#im sure someone's going to completely misinterpret this somehow given my recent boom in followers but ah well

[r0semultiverse]

Hey! 1. you dont have to answer this if it is too laborious, i absolutely get it, but if you do feel like answering I would love your take.

This is a genuine question about ai and voice acting: so, I use a text to speech app to help get through my readings for college. I cant actually afford the AI voices, but from my brief trial period they sound so easy to understand, and I do sort of wish i could afford them over the more robotic voices for my study. Where do you stand on that?

I ask because i feel a little tangled up because 1. I hate AI, and i would rather listen to nails on a chalkboard than listen to an ai voice read an audiobook (also like, i am a writer and chatgpt breaks my heart) BUT 2. It's not like an academic article is going to be properly recorded for accessibility.

i genuinely dont know where I stand on this, and I suppose it starts getting a little murky when we talk about ai and accessibility. Is this one area where ai is ethical, because it is for accessibility? Or does that leave room for 'but i cant draw so midjourney is accessibility for me'? Or can we draw that line more firmly because there are neurological/psychological/developmental reasons someone might need to listen to their academic readings in order to learn rather than read them? Or do we need to push publishers to hire people to read their journals?

again, no pressure to respond. I feel like this is a murky, convoluted question, and ethics can be not super fun to dig into. BUT if it is cut-and-dry for you, i would love to hear your reasoning. I dont want to feel so murky about it.

To make a generalized statement before getting into some specifics; I think that personal private use of AI for stuff like that where you aren't going around sharing a voice actor's voice without their consent is fine. You need it to be able to better read things. You aren't sharing this with others or posting it up for views & clicks & YouTube clout only to (hopefully) later get sued or fined (or a YouTube strike) for the questionable legality of it. If we ever get laws protecting us voice actors (here's to hoping).

Let me clarify as well that consent should have to be given for peoples voices to be used however which ways they are currently. Yes, even for accessibility programs, the maker should be getting consent from and/or paying the voice actors for their voice. Ideally much like how big name companies get a share of movie ticket money & streaming revenue, that currently does not go to the actors/voice actors in a lot of instances. Voice actors & such should not just be getting that single payout for their work, but also payouts over time based on sales with products they helped make & streaming money too.

There's a very fine line between doing something privately & sharing it around publicly. I'm completely against stolen art, commission someone or keep those AI art pieces private to yourself.

I don't think it's on the publishers to have to have an audio version readily available. Book authors/writers & such are screwed over currently enough as is. Having said that, I think people online should be able to read any book out loud/create an audio book & publish it for accessibility & reading along purposes. I can't go reading certain books or literary works on stream due to fear of being copyright stricken. Book copyrights & things aren't my area of expertise though & I'm no professional writer trying to make a living off my work.

There's better educated people on the topics of books & accessibility out there. If you do make a book audio cover on YouTube, you shouldn't be able to monetize it without consent from the author(s). Authors & writers aren't treated great either. I think a lot more groups of people should be striking than are currently.

If it's a bougie publishing company (if those exist), then I think they should absolutely commission someone to have an audio book version of it. The voice actor should also get paid royalties or whatever you call that even after the initial payout though! Again, I don't know jack shit about how books & publishing work, this is just how I think at this current moment in time.

Also if people are going to post AI for clout anyway, they should legally have to disclose they're using AI in whatever they're publishing like how some countries have laws about disclosing when your content is sponsored or an advertisement.

Also as far as paying someone to voice act anything, no company or business gets to own our voices permanently. This is in addition to the things said above. Pay us to voice over a new book, pay us to say those lines, and every other possible instance this can apply to. Our voice isn’t anyone’s to permanently own and do what they want with regardless of context! Pay us for our voice over!