Tag Archives: national association of voice actors

NAVA and UVA fight to protect actors with an amendment to the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act

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NAVA

United Voice Artists (UVA) and The National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA) have submitted an amendment proposal to the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), seeking to safeguard the rights and interests of voice actors in the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence and voice technology.

United Voice Artists is a global coalition of 35 voice acting guilds, associations and unions in Europe (France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Poland, Netherlands) together with Switzerland, the United States, Turkey, Canada, Africa, Asia and Latin America representing more than 20,500 artists that have united to ensure that the use of artificial intelligence in the creative and media industry does not harm artistic heritage and human creativity and to preserve artist’s rights in relation to the use of AI, in particular in the dubbing and voice-over industry.

The UVA acknowledges the efforts of the European legislators in designing the AI Act as the first European legislation for the regulation of certain use cases of AI. However, to ensure that the AI Act does not lead to the extinction of human creativity in the entertainment industry through synthetic and cloning AI techniques and the exploitation of artists and their work by infringing their rights, both from a privacy/publicity data protection and an intellectual property rights protection perspective, we have identified the following key areas that should be urgently addressed in the upcoming trilogue negotiations:

  1. Prohibition to create or expand audio/vocal databases
  2. Extension of transparency requirements
  3. Introduction of unfair contract practices unilaterally imposed by generative AI providers

United Voice Artists and The National Association of Voice Actors have called upon policymakers and stakeholders within the European Union to carefully consider the proposed amendment, recognizing its potential to elevate the voice acting community while setting a global standard for AI legislation that respects artistic integrity and the rights of creators.

You can read the full proposal here.

SDCC 2023: SAG/AFTRA National Executive Director is joining the AI in Entertainment: The Performer’s Perspective panel

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Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG/AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator, will be joining the AI in Entertainment: The Performers’ Perspective panel at San Diego Comic-Con.

AI and machine learning are revolutionizing the world. Entertainment performers must adapt to this groundbreaking technology that can not only replicate their voices and movements but also feed machine learning to create entirely new characters.

With the support of the National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA) and SAG/AFTRA, this will be a discussion on how existing legal structures can be used in some areas and how new standards need to be built for performers and producers to collaborate on great products while still protecting individual rights to performance and publicity.

Moderated by Linsay Rousseau (Transformers: War for Cybertron, God of War Ragnarok), panelists include Ashly Burch (Mythic Quest, Horizon Zero Dawn), Cissy Jones (The Owl House, Transformers Earthrise), Zeke Alton (The Calisto Protocol, SAG/AFTRA negotiating member), Tim Friedlander (Record of Ragnarok, Ace Combat 7, president/founder of NAVA) and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland (SAG/AFTRA National Executive Director & Chief Negotiator).

The panel takes place Saturday, July 22 at 10:30am in Room 29CD.

National Association of Voice Actors