8 ms·

I heard a radio spot recently and I wondered if the voice was a real person or AI. It makes we wonder how such industries are dealing with this gen-AI revoluti

by petcat 1mo ago

I heard a radio spot recently and I wondered if the voice was a real person or AI. It makes we wonder how such industries are dealing with this gen-AI revolution. We spend a lot of time here thinking about how it affects software developers, but I hardly ever see any commentary on how it is affecting screen and voice actors.

newyankee 1mo ago
Everyone will probably go through the 5 stages of grief w.r.t AI adoption in their field and the gatekeepers will (rightfully) hold onto hallucination and errors as reasons to delay incorporation or to incorporate it with more human handholding.
lambda 1mo ago
Many screen and voice actors are unionized, and the unions have been striking and bargaining specifcially over these points. For example: https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2025/10/30/game-over-for-unauthorized-ai-performances-the-sag-aftra-video-game-strike-and-performer-protections-under-the-new-collective-bargaining-agreement/ https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2025/10/30/game-over-for-unau... Software developers, unfortunately, have been convinced that they don't need to unionize, so have no collective bargaining power for dealing with situations like this.
- r_lee 1mo ago
  it's hilarious to see some people here go on about how they're proud to work so that they can be replaced I think too many just expect that they can get by like before because they're a 10x engineer or whatever
  - quaintdev 1mo ago
    It won't happen to me is what I used to think
    - georgemcbay 1mo ago
      > It won't happen to me is what I used to think In my experience this is what almost everyone thinks, right up to the point where it starts happening to them. And it isn't just an individual blind spot, organizations suffer from the same thing in the sense that many companies will be happy to automate away all their labor to avoid paying the "human tax" without giving much thought to the fact that the need for the company itself will also be automated away soon after. If you can replace nearly all of your workers with some cheap tokens and prompts, everyone else who previously would have been a customer can replace your whole company with the same thing.
      - Melatonic 1mo ago
        Exactly. Or a competitor comes in and does what you do for half the cost and double the efficiency.
  - embedding-shape 1mo ago
    > it's hilarious to see some people here go on about how they're proud to work so that they can be replaced To be fair, most of us spent our entire career trying our best to automate ourselves away one way or another, and always seen that as our job description.
    - 12ags-18276 1mo ago
      No, that is just nerd heroism lore that indeed has always shown up in comments, that part is definitely true. Some people dislike automation altogether and like the computational aspect. Most people seem to enjoy constructing virtual worlds and Rube Goldberg machines.
      - genericone 1mo ago
        I thought HN was mostly people who hated doing 'the thing' and would procrastinate until they build a system that does 'the thing' and then they would work tirelessly to never do 'the thing' themselves ever again.
      - embedding-shape 1mo ago
        > Some people dislike automation altogether and like the computational aspect Computation IS automation
  - 12ags-18276 1mo ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
  - zamadatix 1mo ago
    I think I sit somewhere between these two descriptions. I've always supported unions and other "for the common good" type machinery. At the same time, I desperately also don't want to end up doing something the equivalent of barring the use of calculators just so I can toil away at a 9-5 crunching numbers more slowly instead. If AI really does replace all of the meaningful jobs we can do... great - I'd rather we make sure the spoils of that production are distributed than try to cling to preventing the technology from being used. Inexplicably for the current moment, AI has so far actually meant I have even more to do instead of less. I expect that to change eventually... but man, is it a bit of whiplash to go from wondering if my job will be around in 10 years to starting the work day and being more backed up than ever. Doubly so since the rate of change does not seem to be very evenly distributed by tech role.
    - oblio 1mo ago
      > I'd rather we make sure the spoils of that production are distributed than try to cling to preventing the technology from being used. Spoiler alert: unions can help with that.
      - zamadatix 1mo ago
        Agreed, but I must've severely messed up my message if that was supposed to be a spoiler. To be clearer: I think the unions, economic policy, and such should help with that part rather than us wield the very same to hide from replacing the work we do with something much easier. I.e., don't be ashamed to work towards that, just come together to ensure we all share the spoils.
  - BeetleB 1mo ago
    Much of computing history has been about replacing humans. If they were proud of their work pre-LLMs, then at least they're being consistent! It's kind of hypocritical to change just because it's now a different industry being impacted.
  - qwytw 1mo ago
    What options do you have? If you're the 10x engineer you'll be a 100x one and do just fine. Otherwise what can you do besides holding on as long as you can or start searching for a new career.
  - GeorgeWBasic 1mo ago
