A high-profile dispute between Scarlett Johansson and the maker of ChatGPT has brought the subject of AI voices to the fore, but many others in the entertainment industry are affected too. Jennifer Hale and Linsay Rousseau say fair treatment for voice actors is important. (May 23, 2024)
from The Canadian Press
This commentary is from labor disputes last year, I wanted to post it here so that people would remember whose jobs they are trying to steal by pushing fake ai VO. We don’t have to push corpo propaganda here. This is our space, err, [Chris Remington, alyaza [they/she], TheRtRevKaiser, gyrfalcon, rs5th, coldredlight, Leigh, TheRtRevKaiser]'s space. I don’t think any of them are corporations, but maybe I am wrong?
Pushing AI propaganda is a bad move for infinite reasons, here are four:
-
it’s usually an attack on workers
-
the industry steals directly from artists
-
these companies are massive polluters/ emitters
-
it makes you look like a rube
*edit 1 According to the laws of debate, one of you must reveal whichever podcast has you parroting comparisons of VO artists to horse workers *edit 2 Horse husbandry is also a major craft and fine art that ought not be mocked, whether or not it is useful to capitalists
I think you just identified the actual problem, while shying away from identifying it as such. People shouldn’t take issue with ai, they should have issues with capitalism.
IMHO, the point of creative work can be debated, and you’re more than welcome to only be interested in non-ai work, but obviously that differs person to person. Some people might think that creative work is there to be enjoyed and if it brings joy then it’s valid. Plenty of people can enjoy AI work, even if you’re not one of them.
If what you’re fighting for is jobs for creatives, then I think it’s a bad argument. Nobody should be fighting for more things for capitalism to demand from anyone. Creatives should do their work separate and apart from the threat of capitalism, like everyone else. Anti-AI rhetoric serves to make people look like luddites while distracting from the actual problem - capitalism.
This is it. People keep blaming the literal lifeless machines for the choices of the capitalists masters. No bro, AI is not replacing you. Your boss is replacing you, if it weren’t AI it would be anything else that saves them a buck.
The problem at its core is definitely capitalism. That said, AI itself is nothing more than a massive plagiarism machine that is extremely cost-prohibitive to run, which means the only ones that control it and have a say are the ones with the most money. There’s a space for ethical AI that isn’t trained haphazardly on copyrighted works, but what we have today in the mainstream is not that.
As much as I personally hate building anything with AI (programmer that has had to build tools that use it), I don’t hate the concept of AI itself. I hate the fact that the people with the most money to innovate with it are churning out the most boring products so they can go to market faster, while also burning the planet down in the process.