How would you feel about AI being used for deceased voice actors?

[JulieYBM]

Fans don't really matter in this case? It's not like fans are holding a gun to the heads of IP holders. The IP holders make more Dragon Ball because they want the money. These are not two equal parties.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

It's not like fans are holding a gun to the heads of IP holders. The IP holders make more Dragon Ball because they want the money. These are not two equal parties.

The more fans support something, the more of it is put out in the market. When GT failed to catch an audience back in the day, Toei stopped and moved on after its initial 65 episode order. If the likes of Resurrection F and especially the Super anime tanked financially (as the should've), then Toei would've pulled the plug on the project like they did back in 97.

[JulieYBM]

It's not like fans are holding a gun to the heads of IP holders. The IP holders make more Dragon Ball because they want the money. These are not two equal parties.

The more fans support something, the more of it is put out in the market. When GT failed to catch an audience back in the day, Toei stopped and moved on after its initial 65 episode order. If the likes of Resurrection F and especially the Super anime tanked financially (as the should've), then Toei would've pulled the plug on the project like they did back in 97.

The fans aren't the issue, though. The production committee members deciding to make more of a popular propertery are the ones making the decision to do so (and then placing terrible restrictions on the creative people in charge of making said project a reality).

[Vegeta th3 4th]

The fans aren't the issue, though. The production committee members deciding to make more of a popular propertery are the ones making the decision to do so (and then placing terrible restrictions on the creative people in charge of making said project a reality).

The ultimate problem is indeed the companies behind these franchises, but fans aren't innocent either; they enable these bad business practices by supporting them. If Super was met with the same lack of fan support that GT was, it would've been cancelled and forgotten. Instead it's the face of the franchise now.

[Hellspawn28]

I want the AI bubble to crash and burn, much like what happen to NFTs. No one cares about those anymore.

[MCDaveG]

I want the AI bubble to crash and burn, much like what happen to NFTs. No one cares about those anymore.

It kinda does already, we are all just waiting for the news to reach the senior management bubble, after it will crash and burn in practice so much, that they will finally notice or reevaluate their egos.
Effective use of AI is minimal and overshadowed with gimmicky nonsense. While creatives, masters of craft and lesser executives get fired thanks to AI hype, we are flooded with mediocre nonsense.

[Jord]

In the end most people care about how the product sinds up. If AI can do a better Goku, only a minority will complain, while a majority enjoys a consistent good "performance".
Heck, Nozawa currently struggles with her Goku voice in a lot of projects right now. Her voice work in Kakarot and its DLC was very iffy. Daima was a bit better, but I don't think it will get much better.

In the end AI is just a tool to enhance a product. Heck, if AI animation gets better, we could get AI to draw in between frames. I'd rather have that than the choppy animation we saw in Super.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

If AI can do a better Goku, only a minority will complain, while a majority enjoys a consistent good "performance".

I don't see how losing actual human voices in favor of AI is a better deal. Also, don't think for a second that whatever you do for a living is safe from AI, it's not. AI getting better and taking over more jobs is in no one's interest, because eventually they themselves will be forced out of their job.

[Jord]

If AI can do a better Goku, only a minority will complain, while a majority enjoys a consistent good "performance".

I don't see how losing actual human voices in favor of AI is a better deal. Also, don't think for a second that whatever you do for a living is safe from AI, it's not. AI getting better and taking over more jobs is in no one's interest, because eventually they themselves will be forced out of their job.

I don't know if AI is quite there yet, regarding voice acting, but if it can simulate prime Nozawa for example where we hear no difference, we basically have a great Goku voice for eternity. I am not opposed to recasts in general, but TOEI has done a mediocre job with recasting for some of the characters, to the point they're distracting.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

I don't know if AI is quite there yet, but if it can simulate prime Nozawa for example where we hear no difference, we basically have a great Goku voice for eternity.

Or society can start acting normal and understand that nothing is forever, and that we have to eventually move on from certain things.

[Kunzait_83]

In the end most people care about how the product sinds up. If AI can do a better Goku, only a minority will complain, while a majority enjoys a consistent good "performance".
Heck, Nozawa currently struggles with her Goku voice in a lot of projects right now. Her voice work in Kakarot and its DLC was very iffy. Daima was a bit better, but I don't think it will get much better.

In the end AI is just a tool to enhance a product. Heck, if AI animation gets better, we could get AI to draw in between frames. I'd rather have that than the choppy animation we saw in Super.