    I agree with your point, but I don't think it's funny at all. The whole field is changing because of this. The career, except for those ones lucky enough to have jobs where they're valued and they can decide how to use AI tools, is turning into shit because of this and software engineers have become a lot less valuable as management is trying to turn them into reverse centaurs.
- catigula 1mo ago
  Half of them are from India or China. Racial diversity is known to be detrimental to unionization. In fact, Amazon used this exact strategy to bust nascent Somali unions. https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252481961/Amazons-Whole-Foods-uses-heat-mapping-to-track-unionisation-efforts https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252481961/Amazons-Whole-...
  - 12ahsgf 1mo ago
    Here is the obligatory scientific paper for those who cannot observe simple facts without a statistical analysis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0176268022001215 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01762...
- Lagoon3384_SWE 1mo ago
  That is an american take. Sweden just has an "office worker" union. https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen Now, they cannot prevent offshoring or AI use or replacements. Very very rarely if ever. But they can negotiate a large layoff and give better pay/conditions during work etc. This view that unions can prevent anything... when so many jobs have gone to east EU (all amazing and good at what they do but lets face it, it is due to pay) so yea there wont be any union preventing AI...
- arjie 1mo ago
  Personally, I just can’t find it in me to be that self-interested. It’s how other people oppose buildings near them because it blocks their view. I really don’t want to stop other people from writing software. If they want to use AI to do it so be it. That’ll be somewhat detrimental to me perhaps (which isn’t certain), but that’s okay. I’d rather attempt to adapt to a changing world.
  - koe123 1mo ago
    Thats great, although understand that unionizing protects the more vulnerable of also the software engineered. You not advocating for your rights also means weakening others. Is it still self interested to unionized from that perspective?
  - smallerize 1mo ago
    You may be surprised to know that residential areas in San Francisco are height limited, sometimes as short as 4 stories. They're not exactly anti-progress.
    - BeetleB 1mo ago
      Height limiting is anti-progress, which was his point.
      - smallerize 1mo ago
        Ok SF needs somewhat higher-density housing. But wanting something good for yourself and your peers isn't anti-progress. If the benefits accrue to only a few people, it's not progress.
        BeetleB 1mo ago
        > But wanting something good for yourself and your peers isn't anti-progress. It is if it makes it worse for everyone else.
        deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
- boredatoms 1mo ago
  No one has offered a union to join at any workplace Ive been at
  - lambda 1mo ago
    Yeah, the problem is, someone has to start the union. It takes work. You have to get the whole workforce to vote on it. A lot of software engineers believe (or believed) that they were too smart and professional to need a union. And of course, if management gets wind of it while you are working on setting up the vote, they may do all kinds of trickery, legal or illegal, to block it. It is possible. But it's quite uncommon in this industry in the US. And given the current administration, it is hard to trust you'd get fair enforcement of labor laws if the company did illegal things to block unionization.
- vlyan 1mo ago
  >The union demanded clear protections to ensure that recordings of actors’ performances could not be copied without consent and compensation. >California’s legislation passed AB 2602 and AB 1836 in September 2024, prohibiting media companies from using AI to replicate actors’ performances without their consent. it's a very reasonable law, but it is not the win you seem to believe it to be. the actors who refuse to consent will simply be passed over in favor of those who don't. no law will ever be passed to force companies to employ humans over machines, and if it were, the industry would move elsewhere. this is not without precedent :) speech models have got so good so quickly that you can already replace a VA -- even an AAA prima donna -- with a teenager from Fiverr, who will simply bruteforce the right inflection.
  - Melatonic 1mo ago
    If they still have to pay an actual person though to license their likeness then they are much more likely to actually employ that person directly to get a better result. And in the cases where quality is not needed the person still gets paid for their AI likeness. Seems like a reasonable take
- isoprophlex 1mo ago
  And thus the developers remain, until this very moment, ionized.
  - worthless-trash 1mo ago
    I appreciate.
- dzonga 1mo ago
  I don't think software developers need to unionize - but to form French style co-ops. e.g a lot of video game studios even the AAA ones could be co-ops. same as a lot of SAAS software companies. Linear - just announced a tender offer. I don't see a reason - why linear couldn't work as a co-op.
  - ameliaquining 1mo ago
    Are the employees supposed to front the capital themselves?
- epolanski 1mo ago
  Because software developers enjoyed scarcity for most of the fields existence and could barter themselves better conditions instead of falling back to unionized fixed incomes. In any case, the overwhelming majority of jobs is non-unionized and I don't think that software developers can stop technological changes by unionizing.
- ameliaquining 1mo ago
