Kareena Kapoor’s hot and oh-so-fashionable Poo from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham was embraced by audiences at once, but as other movies of the actor came out, people noticed a detail—her voice had changed. It is an open secret that many actors borrow dubbing voices to either plug holes during production, or sound more appealing. But 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 OpenAI’s latest chatbot voice sounded “eerily similar” to hers. ADVERTISEMENT Johansson has requested OpenAI to reveal how and from where they extracted the voice; Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, responded saying they won’t reveal the identity of the voice actor. Who doesn’t recognise the voice that says, “Big Boss chahte hai ki.
..” 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 2018. “The contract was ambiguous,” he said. “I sent them a notice asking if they intend to use my voice for AI.
They said they don’t and will not in the future, and the matter ended there.” Even though the company has assured Singh, and he now has a written document saying so, there is no way for him to.
