AI Voices and SAG-AFTRA: What You Need to Know

You already history story. Welcome, Hi the pro Audio Suite. Those guys a professional and motivated with. Text of the VIDO stars George Wisam, founder of Source Element, Robert Marshall, International Audio Engineers, Darren Robbo Roberts and Global Voice Andrew Peters thanks to Triboo, Austrian Audio Making Passion, Her Source Elements, George the Tech Wisdom and Robbo and APIs International Demo. To find out more about us, check the pro AudioSuite dot com. Hey, welcome to another pro audio suite thanks to try Booth. Don't forget the code t ri I P a P two hundred that will get you two hundred US dollars off your try Booth and Austrian Audio Making Passion heard. You may be hearing AI voices all over the place at the moment. I'm certainly hearing them, but SAG after of just send out a mail to all their members about AI voices and entering contracts which rubber you got in front of you? You want I do it? Says important notice regarding assigning rights to creative and license or use digital replicas of your voice in audiobooks. Given the emergence of AI, audiobook companies, the broad concerns around the use of digital voices in audiobooks and the importance of having union protections in this arena. With the unanimous support of sag AFTER Audiobooks Steering Committee, the Executive Committee of the National Board has voted to issue a no contract, no work order against companies seeking to create and license or use digital voice replicas for audiobooks. Therefore, sag AFTER members are hereby informed that no member may enter into agreements with companies seeking to create and license or use digital replicas of their voice or to train AI systems for use in audiobooks until such time as the company becomes a signatory to a sag AFTER agreement. Members of FURS further advised that violation of such order may be result in discipline reaction in accordance with the sag after a constitution. So there you go. Unless they've signed up with sag you can't work for work with. Them with a yeah, absolutely, So my question is how do you know who that is? You have to like, are they providing a list of. During film television? It doesn't stay here, but you would think they would have some sort of resource. Yeah, that's one thing. I think one other thing I heard was that I believe eleven labs. I believe it's supposed to have or some if you try to clone a voice, it will ask you, Okay, if you're going to clone this voice, have this voice read this or that, so that you have to have a person you're cloning available to say what it is that they say, so that they can verify that. You Like, that's how they're trying to verify. Yeah, sort of like a yeah, sort of like a unique code or whatever. Yeah, yeah, because it's a real problem, like people just throwing anybody's voice into the theft machine, and then I've seen editors do it all over the place. You could also argue, if you've got enough dialogue from the person you're trying to clone, you could actually just cut around what you want them to say anyway. Yeah, possibly, Yeah. What's the story with the YouTube? Was that something else that we were talking about? Well, what I'm trying to get the details on it now, But my understanding is that if your account is one of those headless accounts, meaning that you know, there's no face, there's no identity, it's just voice, yeah, and it's cut together stock footage oftentimes, and that's about it. And it's like an explainer channel, you know, like the biggest boats in the world, stuff like that. You know, there's tons of those channels. If the voice is one hundred percent AI and there's really no identity to the creator, there's really no human element to it, they will no longer allow you to monetize. It's good. That's a really interesting choice that they've made. Now, Robert made a good point, like he's like, somebody's making money off of it just means that you aren't. You You, the owner of that channel, aren't going to make anything, but somebody is, meaning the company. But also it's content, so it's drawing eyeballs to YouTube. So they're obviously making money because they're getting people's eyeballs. So I'm thinking they got some pressure from some of their biggest creators. You know, they probably had a little bit of a you know, pow wow. That's what I'm thinking. They all sat down together or had a meeting and we're like, listen, you guys, we're not happy that we're competing against AI as creators. We're not We're not happy about this. That's that's my best guess is you know what happened, but who really knows. I just all I know is YouTube studios. Are right here in LA I wish I knew somebody on the inside over there. Yeah. Yeah, you guys probably on privy to it. But my kids are on you YouTube kids. And the amount of stuff that's clearly just a eye that gets shoved up there, yeah, is out of control. Well it's happening on Spotify now too. There was a phenomenon in the last week that went out on the that got on the press that there's a band that's totally fabricated and it's getting actual, real numbers, you know, in terms of your listenership and like and it's just it's deplorable. I mean, and they're just doing that to save themselves a little bit of. In a royalty money, I guess. I mean, even the thumbnail of the band, you know, the picture of the band, you know, the album cover of the band. You don't have to look at it for more than three seconds and go, that's an AI generated image. It's not real people, you know. Yeah, it's interesting. On sort an interview with Nick Cave and he was talking about AI and the creative process of anything that's ought, whether it's painting, music, ever, the whole human aspect of the creative process. If you take that away, what are you going to end up with? Like, once it's gone, it's gone. Like if I say to. An AI bot, you know, make me a song that sings