Repeating this for emphasis:

At a certain point, I'd like people in this community to just... take five seconds out of their day to think beyond just "Me want more cool content" and "I'm going to think about this purely from the perspective of the CEO of a studio, even though I'm the furthest fucking thing from one myself, and pretend like I have any remote financial stake in the studio's bottom line, even though I don't and never will".

So long as we live in a capitalist society/economy, then jobs being lost in general is a BAD thing for average, ordinary people: you, person who is reading this, are overwhelmingly likely an average, ordinary person. You're not a billionaire head of a major film or TV studio, and you never will be. You're just some random schmuck, like me and everyone else here, who depends on a paycheck of some kind in order to live and have the basic, bare necessities for survival.

Without jobs, that check you depend on to survive goes away, and you can't afford basic things like food to eat, and a roof over your head to live in. This is how a lot of people become what we call "homeless".

Now that we got that basic concept out of the way, we'll move to something a bit more advanced: not everyone who works in Hollywood or the entertainment industry are super wealthy, famous celebrities. There are a LOT of average, ordinary-ass blue collar manual laborers who work in the film industry: as set designers, carpenters, lighting technicians, electricians, day players, costume seamstresses, etc.

These people are not the wealthy and glamorous Will Smiths or Sydney Sweeneys of Hollywood who make a gazillion dollars to just show up and say their lines for a few weeks at a time and then do press junkets before going back to their million dollar estates: these are average, ordinary-ass people, no different from you or I, who live in a shitty apartment or tiny house, barely make bills every month, and are just working to put food on the table week to week. The only difference is that they work for their shitty paycheck on a film set instead of an office cubicle: other than that however, there's no difference whatsoever between them and any random person you know in your life.

When jobs for ordinary people disappear, in any industry: that's bad for all of us average folks who aren't fabulously wealthy. We ALL depend on these paychecks to survive and not be homeless and starving.

The people who come out ahead and do better when these jobs disappear are not ordinary, average people like you or I: the people who profit from these jobs disappearing are fabulously wealthy CEOs and executives: which, once again, you and I are not and never will be.

Again, for the umpteenth time: YOU, PERSON READING THIS, YOU'RE NOT A WEALTHY STUDIO EXECUTIVE OR CEO, AND YOU NEVER, EVER WILL BE. Like everyone else who posts here, you were born some random nobody and you'll likely die some random nobody.

You're not special (in the economic and social power sense of the word, and not like as an individual human being), you're not rich and powerful, you never will be special/rich/powerful, and you're not a temporarily embarrassed billionaire entrepreneur-in-waiting. The same thing goes for your friends, family, and anyone/everyone else you care about in your life: all of them are average, not-rich, not-powerful, un-special nobodies too, just like you, me, and everyone else in this forum.

Vegas-odds-probability of course.

I'm very sorry to puncture your fantasy here, but allow me to formally and cordially invite you back to real life for a moment here.

So taking all this into account: when you find yourself rooting for and cheering on events to progress in such a way that only fabulously wealthy business executives and CEO's come out ahead while countless average, ordinary working people suffer immensely... ask yourself "Why is that? Why am I acting like this? Who or what am I invested in here? Who's side am I on here?"

Because the thing that you're rooting and cheering for is something that in all likelihood will only ever end up harming average, ordinary people who live paycheck to paycheck, like yourself and every other person you know in life.

Wake the fuck up and smell reality here guys. This isn't a video game, this isn't a Shonen manga or anime. This isn't a fucking internet meme. This isn't a Marvel movie or comic. This isn't some stupid RPG where numbers going higher is always good, no matter what. This is real life: where shit has serious, dire, life-threatening consequences for average, innocent people. Read something of substance about reality sometime soon, ASAP, and/or otherwise touch some grass.

And also adding that most cartoon voice actors - with insanely rare exceptions - are a LOT closer to your average working person than they are gazillionaire celebrities with power, status, and estate money at their disposal ala most A list Hollywood celebrities.

Your favorite anime voice actor, on average, has WAY more in common with your favorite uncle who's worked a regular job for 50+ years than they do Leonardo DiCaprio or Denzel Washington or Tom Cruise.


So again, repeating this for emphasis:

This isn't a video game. This isn't an anime or manga. This isn't an RPG where "numbers go higher is always better no matter what".

This is real life. These are real life human beings with real life and death stakes added to their jobs and paychecks. You're also not a billionaire CEO in charge of making obscene amounts of money from these properties. You're just some regular, average jerk, just like the rest of us here, who will also never be rich and never be a billionaire CEO in charge of one of these properties and making money off of it.

