Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs

[Disney Irish]

By even bringing it up. If you're a humans over dollars person, you would never even consider it. But as we know, in our silly world, dollars almost always trump humans.

To put this in some perspective, my employer is actually a player in the AI field, and we always advocate for AI assistance of humans, not replacement of humans with AI. What we're talking about here is replacement.

I too work in the tech industry for a major player and the fear of AI takeover of jobs is real. Which is why many companies are now ensuring their employees know that its to assist not replace jobs. So a complete replacement of voice actors for AI just doesn't sit right with me, and nor should it for anyone that enjoys entertainment. Using AI to assist voice actors, for example to make an actors voice change to new and exciting ways, similar to the de-aging tech being used, is cool. But a complete replacement, no thanks. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't see SAG/AFTRA stopping to ensuring more protections against using it to replace actors either in front of the camera or behind the mic are put into future contracts.

 

[TP2000]

I am sure there are studios who would like that to happen… as it would save them a. Buck…. That was the main sticking point in the various strikes that almost or did happen… my issue is he’s advocating for AI to take over…and anyone who enjoys films would be against this as that would destroy any creativity in the art form…of course he has already said he does not like movies but continues to post here to point out any failure narratives he can find

I love many movies, and I have several boxes full of BluRays to prove it.

But when it comes to paying celebrities huge sums of money to voice a character in a cartoon, I now have to wonder why?

You could get AI to do that for you easily now, and it will be even easier and cheaper in 2025 and every year thereafter.

The question then becomes "Will people not go see Inside Out 2 because Bill Hader didn't do some of the voiceover work for it?"

 

[LittleBuford]

But when it comes to paying celebrities huge sums of money to voice a character in a cartoon, I now have to wonder why?

Because it’s still acting, which is a uniquely human skill.

 

[TP2000]

By even bringing it up. If you're a humans over dollars person, you would never even consider it. But as we know, in our silly world, dollars almost always trump humans.

To put this in some perspective, my employer is actually a player in the AI field, and we always advocate for AI assistance of humans, not replacement of humans with AI. What we're talking about here is replacement.

Yes, that's exactly what it will be. AI replacing humans who currently do voiceover work for cartoons.

This "replacement" has happened thousands of times before to established jobs since the Industrial Revolution began. There used to be good paying jobs for street lamplighters (replaced by Mr. Edison's bulbs), for skullery maids (replaced by dishwashing machines), for laundresses (replaced by washing machines/dryers), for stenographers (replaced by email), for telephone operators (replaced by transistors), etc., etc.

Why would doing the cartoon voice of a goat or a squirrel or an Evil King be any different? Why would the millions of Typing Pool jobs be replaced by email but cartoon voiceover work would not be replaced by AI?

 

[TP2000]

Because it’s still acting, which is a uniquely human skill.

I guess I just don't understand what makes the human skill of acting any more important than all the other human skills that have been replaced by technology and automation in the past 300 years.

Taxicab drivers used to be a uniquely human skill that we could have never imagined going away just 25 years ago, not to mention the Taxi company dispatcher answering the telephone, noting your current location and requested destination, and then dispatching a nearby taxi to you via radio communication with the driver.

But then came Uber, and now there's Waymo which doesn't even require a human driver. Multiple sets of "human skill" that are no longer unique or needed, replaced by driverless cars summoned to you automatically by an App.

I could easily imagine you'd want a well known celebrity to be the voice of your key characters in an animated movie; the Princess, the villain, the jokester sidekick to help drive business and interest in the movie.

But the voice of a goat, or the Princesses friend, or the chambermaid, or the footman in the palace? Who would care or know?

I've noticed recently that the gate announcements at the Las Vegas and San Diego airports at several airlines are now done by an AI voice in a perfect pitch and dialect. Those announcements used to be done by the human gate agents over the PA, but no more. Why wouldn't that technology come to animation on TV and at the movies? Seems like a slam dunk to me.

 

[DKampy]

I love many movies, and I have several boxes full of BluRays to prove it.

But when it comes to paying celebrities huge sums of money to voice a character in a cartoon, I now have to wonder why?

You could get AI to do that for you easily now, and it will be even easier and cheaper in 2025 and every year thereafter.

The question then becomes "Will people not go see Inside Out 2 because Bill Hader didn't do some of the voiceover work for it?"

