Voice actors around the globe are mobilizing against the unregulated use of artificial intelligence (AI) to generate and clone human voices that they fear poses a threat to their livelihoods.

“We’re fighting a very big monster,” said Mario Filio, a Mexican artist who has done voiceovers for Hollywood star Will Smith, the Obi-Wan Kenobi character in Star Wars and the party-loving lemur King Julien in the animated movie “Madagascar.”

Campaigning under the slogan “Don’t steal our voices,” more than 20 voice acting guilds, associations and unions from Europe, the United States and Latin America have created the United Voice Artists coalition.

It represents the faceless voiceover artists and narrators of commercials, movies, audiobooks and video games who fear that their voices will be replaced by machines, or even cloned by artificial intelligence without their consent.

Read more: AFP