It’s not though. That’s you naively ignoring the aspects that are different. Computer generated imitation is easier to create, can be created at a scale far eclipsing human action, and can be finely tuned to make it harder to discern.
You can look up impressionists and you’ll find it’s a rather small club when looking for the true greats. Computers remove this barrier and allow any asshole with an internet connection to create a video of you screaming racial epithets if your voice is easy enough to access.
Talking up the capabilities of AI voice acting is not really helping the case against it. If it's really so good, and laws are enacted that forbid mixing human and AI voice acting, then I expect the straightforward optimal solution would be to entirely eliminate the human voice actors going forward.
You write laws for the future. Unless you think ai generated content has plateaued. Which is again, naive. Just because social media wasn’t popular at first doesn’t mean we should’ve waited on passing data privacy legislation like we have. It’s good to identify potential issues and attempt to mitigate them early. So we don’t get situations like our current climate status.
I don't think it's plateaued, I think it's going to get significantly better from here onward.
I'm not sure what laws you're proposing at this point. Are you suggesting that AI should be forbidden from "mimicking" a human voice actor? That's what I'm suggesting will lead even more quickly to AI-only projects that get rid of the human voice actors entirely, since having a human voice actor under laws like that would end up as a huge hindrance.
Ai voice impressions should be rendered illegal without explicit consent from the entity being imitated. Simple.
Also your extrapolation of potential events feels ridiculous. Tech is banned so it’s used more in commercial projects heavily subject to such legislation?
If impressions are banned, ie voices that sound like existing human voice actors, then yes, I expect it would be used a lot more. Because the only safe way to use AI voices in that case would be to never have a human actor to begin with. Create a novel AI voice from scratch and use that for your character, and then you can freely generate new lines with no further legal or practical concerns.
Whereas if you were to use a human voice actor for a character, you're stuck with that human voice actor. You can't do a quick virtual re-shoot without hauling him in for it, there's royalties for everything, and if the human voice actor dies or spouts off some unfortunate racist rants on social media or simply quits then you're screwed.
Unless you're proposing banning all AI voices completely, including novel ones that were never imitating a specific human to begin with? That's rather the more ridiculous scenario.
It’s like you just skipped past the “with consent” caveat to go on your diatribe.
So now that I’ve reiterated that it wouldn’t be entirely illegal, can you explain how that requirement will cause there to be no more VAs? In this world you’re imagining, how are these computational models creating voices? You talk about a “safe way to use” it in these circumstances but again, these companies still need data to generate voices. And this data would be protected through active seeking of consent.
You aren’t “[creating] a novel voice from scratch, that’s just not how the technology works. It needs a human to extract data from and compile something intelligible. Unless you want every animated feature to use the robotic assistant voices. Another aspect to why your perspective makes no sense and seemingly shows a complete lack of understanding of how these computational models work and how that comes together with my proposition.
Then your last paragraph is just a confirmation that no, you haven’t fully read what I wrote. So one more time with gusto:
Using computer generation to imitate a person using their own biometric data should be illegal unless explicit consent is given.
Who’s Joan? My Netflix only has a Madison_rogue is awful episode.
But in all seriousness, the tech is here and it’s here to stay. Legal stuff can curb it for a bit, but you know internet. It’s only going to grow.
There should be some other way to deal with it besides “Forbid everything now!”.
I’ve seen several future copyright systems being discussed which might provide a better way of doing things going forward. Like the one where all copyright is basically waived, but royalties are collected and distributed to all participants from any derivative work. Want to make a star wars fan movie? You’re free to do so (and everyone is), but every actor you use and every writer whose part of the lore you’re using gets a small cut from whatever to earn on it (so non-profit derivative work doesn’t require paying royalties, similar to parodies in the US).
Kinda like sampling in music currently works. Could be a better system than what we currently have, with corporations owning hundreds of years of usage for one story or likeness.