Well I hope they go with actual voice over actors… which they should do more of anyway.. There are plenty of talented voice over actors that get looked over for the big celebrity name

 

[TP2000]

There's really no other way to read "Why not..." He also called AI "perfect" (which is laughable), which pretty clearly indicates what he thinks about its capability and utility. [It's also not nearly as cheap to generate as the proliferation of OpenAI, etc. would lead you to believe, but that's neither here nor there.] If TP comes back on here after reading the rest of the thread and says, "Gosh, y'all are right. We don't want computers replacing humans even if it saves costs", then I'll know he wasn't advocating for it. But I work in the field and I would never think to bring it up in the space of generating voices for top-shelf animation projects.

I'm not "advocating" for anything, as I have no financial interest in the animation industry.

But what I am saying is that AI has now gotten to a point where it could do the voiceover work for animated movies. That is undeniable from a technical perspective now. And the subject came to me as we talked about the Millions of dollars that some actors and actresses get for doing voiceover work in Pixar films.

So if we think that somehow AI and technology will eliminate the jobs of secretaries and taxi drivers and telephone operators and countless other jobs and careers that are no longer needed, but somehow technology won't come for voiceover work for TV and movies, then we are all fooling ourselves.

The ladies in the Typing Pool were all good people who didn't deserve to be put out of work. But their skill is no longer needed, and has been replaced by technology that is far more efficient, cheaper, and easier. I don't see how creating a voice for a cartoon squirrel will be any different.

 

[TP2000]

Well I hope they go with actual voice over actors… which they should do more of anyway.. There are plenty of talented voice over actors that get looked over for the big celebrity name

I get that. And I'm just thinking out loud here via the keyboard... but perhaps there would still be key voiceover roles that would demand a "celebrity" or well known voice to do that job? If only from a marketing perspective, for the PR buzz of whoever is the latest hot celebrity at the time.

You obviously can't send AI to make an appearance on The Tonight Show to hype the movie. (Or.... could you someday?)

But how many voiceover roles were in Wish, aside from the Princess and the Evil King guy? Who was the voice of the goat? I can't remember if it was a celeb or not. Like most stuff, I would imagine the first AI voiceover replacements go to background voices and/or supporting characters with only a few dozen lines.

But to sit here and think "Well, they could NEVER replace voiceover jobs with AI!" seems to be putting your head in the sand. And seems to be that typical Hollywood opinion that they are somehow special and above all the other industries and careers out there that are being replaced by technology and/or legislation. What makes being the voice of a cartoon squirrel any different than being a taxicab driver or an office secretary or an automotive assemblyman?

 

[Disney Irish]

I'm not "advocating" for anything, as I have no financial interest in the animation industry.

But what I am saying is that AI has now gotten to a point where it could do the voiceover work for animated movies. That is undeniable from a technical perspective now. And the subject came to me as we talked about the Millions of dollars that some actors and actresses get for doing voiceover work in Pixar films.

So if we think that somehow AI and technology will eliminate the jobs of secretaries and taxi drivers and telephone operators and countless other jobs and careers that are no longer needed, but somehow technology won't come for voiceover work for TV and movies, then we are all fooling ourselves.

The ladies in the Typing Pool were all good people who didn't deserve to be put out of work. But their skill is no longer needed, and has been replaced by technology that is far more efficient, cheaper, and easier. I don't see how creating a voice for a cartoon squirrel will be any different.

There is a difference in the jobs you're talking about, they require no creativity. Unlike acting, including voice acting, that does require creativity.

AI has come a long way but it still cannot be creative, come up with its own lines, improv, etc., like a human, sorry to disappoint.

An AI cannot do this today, nor will it probably for the foreseeable future -

 

[TP2000]

There is a difference in the jobs you're talking about, they require no creativity. Unlike acting, including voice acting, that does require creativity.

AI has come a long way but it still cannot be creative, come up with its own lines, improv, etc., like a human, sorry to disappoint.

An AI cannot do this today, nor will it probably for the foreseeable future -

I was a huge Mork & Mindy fan, and loved him in Aladdin and Good Morning, Vietnam. But he was also one of those celebs were you didn't really want to know how his brain got to be that way. The less you knew, the better.

But there was only one Robin Williams, and only a handful of roles he appeared in. There are millions of possibilities for voiceover roles in TV and movies. How many animated movies came out in the past year? At least a dozen. How many speaking roles were there in all those movies combined? Likely hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more.

AI can, and will, replace a lot of those voices in those TV shows and movies. There may still be a Robin Williams or a Marge Simpson type character that has a specific celebrity voice to it. But there are thousands of characters having voice put to them in animation. To pretend that AI can't, and won't, replace them all seems silly to me.

Now, if you could please send in my girl with her pad, because I need to issue a memorandum to the entire 18th floor!

 

[Ghost93]

I do think there should be pushback to A.I. doing voiceover work. If we are fine with A.I. stealing 90% of humanity's jobs, what will be the point of life? No human will be able to work and afford a living as all of the jobs will be done by AI. We will just suffer while our A.I. replacements satisfy the 1%.