about spring and birds and riding a bike or something, and outcomes this song, there's no creative process. It's just an AI bot. There's no expression to it. The thing I like the best is like after after you kill all the artists. Right now, no artists can make a living, so no one's writing songs, no one's doing anything. Then the only thing the AI has to feed on is itself. So it's just gonna correct it's it's going to turn into it's like a room and a room and a room and a room. You're just gonna end up with just the reverb and no actual source material. It's just going to sound like shit. Well that's the problem when when bots start talking to one another, because if you think about, like, yeah, every human beings, you know, our capacity in our brain, you multiply that by a point four billion people, that's what II's got. We've only got one brain. So the II is going to be so much more intelligent than we are, so it's not going to refer to us to get information. It's going to go after another II bot because it's more intelligent than we are. Well, I mean, we have to constantly teach it that we are the best source for knowledge. So it wants to use us, you know, it does. It is trainable, but you do have to train it. It's a weird, man, is it weird? The more I've been using it, and I have been using it a lot more, I've been using it to generate content like web page content, marketing content, like you know, summarizing things, responding to emails, and the more you train your model about who you are, how your voice is, how you talk, how you answer, the more it sounds like you. It's crazy. I can now like drop an email, drop an entire letter in there, and I don't even tell it. What to do. It just says I drafted a response, would you like to use this? And I read through it, I'm like, that's okay, that'll do. I'm looking at this like AI picture from the band, And when you look at it, do you know what the first giveaways is? Is that large diaphragm mic that doesn't exist. What the picture of the the fake Spotify band? Yeah yeah, the album cover Okay, you see the guy with his eyes closed smiling or singing. Okay, what the fuck kind of mic stand is that? Where's the yoke? Where's the cable for the mic? Yeah? What is going on there? Like that's some AI. Invention, right, It's interesting. I saw another thing on there's a big campaign in the UK. Simon Peg was being interviewed and it's all about writing letters, like getting back into actually sitting down with a pen and a piece of paper and writing a letter because no one does it anymore. I mean the last time I wrote a letter would have been in the nineties. Like the stramacaster looks so weird. It has like four bolts for the pickup and the frets are like crazy tape. Now, if they're going to do this, they should at least filter it so people like what a bunch of garbage that they even did? Well, they should actually put in the title or in the band description AI band. Yeah, yeah, this gives a lot of authenticity to the monkeys. It's funny though, Andrew just got what you're going back to saying about writing a letter. I used to do a podcast with a mutual friend of ours and we sort of didn't really see eye to at the end of the podcast. But one thing that he used to do that I thought was a really good idea was he had postcards made up with the name of the podcast on the front and the sort of image that we used on our website, and on the back it was just a postcard. And when we had guests on, he would actually handwrite a postcard and mail it and I just kind of thought, you know what, that's a really nice touch. I got to give it to him. That is one of those things you know, it would turn up in the mail. You can just imagine it turning up in the mail and you're going, huh, you know that took a bit of effort, a bit of thinking about so exactly. So I'm actually putting Andrew forward to start doing that for us. In block capitals. That's about all. But it's funny because when I was doing one of the TV shit series here, Dancing with the Stars. Every new series, I get to the booth and there would be a handwritten letter and a bot of French champagne from those nice right. Absolutely, it makes you feel appreciated. Yeah. Absolutely, it's not just I'll shoot an email or i'll you know whatever. Yeah, it's sort of it's nice, it's personal, it's you know, and there's so much of that that's not around anymore. Maybe we should invent an AI that writes letters for us. I'll tell you what one thing AI could do better than me is handwriting. Christ you should see, I should have been. A doctor, made me need an automaton, to an AI automaton to write letters. For us exactly. I know that could be yeah, old fashioned and all combined into one. It's not it's not AI, but I mean something else that we sort of seem to be doing around the house more and more as we've got one of those Google sort of you know, screens and speakers around the house and all that sort of stuff, and sort of today and I start find ourselves starting to leave messages for each other, you know, in the like you know, set a reminder for nine o'clock in the morning. Hey, you know, hey babe, don't forget to you know, put the kids lunch boxes in their school box or whatever. And rather than you know, sort of saying it to each other and all that sort of stuff. It's it's weird how it changes your lifestyle. Has it become something that you both mutually do? Now? Yeah? Yeah, just because you say, standing in the kitchen and you know, because today started working three days a week, so you're standing in the kitchen and whatever, and this little reminder pops up. You know that she's for whatever time. Right, whatever, But you don't hear it in her voice. It's just the voice pops up. Yeah, is this your assistant going, hey, you know, Tony said a reminder. Full blah blah blah right right, Yeah, I wonder I wonder why the default isn't just to have