  My objection has always been that advocates either can't or don't care to explain how such a thing would actually work from the perspective of a unionized engineer.
- Melatonic 1mo ago
  Software engineers and VFX workers also tried to unionise back in the day and there was a giant wage fixing and anti competitive hiring scandal that was majorly illegal. Perpetuated by some of the biggest names in tech. They settled for a large undisclosed sum out of court. But largely won unfortunately as unionisation efforts failed
- miki123211 1mo ago
  In the 21st century, the only professions that can successfully unionize are those you can't replace with workers from a non-unionized country. If your students are in Oklahoma, your teachers also have to be in Oklahoma. If the Oklahoma teachers unionize, you have no option but to hire those unionized teachers if you want your students taught. If your bank is in Oklahoma, you can hire programmers in London or buy a SaaS from a company based in Geneva. Programmers also have much less of a reason to unionize, as "quit and go work somewhere else" is often a realistic option. This is usually not the case for teachers, where the only employer seeking their skills in the area is the government, whose idea of what teacher salaries should be is not based on market forces.
earthnail 1mo ago
Work that doesn’t have a personal brand involved is basically dead. Arbitrary voice acting? Dead. It’s brutal for these people. The creative industry was always hard, but this is just plain brutal.
- Melatonic 1mo ago
  People pretty consistently vote with their wallet and are not excited to pay and consume media made by AI.
  - richrichardsson 1mo ago
    Unfortunately sometimes you can't even vote with your wallet. I was bored yesterday and started watching a stupid documentary series about UFOs/UAP on Netflix. It was immediately obvious that the voice over was AI slop bullshit. All I could do is stop watching and thumb down it, but they still have my money. :(
  - sumedh 1mo ago
    Do you have any stats for that?
moscoe 1mo ago
Sounds like a perfect application of AI. Some jobs should be automated.
- tiagod 1mo ago
  I would rather hear human voices than synthesized ones. I don't care how realistic they sound. I'm not alone, and the sentiment will certainly grow.
  - chung8123 1mo ago
    As long as there are enough people than there will be a market. I think there are a lot of people that prefer human but don't want the human cost.
- oblio 1mo ago
  Ok, let's go the other way round. Which jobs do you think should not be automated?
  - Melatonic 1mo ago
    Probably the ones we collectively value as human and are willing to pay for (in either our time or money or both). And jobs where quality is paramount and or there is greater chance of risk / bodily harm
    - oblio 1mo ago
      > Probably the ones we collectively value as human and are willing to pay for (in either our time or money or both). Society seems to be very bad at that, and we end up with high frequency traders making millions while teachers are paid peanuts.
  - ajjahs 1mo ago
    [dead]
porridgeraisin 1mo ago
A lot of it will get automated the same way very many industries got automated. A lot of physical labour got automated once a primitive for it was created. Similarly, we have now a primitive for automating knowledge work. In the next few years to a decade, as all the right training data and runtime environments are slowly consolidated for various fields, a lot will be automated. There is no inherent reason a voice actor must be an eternal job, the same way there was no inherent reason for a draftsman or stage musician to be an eternal job. It has nothing to do with skill. Both were very skilled jobs. Draftsman as well despite many people going to it straight from school. But computers and CAD mean that it is now necessary for someone to do a STEM degree to be a draftsman. Recorded audio made many stage musicians redundant. It is cheaper to do it this way and gets superior results, that is all, there is no further agenda. Now too, the next generation of voice actors and many other knowledge workers will have to go up the value chain one step and operate or potentially build these tools (in whatever form they mature to in a decades time). The current generation of voice actors will face the same situation as many before in the performance industry - stage musicians/performers for example that were made redundant by recorded audio. The reality is that most of them just left and dispersed into the economy doing completely unrelated jobs. For software and generally computer engineers, this new primitive happens to itself be software, so it's less of a transition and an easier upskilling path to learn to build it. And building it is one step higher in the value chain than simply using it. That is a structural advantage.
- bubblemoth 1mo ago
  I don't really like comparing the way automation of the past displaced jobs to the way AI is/will displace jobs. The timeline is just faster and, more importantly, there were still plenty of other fields of work for people to go to. But now that we are automating white collar work... where will people go? I'm a 36 year-old veteran who has returned to college and so many of the younger students seem to be filled with despair. I have hope for the future, but I think there will be an uncomfortable period of time.
  - porridgeraisin 1mo ago
    I think people are overestimating the speed at which the transition will happen. I think it will happen much slower than is often portrayed online. This slow transition period will also help answer the "where will they go" questions. We can't answer them right now. Ultimately, everything we do is in service of social political and personal human incentives, and I think the effect of that is discounted when people make these takeoff predictions for AI and "AGI"