So I ask again: who's fucking side are you on here? This isn't an abstract, this isn't a hypothetical: this is real, serious shit here where the lives and livelihoods of millions and millions of people are at stake and on the line here.

Real life will also inevitably require you at times to drop the "I'm above it all and acting as an impartial witness to events disconnected from me" bullshit, realize that some of this shit DOES in fact directly concern and impact you (and/or people you know and ostensibly care about), and actually take a fucking side and a concrete position and point of view.

And that whether you fucking like or not, that you have an innate responsibility - as a thinking, active member of society - to actually put some serious thought and careful consideration into your concrete position and which side you ultimately pick.

And when you do ultimately pick a side, maybe try to not act so fucking shocked and chagrined when most normal people around you look at you and regard you like you're a fucking insane, delusional moron when you pick a side that obviously disfavors and disadvantages not only yourself, but moreover countless regular, average people you know and interact with regularly all around you, for completely inscrutable, asinine reasons.

The choice in this case is pretty pat and clear:

What's more important to you? That you have a dumb kiddie "pew pew" cartoon that's mildly, slightly "better quality" in your eyes? Or that countless working people - including among them countless voice actors who countless people in communities like this one claim that they love, adore, admire, and go out of their way to follow around at conventions and whatnot - do not lose their ability to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table for themselves and their families?

And for the especially pedantic and dense among you, let me also emphasize that the blindingly obvious and glaring subtext undergirding this whole discussion here is obviously about a whole lot more than just voice acting: as AI, by this same thread of logic, inherently threatens vastly more jobs (and thus vastly more human lives, families, and livelihoods) within vastly more industries worldwide beyond just some silly cartoons and so forth.

I'd like to also now issue a serious challenge to everyone in this thread who both has a favorite anime voice actor who they idolize and follow around at conventions and are also saying simultaneously something along the lines of "well if AI can do a better job and can make more money for the IP, then I guess we all just have to accept it and move on":

I'd like every single one of you guys, at the next anime convention you attend where you're seeing your favorite VA do a panel and sign autographs for fans, to say the exact same lines of argument to them verbatim as you've said them here (about how AI is inevitable and we need to all just passively sit back and accept whatever job losses come as a result of them, as if this is a natural phenomenon like the weather, and not active decisions being made by other human beings first and foremost), and see how said favorite VA's react to it. And also how other fans in attendance also react to it as well.

And also if possible, video record the results of this and post it publicly online for the rest of us to witness. You know, for science.

Basically I'd like you guys to pull yourselves out of this completely senseless fucking daze you're seemingly stuck in - where you're just reacting to everything seemingly like this is all some kind of simulation or some shit - and come back to thinking about real life and real life human stakes for five seconds. Understand that other human beings who exist alongside you out there in the world - even ones that you can't see or talk to immediately - aren't "NPC's".

They're living, breathing, thinking, feeling human beings, just as complex and multifaceted as you or anyone you know, and that their lives, safety, and ability to earn a living and have a roof over their heads and eat food for sustenance is all JUST AS IMPORTANT and matters JUST AS MUCH TO THEM as it does to yours and your family and friends.

I'm asking you to understand that the needs of the overwhelming many - in this case, average working people like you, me, and anyone else you know or love or care about (if anyone) - vastly outweighs the needs of the few: which in this case are a relative handful of over-moneyed business executives who have so much goddamned money that they'll never, ever, ever have to work or worry about food or shelter for a single goddamned microsecond of the rest of their pampered-ass lives, nor will their children or their children's children.

I'm asking you also to question and interrogate yourself, to do some basic introspection:

"Why am I taking on and prioritizing the POV of a handful of disgustingly rich CEOs of these giant companies - that I'll never own or have any sliver of a stake in whatsoever - and putting them and their views and their interests above those of regular people like me, anyone else I know, and even my favorite anime personalities that I won't shut up about how much I idolize them?

Why am I taking on these positions of favoring the needs and wants of the powerful above those of the powerless as if their needs are inherently positive and as inevitable as the weather, when I myself am powerless, as is everyone else I know and ostensibly care about?

Doesn't me simping unthinkingly and unquestioningly for the greed and gluttony of a handful of wealthy billionaire suits above the needs of average people like myself, and even anime VA's I claim to love and look up to - doesn't that maybe make me kind of an utterly pathetic boot-licking, ass-kissing, dick-sucking sycophant and toady, no better and no different whatsoever than a medieval peasant bowing and scraping and groveling before the monarchy and nobility of ye olden days of yore?"

