Our voice is our livelihood

Kareena Kapoorrsquos hot and ohsofashionable Poo from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham was embraced by audiences at once but as other movies of the actor came out people noticed a detailmdashher voice had changed It is an open secret that many actors borrow dubbing voices to either plug holes during production or sound more appealingBut these professional voice actors cannot vocalise their work and remain largely unrecognised and celebrated outside a closed circle of movie technicians Their professional rights or lack thereof came to the fore after Scarlett Johansson made headlines for saying OpenAIrsquos latest chatbot voice sounded ldquoeerily similarrdquo to hersVijay Vikram Singh the voiceover artist who plays the role of sutradhar in Big Boss recently sent a notice to a company asking if his voice would be used by AI for voice cloning PicSatej ShindeJohansson has requested OpenAI to reveal how and from where they extracted the voice Sam Altman OpenAIrsquos CEO responded saying they wonrsquot reveal the identity of the voice actorWho doesnrsquot recognise the voice that says ldquoBig Boss chahte hai kihelliprdquo Vijay Vikram Singh was one of the first of the fraternity to take legal recourse against his unmistakable voice being reproduced In March Singh sent a legal notice to a previous employer with whom he had recorded some common phrases in 2018ldquoThe contract was ambiguousrdquo he said ldquoI sent them a notice asking if they intend to use my voice for AI They said they donrsquot and will not in the future and the matter ended thererdquo Even though the company has assured Singh and he now has a written document saying so there is no way for him to check whether it will keep their word ldquoI have no tools to know where and when they use my voice I just have to take their word for it this is the complication with AI entering our industryrdquo he addsA simple Google search will hand you hundreds of apps and websites on which you can sign up in 30 seconds drop an audio clip and transform it to anyonersquos voice including that of the countryrsquos highestpaid voice actor Amitabh BachchanAmarinder Sodhi General Secretary Association of Voiceover ArtistsThis despite the actor approaching Delhi High Court in 2022 to safeguard the use of his voice face name and of course image He has raved against the 60yearold copyright laws on his blog One line reads sicldquowho built this Law who prescribed the time years of 60 why did they do so how can individual property become public property NOrdquoAt 47 years of age Singh has seen his share of struggles He tasted success at 30 when he became an ldquoaccidentalrdquo voice artist It has been only 10 years since he was selected as narrator of Big Boss talks about why he revisited a job he had done six years ago ldquoWhen I signed the contractrdquo he says ldquoAI was nowhere in our field But recently we have been hearing of voices being cloned for project actors never agreed upon We get paid per line Now we have to ensure our voice is not used for a project we wouldnrsquot sign on for ethical or personal reasonsrdquoGanesh Divekar and Akshay ShettyIn August last year the Association of Voiceover Artists AVA held their first conference in Mumbai Ganesh Divekar AVA President shares insight on how big the industry is ldquoThere are a mere 5000 artistes by our estimate and the industry is split into two the BandraKhar artistes who work in advertising and the AndheriGoregaon professionals mostly involved in OTT theatre animation web series etcrdquo says DivekarWhile the advertisement industry is a freelance setup the artistes from AndheriGoregaon belt are part of a more organised system closer to a regular job economy and itrsquos here that trouble has been brewing in particularSam Altman in turn has said that they have in fact used a voice actor for the OpenAI but said that they would not be able to reveal her identity File picGetty Images right Scarlett Johansson who has voiced a selfaware computer operating system woman in the movie ldquoHerrdquo back in 2013 has said that the chatbott voice of OpenAI is ldquoeerily similarrdquo to hers and has asked itrsquos CEO Sam Altman to clarify as to how the voice was madeDivekar who is the Marathi voice for Jethalal from Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah says ldquoYou may have to record 400 episodes in six months and get paid Rs 500 to 1000 per episode unlike commercials where you may be paid up to Rs 2 lakh for just one linerdquoDivekar is no small fishmdashhe is the Hindi voice of Timon the meerkat in Lion King and has dubbed for bigticket movies such as Ishmael Gregor the antagonist in Black Adam as well as Rhino the hamster in Bolt and Dug the dog in Up ldquoThe reason we are banding together is that the voiceover industry has never had a proper legal framework and now AI has come in and disrupted it furthermore Our voice is all we haverdquo he saysAmarinder Sodhi General Secretary AVA and their Legal Counsel Akshay Shetty have been trying to retrofit the rights of voiceover artistes into Intellectual Property Rights IPR ldquoAs of nowrdquo says Sodhi ldquowe have legal language so we are using IPR to protect ourselvesrdquo The need to educate colleagues is a high priority for many reasons ldquoThere have been a number of incidents in the past two or three years where ambiguity in contract or the complete absence of one have raised alarm bellsrdquo Sodhi adds ldquoAn artiste is called in and made to say vague phrases that seem to be cloned and reused elsewhere They layer our voice over another audio and it sounds just like us They are teaching AI voice modulation with the experience we have earned over our entire livesrdquoLack of information about contracts and legal right was obvious in the conference held last year ldquoSome artistes didnrsquot know the very first thing about getting a contractrdquo says Shetty ldquoIn one caserdquo adds Sodhi ldquowhile an artiste was recording they asked the production house where and for how long their voice would be used Their evasive answer raised the artistersquos antennae and the artiste left the session midwayrdquoSo is there no legal recourse at all ldquoThere isrdquo says Shetty ldquobut itrsquos vague and there is a lack of awareness within the industry But I fully believe that the law will catch up with AI one day Maybe not immediately but we must keep fighting so that the future generation of artistes donrsquot get the short end of the stick like usrdquo