space_fountain 1mo ago
I'm really sad about how little creative control these tools have. They seem great for creating slop, but pretty useless for creating content that someone would love. I love the potential but text isn't really a great medium for describing artistic vision. All these demos are focused on how easy it makes everything. Easy is great, but if everyone is able to make instant cute cat videos or whatever it just devalues it. I want to see turning a photo into a rigged 3d model, letting the artist animate and then generate the video. This technology could be used to increase creative expression, but instead it's being used to squeeze out creative expression
- bonoboTP 1mo ago
  Text is not the only input. You can provide 3d block outs with rudimentary animation, annotated images with arrows etc, voice recordings of one person acting out some emotion then mapping that to a different character's voice, other uses of video to video, etc. There could easily be at least some time period of low skilled ugly people acting in approximate but shitty ways in cheap sets just to give an input reference to a model and then describing the differences in text, yielding gorgeous people speaking with prestigious accents doing stuff in fancy locations in the output.
- api 1mo ago
  That'll change. They'll get as many knobs as e.g. photoshop for image editing. You'll also be able, if not already, to use your own voice to communicate the emotion and tone you want but then have it re-render it in the voice of your choice. The "slop" phase is early AI, like chunky ugly very early 3D graphics where you can see the triangles. I'm already seeing images generated by first-generation diffusion models like Stable Diffusion 1.5 (which is small enough to run on a phone) used ironically as meme generators due to the now-retro silliness of what they generate.
NooneAtAll3 1mo ago
recently I encountered several youtubers in the uncanny valley of "is it Ai or really repetitive intonation pattern" one youtuber used irl footage, with hands and stuff - so I know there's human behind the camera the other was a letsplay that reacted to events just fine emotionally and yet the uncanny valley of the sound is in full force. Maybe youtube has done something with the codecs? I feel sad
- bulder 1mo ago
  I know that there are at least a few content farms out there that specifically pump out "faceless video" to be resold, ie. those "hands in frame only" videos. The idea being that you can then put on some AI generated voiceover over them.
thangalin 1mo ago
It'll come quickly for audio books. I've been working on a locally hosted, fully containerized web application to narrate my sci-fi novel using a full cast of characters and a few distinct narrators: * https://i.ibb.co/ccqKZ71L/keenlore.png https://i.ibb.co/ccqKZ71L/keenlore.png * https://i.ibb.co/1t3W0JqZ/keenlore-02.png https://i.ibb.co/1t3W0JqZ/keenlore-02.png * https://i.ibb.co/LdBqHwKB/keenlore-03.png https://i.ibb.co/LdBqHwKB/keenlore-03.png
- dormento 1mo ago
  This is very interesting! Imagine Silly Tavern, with dialog tagging and coloring of some sort, auto-generated talking heads. Almost a game engine.
- ianmarcinkowski 1mo ago
  I would pay a few actors (mostly Star Trek TNG cast) money for a license to their voice. I don't know how the next generation of beloved actors comes about and how we don't descend into a pit of neverending photocopies of things people once loved in the 1990s/2000s.
  - thangalin 1mo ago
    From reddit: * $250 per finished hour for the narrator (lowest professional rate). * 200k to 270k words. * 22 hours, 20 hours, and 25 hours. * Books 1 to 3 cost $5,500, $5,000, and $6,250, respectively. My novel has 8 major characters, including the 3 narrators, and 25+ minor characters. That price tag is daunting, presumably in USD. This would mean investing $7,750 CAD in crafting an audiobook, which may not even sell, much less recoup the investment. In contrast, a locally hosted solution has a wallet cost of pennies for electricity plus my time to develop the system.
  - ChickeNES 1mo ago
    > I don't know how the next generation of beloved actors comes about To me it's been obvious for a while now: there won't be one
    - 1mo ago
dominotw 1mo ago
it effects software develpoers because ai has compliers , tests , ci and bought tons of data in mercor. it always sucks at everything else.
andsoitis 1mo ago
> I hardly ever see any commentary on how it is affecting screen and voice actors. Articles and discussions pop up from time here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Ai%20actors&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
anonzzzies 1mo ago
Related; here in my city, every event, restaurant, cinema, delivery service etc have all images / posters generated, very obviously, by OpenAI. ‘Authentic Italian’ and then an AI generated menu. This must hurt companies that used to make these before; a friend was a good photographer and he says he does wedding since end last year as the work was plummeting. Not sure about stats but it’s just ‘normal’ here at least.
qingcharles 1mo ago
My ex is a professional voice actor. Someone recently gave her a negative review saying she was AI, so now even the humans are getting unfairly penalized. I also heard a promotional video recently that used her voice, that she hadn't done, so someone has already trained their voice model on her.
DeusExMachina 1mo ago
Relatedly, a friend told me that graphical design gigs dried up because everyone can make event fliers and posters with AI with results that are often better than those of designers.