I'm often reminded in these sorts of discussions of that famous Upton Sinclair quote:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

For all the people mindlessly regurgitating these kinds of armchair CEO, pro-corporate profit platitudes in threads like this, as if they have any kind of a stake in these companies' quarterly profit margins:

You don't even work for these companies in ANY capacity whatsoever. Ergo, your salaries are NOT in any way dependent on you not grasping these simple, basic fundamentals of how real life works. Quite the contrary, as an average working person, it would GREATLY benefit your salary if you DID actually grasp the barebones basics of how power dynamics function in a worker-based society much better.

So what exactly is your excuse for being this fucking dense about how the working world works at this late fucking stage in your life?

You're NOT "secret business partners on the ground floor" with the bosses, and you never, ever will be. The bosses are not your peers and equals, and never will be - not now in the present, and not in some potential future.

The bosses, on average for the most part, generally hate the guts of all their own workers and employees (like you and your friends/family), look down on them/you, think and care only about themselves and their own greed, and are merely looking for the slightest excuse to get rid of all your jobs so that they no longer have to pay you or anyone else you know a salary of any kind ever again so that they can keep that much more of the money for themselves and have fewer people to share it with.

For more context on this dynamic, simply look up the words "greed" and "selfish" in the dictionary. "Drunk with power" is also a good resource.

Welcome to real life. You're not a future, soon-to-be rich power-broker in waiting, and you never will be. You're just another rando loser like the rest of us. So my unsolicited advice is for you to take the boss' collective cocks out of your mouths, nut the fuck up, grow a goddamned spine along with some self-respect and dignity, and start giving half of a shit about the lives of other average working people around you - because you're one of them, your families and friends' are among them, and your interests and fates are all intertwined and connected, and are also all at direct odds against the interests of big business and the corporate higher ups above you.

[JulieYBM]

Everyday, I curse fascists for devaluing the arts by defunding art education in public schools and socially devaluing their worth and the viability of living a life primarily as an artist. AI is just the next permeation of that hellish ideology.

[MasenkoHA]

In the end AI is just a tool to enhance a product. Heck, if AI animation gets better, we could get AI to draw in between frames. I'd rather have that than the choppy animation we saw in Super.

The choppy animation could also be avoided by not having Super’s rushed production schedule. See Kunzait’s point about how you are not a CEO for Bandai/Toei/Fuji Tv/Shueisha.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

Real life will also inevitably require you at times to drop the "I'm above it all and acting as an impartial witness to events disconnected from me" bullshit, realize that some of this shit DOES in fact directly concern and impact you (and/or people you know and ostensibly care about), and actually take a fucking side and a concrete position and point of view. And that whether you fucking like or not, that you have an innate responsibility - as a thinking, active member of society - to actually put some serious thought and careful consideration into your concrete position and which side you ultimately pick.

Although I agree with everything you said in this post, I wanted to comment on this part in particular due to how the idea of being impartial or undecided is being used nowadays. In the past, people would be impartial on issues that weren't important (who sells the best pizza), or issues that were indeed hard to decide on (which of the best schools is the better option). Now however, it is being used out of shame or fear for supporting the clear wrong side. You especially see this in American politics, where it's pretty much used as a way to say you support bad policies or politicians without outright admitting to doing so. There are certain issues that are not various shades of grey, they're clearly black and white, but these people are too ashamed to admit that they support the clearly wrong and immoral option. If you're someone who supports shit like AI, like low wages, like dying if you can't afford medical care, then just say so and move on. Stop pretending to be better than everyone by being this holy being who's above taking sides when we know exactly which side you're on. If someone says they're "undecided" on an issue that will factually and clearly hurt millions of people, then chances are that someone is simply a bad person.

[JulieYBM]

In the end AI is just a tool to enhance a product. Heck, if AI animation gets better, we could get AI to draw in between frames. I'd rather have that than the choppy animation we saw in Super.

The choppy animation could also be avoided by not having Super’s rushed production schedule. See Kunzait’s point about how you are not a CEO for Bandai/Toei/Fuji Tv/Shueisha.

This.

Dragon Ball Super looking bad is not an excuse to use AI, it's proof that you need to give your production staff actual time to create a good project.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

Dragon Ball Super looking bad is not an excuse to use AI, it's proof that you need to give your production staff actual time to create a good project.

Animators and manga artists in Japan have historically been overworked, sometimes to death, so I wouldn't mind AI being used as a tool to take some of the workload off them. My issue with AI in the industry is it being used to outright replace these people, that should never happen.