Because voice actors are not considered real actors by SAG-AFTRA. Despite the fact that doing voice over work is typically far more grueling than being in front of a camera. I've never met a VOA who wasn't looked down on by other SAG members. Even by fucking extras. "You just stand in a booth and read lines."

I've been trying to figure out a deadened set up for a while. My closet isn't big enough as a gay man, no. I'm not going back in. I need one of those lil curtain thingies that create a dead space.

But yeah I agree. Resident Evil 4 killed me for that. So many of the characters sounded amazing and then Ada just stuck out like a sore thumb. I don't mean because of a poor performance or anything either. I wasn't totally happy with it but I blame the game director for that, not her for doing what they asked of her. But everyone else was done in a professional set up and her quality is NOTICABLE different. It fucked up the entire DLC for me and I haven't been able to really enjoy it.

Doing voice acting and then hearing all the ways people mess up in stuff is astounding. Not that I don't, mind you. I'm not perfect. But my god do you notice all the major errors in every game out there once you start working a bit in the field.

I occasionally record readings and narrations of dumb things on Mastodon but they're usually just super quick. Like so quick that I don't even bother fucking with noise reduction or anything. Just get bored and go "I LIEK THIS POEM"

I disagree with it "solving" the problem. I've yet to hear an AI voice that actually works/sounds like an actual person. I've heard sentences or two that are somewhat passable at times, but never enough for actual dialogue. Regardless, your entire comment also does not address the issue presented at all, that voice actors did not agree with this deal.

within a year or two AI actors will have no jobs

extreeeeeme doubt. The moment an AI has to inflect emotion it really fucks it up. You'll spend 5 hours and $200 of compute costs getting it to say "Great, thanks" sarcastically, when an actor could do it in a single take as part of doing the entire script.

Blah blah blah

And this deal was vetted and approved by which working voice actors?

Can't even configure assistants to call them "Computer"

And this has to be on a per-game basis, to. Studios licensing a voice in perpetuity will eventually come back to the same issues.

For AI to truly be a net benefit to our society, it should be used as a tool by the artists to augment the output from the artists. It shouldn't be a way of replacing them.

If a voice actors job goes from recording each and every line to recording samples for AI and helping to tweak the output, that's fine. But the compensation stays the same.

That's how it improves our world. Makes the human's job easier without replacing them or affecting their compensation.

The way it's currently on track to be used is how it improves the lives of the wealthiest at the expense of everyone else. No amount of futurist techno-jerking should distract from that. These are not tools for us to benefit from in any significant sense.

That's... what this agreement proposes.

Yet. Once upon a time we couldn’t patent an organism and yet now GMOs and companies like Monsanto abuse the legal framework.

That's correct, but it's important to distinguish something explicitly here. The voices may not be copyrightable, but the dialogue is, as long as it's not also generated by AI (i.e., dynamically generated). Also, the trained model that generates the voice is still proprietary: only its product (and only the sound itself, not the words if the speech is from a script) can be openly used.

I mean even main characters could have AI generated dialogue, you have the VA do the voice until there is enough sampling data to train a model on, and then you can use that for any small or side content.

Then just have that characters AI model be owned by the actor and use of the voice gives them royalties for it. Then you can supplement actual lines with generated banter, etc. While still giving the VA compensation for their voice and likeness.

In my mind, they should be paying the actor the same for the new lines regardless of whether they opt for them to come back in and re-record or use AI to generate the new line. The actor's product (their voice) isn't worth any less, but the company could save money by streamlining the creation of a new line through simplified logistics. This way the company has some benefit while preserving the actor's livelihood.

Of course there's no way these companies are going to want to pay full price for these new lines, since it's an obvious point where they can pressure performers to accept a lower rate.