by petcat 1mo ago

newyankee 1mo ago

Everyone will probably go through the 5 stages of grief w.r.t AI adoption in their field and the gatekeepers will (rightfully) hold onto hallucination and errors as reasons to delay incorporation or to incorporate it with more human handholding.

lambda 1mo ago

Many screen and voice actors are unionized, and the unions have been striking and bargaining specifcially over these points. For example: https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2025/10/30/game-over-for-unauthorized-ai-performances-the-sag-aftra-video-game-strike-and-performer-protections-under-the-new-collective-bargaining-agreement/ https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2025/10/30/game-over-for-unau... Software developers, unfortunately, have been convinced that they don't need to unionize, so have no collective bargaining power for dealing with situations like this.

r_lee 1mo ago
it's hilarious to see some people here go on about how they're proud to work so that they can be replaced I think too many just expect that they can get by like before because they're a 10x engineer or whatever
- quaintdev 1mo ago
  It won't happen to me is what I used to think
  - georgemcbay 1mo ago
    > It won't happen to me is what I used to think In my experience this is what almost everyone thinks, right up to the point where it starts happening to them. And it isn't just an individual blind spot, organizations suffer from the same thing in the sense that many companies will be happy to automate away all their labor to avoid paying the "human tax" without giving much thought to the fact that the need for the company itself will also be automated away soon after. If you can replace nearly all of your workers with some cheap tokens and prompts, everyone else who previously would have been a customer can replace your whole company with the same thing.
    - Melatonic 1mo ago
      Exactly. Or a competitor comes in and does what you do for half the cost and double the efficiency.
- embedding-shape 1mo ago
  > it's hilarious to see some people here go on about how they're proud to work so that they can be replaced To be fair, most of us spent our entire career trying our best to automate ourselves away one way or another, and always seen that as our job description.
  - 12ags-18276 1mo ago
    No, that is just nerd heroism lore that indeed has always shown up in comments, that part is definitely true. Some people dislike automation altogether and like the computational aspect. Most people seem to enjoy constructing virtual worlds and Rube Goldberg machines.
    - genericone 1mo ago
      I thought HN was mostly people who hated doing 'the thing' and would procrastinate until they build a system that does 'the thing' and then they would work tirelessly to never do 'the thing' themselves ever again.
    - embedding-shape 1mo ago
      > Some people dislike automation altogether and like the computational aspect Computation IS automation
- 12ags-18276 1mo ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
- zamadatix 1mo ago
  I think I sit somewhere between these two descriptions. I've always supported unions and other "for the common good" type machinery. At the same time, I desperately also don't want to end up doing something the equivalent of barring the use of calculators just so I can toil away at a 9-5 crunching numbers more slowly instead. If AI really does replace all of the meaningful jobs we can do... great - I'd rather we make sure the spoils of that production are distributed than try to cling to preventing the technology from being used. Inexplicably for the current moment, AI has so far actually meant I have even more to do instead of less. I expect that to change eventually... but man, is it a bit of whiplash to go from wondering if my job will be around in 10 years to starting the work day and being more backed up than ever. Doubly so since the rate of change does not seem to be very evenly distributed by tech role.
  - oblio 1mo ago
    > I'd rather we make sure the spoils of that production are distributed than try to cling to preventing the technology from being used. Spoiler alert: unions can help with that.
    - zamadatix 1mo ago
      Agreed, but I must've severely messed up my message if that was supposed to be a spoiler. To be clearer: I think the unions, economic policy, and such should help with that part rather than us wield the very same to hide from replacing the work we do with something much easier. I.e., don't be ashamed to work towards that, just come together to ensure we all share the spoils.
- BeetleB 1mo ago
  Much of computing history has been about replacing humans. If they were proud of their work pre-LLMs, then at least they're being consistent! It's kind of hypocritical to change just because it's now a different industry being impacted.
- qwytw 1mo ago
  What options do you have? If you're the 10x engineer you'll be a 100x one and do just fine. Otherwise what can you do besides holding on as long as you can or start searching for a new career.
- GeorgeWBasic 1mo ago
  I agree with your point, but I don't think it's funny at all. The whole field is changing because of this. The career, except for those ones lucky enough to have jobs where they're valued and they can decide how to use AI tools, is turning into shit because of this and software engineers have become a lot less valuable as management is trying to turn them into reverse centaurs.
catigula 1mo ago
Half of them are from India or China. Racial diversity is known to be detrimental to unionization. In fact, Amazon used this exact strategy to bust nascent Somali unions. https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252481961/Amazons-Whole-Foods-uses-heat-mapping-to-track-unionisation-efforts https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252481961/Amazons-Whole-...
- 12ahsgf 1mo ago
  Here is the obligatory scientific paper for those who cannot observe simple facts without a statistical analysis: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0176268022001215 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01762...