it be your own voice. Would be nice, wouldn't it. It would be nice. That wouldn't be that hard. No, Well, it's listening to everything else anyway. I know. It's so true. I had this risk watch that's off right now or batteries dead. This thing is called a b computer like the Honeybee, and it's just a microphone that if I charge it, it just listens to literally everything. Oh you was saying this, Yeah, keeps notes and I honestly I've stopped using it the last couple of weeks because I don't do that much in real life with people anymore. I mean, I just don't. I'm always on zoom, so Zoom's already taking all the notes and then the stuff that I would want this for, I'm not authorized to use it for. Yeah, aka exactly. She does not want this thing listening on all conversations, taking notes, putting summary And I was like, listen, I got this to help me remember things, like That's why I got it because I forget stuff and you get frustrated. I want to forget stuff. She's like, yeah, I just I don't want that happening. I don't want it listening to my conversation. I was like, all right, that's why I have bits of paper, you see, and I just make lists. That just fine? Yeah, always, always, always. I went that off my old man. My old man's in his eighties and he still keeps a notebook and a pain in his top pocket just to remind himself and stuff. And got an ink stain in his top pocket of his share sometimes. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's old fashioned. We actually talk about old fashioned. Over the weekend, we thought, let's drag out a board game. Wow. Yeah, because everyone sits around like sitting on their phone or watching TV or what. Our some of fuddy diddies. But my daughter was here for almost three weeks. I really, I'm really upset. We never sat. We never played a single board game. Monopoly. She's like. Another board games that they combined the two. Well we were playing. We played Monopoly, but the Stranger Things version of Monopoly, they've never been open. It's been sitting there there for years. But after a few venos when I'm playing, I decided that because there was a walkman was one of the objects that live around the board. There was a car, there was a piece of pizza, whatever it was, so it ended up anyway. So I was getting songs that went with whoever it was throwing the dice for their objects. So it was like, I don't know whether you can hear any of this. That's got to So there's the walkman, you know, Cliff Richard when he's doing yeah, and then of course he had a car. So it's like to have a bit of a bit of this for Henry. He's stiltering it out of it. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I mean, how long is it since you picked up a decade cards? You know, it's like play solitaire or whatever, you know, Like I used to do. That all the time. I don't even know that we've got a decad cards in the house anymore. No, really, Yeah, I have a couple, but mainly because they're a novelty. One is a Banksy set of cards. It's all about banks the cards. And I have another one that's from a bicycle event I do with my buddies and for the thirtieth anniversary, he printed pictures of all of us on the backs of the playing cards. You know. Nice but yeah, I mean the guy that leads that event actually is a total retro grouch. He doesn't even have a smartphone. He doesn't show up to the race with a phone. He's he's like, if you show up late, tough titties, you know what I mean, Like, you show up on time, right, And so he even invented his own board game and uh and sold it, you know. And it's a tough game to play with people because you know, it makes you delve into some deep dark stuff. It's really intense. And I'm like, so I had that game from him that I don't know anybody wants to play with me. I have another one that's about name that sound. It's like a sound game that's too tough for a. Lot of people to play. So I might have to end up going on of those nerdy board game places to play games. Yeah, those are getting really popular now. I've gone into that one want to buy a game for somebody as a gift. And there must have been three different gaming rooms, you know, in this store, and they were full of people. I mean the place was packed, you know. Now, location wise, that was up near Hollywood. Anything that's in the Valley Hollywood area, really close to the animation studios. That's where the geekier animation people are, so they're all into that stuff, right there's but down on my side of town, you'd be hard pressed to find that those kind of places as much. But yeah, I guess if you want to play games in real life, I mean a fan of ours used to have us over for games. We play something called Katan or something like that. But yeah, it's it's definitely fallen away. We need to do more in real life physical gaming. Yeah, I think so. I just I think bring the family to get in general. I mean, god, you know, you look at our house, four kids, dinner time, is you know, four iPads on the table. Yeah, all that sort of stuff, and yeah, look, you know you can, you can sort of make rules and all that sort of stuff. But the reality is it's impossible. It really is to sort of like we make them sort of turn them off and at least have a conversation, but after a while they're fucking back into it and all the rest of it. You know, you're only delaying the inevitable. Yeah, that's true. What's wrong with robbery? I don't know. He's on and off off. Yeah, he's going by. He's obviously using his neighbors Internet. But we've gone way off topic, right, Okay, so there you go. So if you're into ay, I'm good on you. But go and buy Monopoly. That was fun. The pro Audio Suite Thanks and. Austrian audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peters, mixed by Robo. Got your own audio issues just ask robo dot com. Text report from George the Tech Window. 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