I think A.I. should only be used to do what humans cannot. But if a human can do it, humans should be given priorities to do so over robots.

 

[Disney Irish]

I was a huge Mork & Mindy fan, and loved him in Aladdin and Good Morning, Vietnam. But he was also one of those celebs were you didn't really want to know how his brain got to be that way. The less you knew, the better.

But there was only one Robin Williams, and only a handful of roles he appeared in. There are millions of possibilities for voiceover roles in TV and movies. How many animated movies came out in the past year? At least a dozen. How many speaking roles were there in all those movies combined? Likely hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more.

AI can, and will, replace a lot of those voices in those TV shows and movies. There may still be a Robin Williams or a Marge Simpson type character that has a specific celebrity voice to it. But there are thousands of characters having voice put to them in animation. To pretend that AI can't, and won't, replace them all seems silly to me.

Now, if you could please send in my girl with her pad, because I need to issue a memorandum to the entire 18th floor!

And I'm telling you that AI cannot do what most voice actors do during their recording sessions. There are many many times where a voice actor will come up with a better line than what is on the script that makes it into the movie. In addition a lot of times the animators will use the voice actor as the basis for the character design, such as how the character reacts, etc.

So I'm glad you're all for replacing voice actors with AI, doesn't mean the rest of humanity is ready to just put a whole industry out of work yet again.

 

[TP2000]

I do think there should be pushback to A.I. doing voiceover work. If we are fine with A.I. stealing 90% of humanity's jobs, what will be the point of life? No human will be able to work and afford a living as all of the jobs will be done by AI. We will just suffer while our A.I. replacements satisfy the 1%.

I think A.I. should only be used to do what humans cannot. But if a human can do it, humans should be given priorities to do so over robots.

This is an interesting topic to be sure. I'm surprised by how many folks here are so worried about it.

But if you apply that template to any job a human has traditionally done, what makes voiceover work so special?

Why does a voice actor working on TV commercials or Disney movies get preferential treatment over a steelworker in Pittsburgh or an assembly line worker in Detroit or a lady wiring a new Whirlpool refrigerator in Iowa? All of those jobs have, and are, actively being outsourced to cheaper foreign (and often Communist) countries or being automated fully into oblivion.

Not to mention the jobs humans used to do that were simply replaced because the new technology was faster, better, smarter than any human could ever be.

An email from the boss to the team is infinitely easier and faster and more efficient than a stenographer taking dictation, then typing out a memorandum on a Selectric, then sending it to the Mimeograph department for duplication, so the mail room boy could distribute it to all department heads the next day. Three humans no longer needed, replaced by a single email.

After 300 years of technological change and progress, why would the voice of a cartoon squirrel be sacrosanct?

 

[TP2000]

And I'm telling you that AI cannot do what most voice actors do during their recording sessions. There are many many times where a voice actor will come up with a better line than what is on the script that makes it into the movie. In addition a lot of times the animators will use the voice actor as the basis for the character design, such as how the character reacts, etc.

So I'm glad you're all for replacing voice actors with AI, doesn't mean the rest of humanity is ready to just put a whole industry out of work yet again.

As this conversation rolls along, I can agree with you that there are (and will still be) roles in animation that need a special human voice. Again, your Robin Williams example is perfect for that.

But those are the rare exceptions, the leading roles in headline movies. There are likely dozens of voice actors employed in the upcoming Inside Out 2. Why do all of them need to be voiced by humans in a recording booth? It seems the majority of them as background voices or supporting roles could be outsourced to AI, especially as AI continues to improve and advance at lightning speed in the next year or three.

It's obvious AI can do this job as it stands now. It's also obvious that AI will only get better at doing that job, and it will be far cheaper than hiring humans to do that job. That seems like the classic 300 year old recipe of technology replacing jobs that used to exist for humans.

A union contract or a licensing agreement may stave off that inevitable change for a few years, but contracts and licenses can't stop change forever. Just ask all those taxi drivers who bought expensive medallions from their city taxi department just before Uber was invented.

 

[Disney Irish]

This is an interesting topic to be sure. I'm surprised by how many folks here are so worried about it.

But if you use that template to any job a human has traditionally done, what makes voiceover work so special?

Why does a voice actor working on TV commercials or Disney movies get preferential treatment over a steelworker in Pittsburgh or an assembly line worker in Detroit or a lady wiring a new Whirlpool refrigerator in Iowa? All of those jobs have, and are, actively being outsourced to cheaper foreign (and often Communist) countries or being automated fully into oblivion.