Lagoon3384_SWE 1mo ago
That is an american take. Sweden just has an "office worker" union. https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen Now, they cannot prevent offshoring or AI use or replacements. Very very rarely if ever. But they can negotiate a large layoff and give better pay/conditions during work etc. This view that unions can prevent anything... when so many jobs have gone to east EU (all amazing and good at what they do but lets face it, it is due to pay) so yea there wont be any union preventing AI...
arjie 1mo ago
Personally, I just can’t find it in me to be that self-interested. It’s how other people oppose buildings near them because it blocks their view. I really don’t want to stop other people from writing software. If they want to use AI to do it so be it. That’ll be somewhat detrimental to me perhaps (which isn’t certain), but that’s okay. I’d rather attempt to adapt to a changing world.
- koe123 1mo ago
  Thats great, although understand that unionizing protects the more vulnerable of also the software engineered. You not advocating for your rights also means weakening others. Is it still self interested to unionized from that perspective?
- smallerize 1mo ago
  You may be surprised to know that residential areas in San Francisco are height limited, sometimes as short as 4 stories. They're not exactly anti-progress.
  - BeetleB 1mo ago
    Height limiting is anti-progress, which was his point.
    - smallerize 1mo ago
      Ok SF needs somewhat higher-density housing. But wanting something good for yourself and your peers isn't anti-progress. If the benefits accrue to only a few people, it's not progress.
      - BeetleB 1mo ago
        > But wanting something good for yourself and your peers isn't anti-progress. It is if it makes it worse for everyone else.
      - deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
boredatoms 1mo ago
No one has offered a union to join at any workplace Ive been at
- lambda 1mo ago
  Yeah, the problem is, someone has to start the union. It takes work. You have to get the whole workforce to vote on it. A lot of software engineers believe (or believed) that they were too smart and professional to need a union. And of course, if management gets wind of it while you are working on setting up the vote, they may do all kinds of trickery, legal or illegal, to block it. It is possible. But it's quite uncommon in this industry in the US. And given the current administration, it is hard to trust you'd get fair enforcement of labor laws if the company did illegal things to block unionization.
vlyan 1mo ago
>The union demanded clear protections to ensure that recordings of actors’ performances could not be copied without consent and compensation. >California’s legislation passed AB 2602 and AB 1836 in September 2024, prohibiting media companies from using AI to replicate actors’ performances without their consent. it's a very reasonable law, but it is not the win you seem to believe it to be. the actors who refuse to consent will simply be passed over in favor of those who don't. no law will ever be passed to force companies to employ humans over machines, and if it were, the industry would move elsewhere. this is not without precedent :) speech models have got so good so quickly that you can already replace a VA -- even an AAA prima donna -- with a teenager from Fiverr, who will simply bruteforce the right inflection.
- Melatonic 1mo ago
  If they still have to pay an actual person though to license their likeness then they are much more likely to actually employ that person directly to get a better result. And in the cases where quality is not needed the person still gets paid for their AI likeness. Seems like a reasonable take
isoprophlex 1mo ago
And thus the developers remain, until this very moment, ionized.
- worthless-trash 1mo ago
  I appreciate.
dzonga 1mo ago
I don't think software developers need to unionize - but to form French style co-ops. e.g a lot of video game studios even the AAA ones could be co-ops. same as a lot of SAAS software companies. Linear - just announced a tender offer. I don't see a reason - why linear couldn't work as a co-op.
- ameliaquining 1mo ago
  Are the employees supposed to front the capital themselves?
epolanski 1mo ago
Because software developers enjoyed scarcity for most of the fields existence and could barter themselves better conditions instead of falling back to unionized fixed incomes. In any case, the overwhelming majority of jobs is non-unionized and I don't think that software developers can stop technological changes by unionizing.
ameliaquining 1mo ago
My objection has always been that advocates either can't or don't care to explain how such a thing would actually work from the perspective of a unionized engineer.
Melatonic 1mo ago
Software engineers and VFX workers also tried to unionise back in the day and there was a giant wage fixing and anti competitive hiring scandal that was majorly illegal. Perpetuated by some of the biggest names in tech. They settled for a large undisclosed sum out of court. But largely won unfortunately as unionisation efforts failed
miki123211 1mo ago
In the 21st century, the only professions that can successfully unionize are those you can't replace with workers from a non-unionized country. If your students are in Oklahoma, your teachers also have to be in Oklahoma. If the Oklahoma teachers unionize, you have no option but to hire those unionized teachers if you want your students taught. If your bank is in Oklahoma, you can hire programmers in London or buy a SaaS from a company based in Geneva. Programmers also have much less of a reason to unionize, as "quit and go work somewhere else" is often a realistic option. This is usually not the case for teachers, where the only employer seeking their skills in the area is the government, whose idea of what teacher salaries should be is not based on market forces.

