthetic voices. But that's not, that's… that's an extra step into this process.

And, you know, this is this is the first initial step, which is let's make sure that we feel safe using these platforms. And, you know, I think for the most part, everybody has a, you know, and I think there's been there's been, you know, a little bit of talk here and there about the potential of something happening. But I don't think anybody is directly felt threatened that their voice that they're putting up something on a pay-to-play and it's being stolen and used to train AI.

We know what's been happening. Other places, Findaway Voices which very publicly, you know, the information is out there about what they did with, you know, what they've done with their audio for Apple audiobooks.

But to have this in writing is great. And you know one of the things that we saw from the other sites that, Armin was like, “Oh, wow, I've already had already had it on the site. Like, I'll sign it, but it's already on the site . I'm already doing it. So, if you want me to sign on, I will. But I've already been saying we're not going to do this.”

And the other sites as well have it in their terms of service, you know, some references to this and have for a while. One thing it's interesting to notice about the Voices document is they have another clause that says voice actors won't upload synthetic voices. Which is very interesting because, to be fair, if you're going to do it for one side, it's got to be fair.

PS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

PS: You know, it's easy for me to go on to Eleven Labs and spend $5 a month and create a synthetic voice and audition with it. And some auditions you could very easily potentially do with a synthetic voice. So, it's fair for the client on the other side to know that they're getting a human voice. And it's fair for us to, to know that they're not going to take our real voice and make it a synthetic voice.

PS: I… well, it's like… at the point where I'm sending in a synthetic voice audition. That's the time I need to get out of the business, right?

TF: So. Well, let's look at that. Let's have a let's just chat about that because, I get if you, if you don't mind, there is a very interesting… So, what I think about this process, the possibility that a client can go to my website and type in their script and hear it in my synthetic voice without ever having to contact me directly for an audition to go, “Yep, I want that voice.”

You hire me as the human voice of what you're going to do, but you have the potential to hear my audition on my website through a synthetic voice.

PS: The technology… in my ear, just to my ear, right, the technology for me would have to go a long way where I would trust it to do what I do at my core as an artist, right?

TF: Yeah. Yeah. So… and so it goes into, you know, depends on what, what people, what, what the client is going to need and absolutely you know but so I think instead of thinking of it as if you look at it as some kind of capacity to be a tool that we can benefit from as voice actors, I think it takes it takes a little bit of the fear away, but it also gives a little sense of control and the fact that we can look so we can utilize this these synthetic voices to our benefit.

At some point, I may not be where we where we need it now, but let's look down in the long term. I say, okay, let's not freak out about this because it is scary. It is it is a very scary concept. And I've said this in interviews that there's a potential of we've been training our replacements for the last ten years. Right?

That's a that's very a very real possibility that our contracts that we've been signing without reading for the most part, have been giving people the rights to synthesize and digitize our voices. So what do we have? What can we do about that? And how can we benefit from this technology that they have created basically on the backs of our data of us, of the sound of our voice?

PS: Right. So, so moving forward, what is NANA working on specifically? You know, what are what are your priorities when it comes to protecting us from AI? And also, the flip side of that, as you just mentioned, is how do we now leverage AI in a way that makes sense for everybody concerned?

TF: Our big push right now is education. You know, it is speaking to just this this idea that we have to read our contracts and we have to understand what our contracts are saying, and that's working with nonunion and union and Ficore members, because this is an industry. It doesn't matter whether you're in the union, you are not any more protected from somebody.

If they want to take your voice, they can take your voice. Just because you're in SAG-AFTRA does not mean that you're protected. You have a, you know, you have a legal team that will go after that and help enforce the contract if you need it. But somebody could just as easily take that data.

You know, we are we are working just to have as many conversations with as many different people as we can to discuss this and doing like what we're doing with the fAIr Voices campaign of trying to just educate everybody involved where we've got to major, not Apple, not the big major tech companies, but two large tech companies that we've been speaking to for the last month or so tried to help put in some kind of framework of standard rate, standard operating procedures when dealing with synthetic voices and what fair rates were going to be.

Because rates are, you know, this, all the conversation. But you know, how much does it how much does it cost to hire to hire my synthetic voice versus a human voice is the technology.

If the value to the client is the same, then the cost is going to be the same. If the value is not the same, then you have to admit that the technology is not as good as you say it is.

And now we've got this kind of catch-22. So, it's this interesting place to be an ideally, I would love to be speaking in front of Congress by the end of the year about this.

This is where I would like to be discussing this conversation. We are in the entertainment industry, right? So, what happens with the WGA strike right now, whether you're union nonunion, is going to have ramifications on us. I think one of the really one of one of the things that I did before I joined the union was I tried to stay very educated of what was happening in the voiceover industry, including the union.

So I got into the into the union in 2016, right as the video game strike was happening. And I put together a whole website to educate the nonunion world about the video game strike and in because what happens in in those realms they go back and forth what we do with the nonunion world is going to have an impact on what we do in the SAG-AFTRA world.

So what happens in The WGA strike is going to impact what happens in the next SAG negotiations. It could happen in the next DGA negotiations, and all of those things are going to impact us. And AI is at the forefront of all of these industries. So, it's supporting what SAG-AFTRA is doing in their messaging, helping to educate everybody in the industry so that when SAG-AFTRA goes and has these discussions, they know what the impacts are in the nonunion world.

They know how this impacts the nonunion voice actor in a way that they wouldn't know if the only dealt with it with the union world and vice versa. The nonunion world needs to be aware of what's happening in the union world because those contracts can be used, can be helped to inform what you do in the nonunion world.

Let's take these protections, these… parameters that are in a union contract and let's just move them into the nonunion world if we need to. Let's see how these work and we can have those specifications there as well.

PS: And they become precedent, really.

TF: They become part of the take up as they become boilerplate. Right. They become which, you know, we have our AI synthetic rider, which we put out, Rob Sciglimpaglia drew that up for us the beginning of the year. We put on the website to help some voice actors who were concerned about what to do, and that's already becoming boilerplate.

Carin worked… We had a client last week, send her the rider back to sign, which is now part of their standard contract. It's like, it's…

PS: Fantastic.

TF: So we're seeing that and that's being picked up in various different places. It can't be in a union contract because the union has to negotiate those contracts. But the language can inform what's going to be in the next union contracts. And what happens in the union contract can inform what we end up putting in the rider or adjusting in the writers as we go, as we go forward.

PS: We'll put the link to the NAVAvoices.org page for AI and synthetic voices, as well as the link to the fAIr Voices campaign so that folks that are watching this video can get educated. And by the way, I try to mention this every time we mention that, you do not need to be union nonunion or even a NAVA member to access those pages and to get that information.

So, we'll put those links in the in the description in the show notes, whether you're watching us on YouTube or listening to us on the podcast, we'll have that accessible for you in in the notes.

Tim Friedlander, thank you so much. Congratulations to you and Carin Gilfry on some big early wins in the fAIr Voices campaign. And we'll be looking for more and hopefully we can have you back on soon to talk about some more progress.

TF: Yeah, that'd be great.

PS: Awesome. Thanks so much.

TF: As well.