Not to mention the jobs humans used to do that were simply replaced because the new technology was faster, better, smarter than any human could ever be.

An email from the boss to the team is infinitely easier and faster and more efficient than a stenographer taking dictation, then typing out a memorandum on a Selectric, then sending it to the Mimeograph department for duplication, so the mail room boy could distribute it to all department heads the next day. Three humans no longer needed, replaced by a single email.

After 300 years of technological change and progress, why would the voice of a cartoon squirrel be sacrosanct?

Because no offense to the steelworker, the line worker, or the lady wiring up a new refrigerator, those aren't creative jobs that require human intellect. They are manual labor jobs, that while admirable, don't require a lot of intellect to perform.

 

[Disney Irish]

As this conversation rolls along, I can agree with you that there are (and will still be) roles in animation that need a special human voice. Again, your Robin Williams example is perfect for that.

But those are the rare exceptions, the leading roles in headline movies. There are likely dozens of voice actors employed in the upcoming Inside Out 2. Why do all of them need to be voiced by humans in a recording booth? It seems the majority of them as background voices or supporting roles could be outsourced to AI, especially as AI continues to improve and advance at lightning speed in the next year or three.

It's obvious AI can do this job as it stands now. It's also obvious that AI will only get better at doing that job, and it will be far cheaper than hiring humans to do that job. That seems like the classic 300 year old recipe of technology replacing jobs that used to exist for humans.

A union contract or a licensing agreement may stave off that inevitable change for a few years, but contracts and licenses can't stop change forever. Just ask all those taxi drivers who bought expensive medallions from their city taxi department just before Uber was invented.

You seem to now be an expert in AI, for a guy who up until last summer didn't even know what generative AI was. So please tell me what creative industry, one where intellect is a key requirement, has AI actually taken over? Not cab drivers, not factory workers, not the former secretarial pool, an actual creative industry that AI has actually taken over.

I'll wait.......

 

[TP2000]

Because no offense to the steelworker, the line worker, or the lady wiring up a new refrigerator, those aren't creative jobs that require human intellect. They are manual labor jobs, that while admirable, don't require a lot of intellect to perform.

That's just it, technology is finally creating intellect on its own. The letter "I" in A.I. stands for intelligence, remember.

Is A.I. capable in 2024 of replacing all the voices on a Pixar movie now? Probably not, or at least not very well.

Is A.I. capable in 2024 of replacing background and minor supporting voices on a Pixar movie now? Yeah, probably.

Will A.I. be capable in 2027 of doing a better job of voice acting than it can today? Most definitely, yes.

Technology finally created artificial intelligence. It will only get better, faster, cheaper from here. So why does the voice of the cartoon squirrel have to be created by a human when A.I. could do it better, faster, cheaper?

 

[Disney Irish]

The letter "I" in A.I. stands for intelligence, remember.

Tell me you don't know anything about AI without telling me you don't know anything about AI.

 

[TP2000]

You seem to now be an expert in AI, for a guy who up until last summer didn't even know what generative AI was.

Nope, I'm not an expert at anything really, except for Disneyland Trivia (don't even try it, you'll lose). I'm just a man who likes to keep up on the latest mainstream news. And I've read several great articles about it lately.

So please tell me what creative industry, one where intellect is a key requirement, has AI actually taken over? Not cab drivers, not factory workers, not the former secretarial pool, an actual creative industry that AI has actually taken over.

I'll wait.......

I doubt there's any industry were A.I. has taken over yet. It's still in its infancy; about where Henry Ford was with his Model T around 1910. I have noticed the airport announcements have gone to A.I. lately though, and it's obvious they can take into account the changes in gates or departure times automatically and then announce that info in perfectly clear English devoid of human stumbles or unusual dialect or poor grammar while the gate agent tends to passengers at the desk.

A.I. is by its very name designed to take over intellect and intelligence duties from many human tasks, and do those tasks cheaper and faster than humans do them today. The medical field, customer service, editing, writing, graphic design, the spoken word, etc., etc. are all in the pathway of A.I. in the 2020's and beyond.

Including the voice of a cartoon squirrel.

 

[Ghost93]

But if you apply that template to any job a human has traditionally done, what makes voiceover work so special?

The point is if you don't draw the line somewhere there will be no jobs, no way of income, and no way to make a life. We are reaching a point where AI can soon be capable of anything. And if greedy billionaires decide to completely cut humans out of the picture, our entire civilization falls apart as humanity is replaced by robots. I know that sounds absurd and extremist and like something out of the Terminator, but it's a growing concern. I don't think we'll be at that point in the next five years, but in 15 years or so I'd be very very worried!