earthnail 1mo ago

Work that doesn’t have a personal brand involved is basically dead. Arbitrary voice acting? Dead. It’s brutal for these people. The creative industry was always hard, but this is just plain brutal.

Melatonic 1mo ago
People pretty consistently vote with their wallet and are not excited to pay and consume media made by AI.
- richrichardsson 1mo ago
  Unfortunately sometimes you can't even vote with your wallet. I was bored yesterday and started watching a stupid documentary series about UFOs/UAP on Netflix. It was immediately obvious that the voice over was AI slop bullshit. All I could do is stop watching and thumb down it, but they still have my money. :(
- sumedh 1mo ago
  Do you have any stats for that?

moscoe 1mo ago

Sounds like a perfect application of AI. Some jobs should be automated.

tiagod 1mo ago
I would rather hear human voices than synthesized ones. I don't care how realistic they sound. I'm not alone, and the sentiment will certainly grow.
- chung8123 1mo ago
  As long as there are enough people than there will be a market. I think there are a lot of people that prefer human but don't want the human cost.
oblio 1mo ago
Ok, let's go the other way round. Which jobs do you think should not be automated?
- Melatonic 1mo ago
  Probably the ones we collectively value as human and are willing to pay for (in either our time or money or both). And jobs where quality is paramount and or there is greater chance of risk / bodily harm
  - oblio 1mo ago
    > Probably the ones we collectively value as human and are willing to pay for (in either our time or money or both). Society seems to be very bad at that, and we end up with high frequency traders making millions while teachers are paid peanuts.
- ajjahs 1mo ago
  [dead]

porridgeraisin 1mo ago

A lot of it will get automated the same way very many industries got automated. A lot of physical labour got automated once a primitive for it was created. Similarly, we have now a primitive for automating knowledge work. In the next few years to a decade, as all the right training data and runtime environments are slowly consolidated for various fields, a lot will be automated. There is no inherent reason a voice actor must be an eternal job, the same way there was no inherent reason for a draftsman or stage musician to be an eternal job. It has nothing to do with skill. Both were very skilled jobs. Draftsman as well despite many people going to it straight from school. But computers and CAD mean that it is now necessary for someone to do a STEM degree to be a draftsman. Recorded audio made many stage musicians redundant. It is cheaper to do it this way and gets superior results, that is all, there is no further agenda. Now too, the next generation of voice actors and many other knowledge workers will have to go up the value chain one step and operate or potentially build these tools (in whatever form they mature to in a decades time). The current generation of voice actors will face the same situation as many before in the performance industry - stage musicians/performers for example that were made redundant by recorded audio. The reality is that most of them just left and dispersed into the economy doing completely unrelated jobs. For software and generally computer engineers, this new primitive happens to itself be software, so it's less of a transition and an easier upskilling path to learn to build it. And building it is one step higher in the value chain than simply using it. That is a structural advantage.

bubblemoth 1mo ago
I don't really like comparing the way automation of the past displaced jobs to the way AI is/will displace jobs. The timeline is just faster and, more importantly, there were still plenty of other fields of work for people to go to. But now that we are automating white collar work... where will people go? I'm a 36 year-old veteran who has returned to college and so many of the younger students seem to be filled with despair. I have hope for the future, but I think there will be an uncomfortable period of time.
- porridgeraisin 1mo ago
  I think people are overestimating the speed at which the transition will happen. I think it will happen much slower than is often portrayed online. This slow transition period will also help answer the "where will they go" questions. We can't answer them right now. Ultimately, everything we do is in service of social political and personal human incentives, and I think the effect of that is discounted when people make these takeoff predictions for AI and "AGI"

space_fountain 1mo ago

I'm really sad about how little creative control these tools have. They seem great for creating slop, but pretty useless for creating content that someone would love. I love the potential but text isn't really a great medium for describing artistic vision. All these demos are focused on how easy it makes everything. Easy is great, but if everyone is able to make instant cute cat videos or whatever it just devalues it. I want to see turning a photo into a rigged 3d model, letting the artist animate and then generate the video. This technology could be used to increase creative expression, but instead it's being used to squeeze out creative expression

bonoboTP 1mo ago
Text is not the only input. You can provide 3d block outs with rudimentary animation, annotated images with arrows etc, voice recordings of one person acting out some emotion then mapping that to a different character's voice, other uses of video to video, etc. There could easily be at least some time period of low skilled ugly people acting in approximate but shitty ways in cheap sets just to give an input reference to a model and then describing the differences in text, yielding gorgeous people speaking with prestigious accents doing stuff in fancy locations in the output.
api 1mo ago
That'll change. They'll get as many knobs as e.g. photoshop for image editing. You'll also be able, if not already, to use your own voice to communicate the emotion and tone you want but then have it re-render it in the voice of your choice. The "slop" phase is early AI, like chunky ugly very early 3D graphics where you can see the triangles. I'm already seeing images generated by first-generation diffusion models like Stable Diffusion 1.5 (which is small enough to run on a phone) used ironically as meme generators due to the now-retro silliness of what they generate.

NooneAtAll3 1mo ago

recently I encountered several youtubers in the uncanny valley of "is it Ai or really repetitive intonation pattern" one youtuber used irl footage, with hands and stuff - so I know there's human behind the camera the other was a letsplay that reacted to events just fine emotionally and yet the uncanny valley of the sound is in full force. Maybe youtube has done something with the codecs? I feel sad

bulder 1mo ago
I know that there are at least a few content farms out there that specifically pump out "faceless video" to be resold, ie. those "hands in frame only" videos. The idea being that you can then put on some AI generated voiceover over them.

thangalin 1mo ago

It'll come quickly for audio books. I've been working on a locally hosted, fully containerized web application to narrate my sci-fi novel using a full cast of characters and a few distinct narrators: * https://i.ibb.co/ccqKZ71L/keenlore.png https://i.ibb.co/ccqKZ71L/keenlore.png * https://i.ibb.co/1t3W0JqZ/keenlore-02.png https://i.ibb.co/1t3W0JqZ/keenlore-02.png * https://i.ibb.co/LdBqHwKB/keenlore-03.png https://i.ibb.co/LdBqHwKB/keenlore-03.png

dormento 1mo ago
This is very interesting! Imagine Silly Tavern, with dialog tagging and coloring of some sort, auto-generated talking heads. Almost a game engine.
ianmarcinkowski 1mo ago
I would pay a few actors (mostly Star Trek TNG cast) money for a license to their voice. I don't know how the next generation of beloved actors comes about and how we don't descend into a pit of neverending photocopies of things people once loved in the 1990s/2000s.
- thangalin 1mo ago
  From reddit: * $250 per finished hour for the narrator (lowest professional rate). * 200k to 270k words. * 22 hours, 20 hours, and 25 hours. * Books 1 to 3 cost $5,500, $5,000, and $6,250, respectively. My novel has 8 major characters, including the 3 narrators, and 25+ minor characters. That price tag is daunting, presumably in USD. This would mean investing $7,750 CAD in crafting an audiobook, which may not even sell, much less recoup the investment. In contrast, a locally hosted solution has a wallet cost of pennies for electricity plus my time to develop the system.
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  > I don't know how the next generation of beloved actors comes about To me it's been obvious for a while now: there won't be one
  - 1mo ago

dominotw 1mo ago

it effects software develpoers because ai has compliers , tests , ci and bought tons of data in mercor. it always sucks at everything else.

andsoitis 1mo ago

> I hardly ever see any commentary on how it is affecting screen and voice actors. Articles and discussions pop up from time here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Ai%20actors&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

anonzzzies 1mo ago

Related; here in my city, every event, restaurant, cinema, delivery service etc have all images / posters generated, very obviously, by OpenAI. ‘Authentic Italian’ and then an AI generated menu. This must hurt companies that used to make these before; a friend was a good photographer and he says he does wedding since end last year as the work was plummeting. Not sure about stats but it’s just ‘normal’ here at least.

qingcharles 1mo ago

My ex is a professional voice actor. Someone recently gave her a negative review saying she was AI, so now even the humans are getting unfairly penalized. I also heard a promotional video recently that used her voice, that she hadn't done, so someone has already trained their voice model on her.

DeusExMachina 1mo ago

Relatedly, a friend told me that graphical design gigs dried up because everyone can make event fliers and posters with AI with results that are often better than those of designers.