Yeah, it just seems like the deal was announced that there is a mechanism for voice actors to sign away the rights to AI imitation. The story seems to be that so many of the union members had no part or consultation in the negotiations.

Many voice actors object to the ability to sign away the rights to your own voice at all, because studios will insist on hiring only voice actors who are willing to do so. AI replication of voices will pretty much eliminate the need to ever pay another voice actor forever. You could probably count on one hand the number of voice actors with the power to negotiate that out of a contract on their own.

It’s sort of like a union saying that there’s a way for companies to hire members who will work more than 18 hours a day. You think, “well they can just say ‘no’ if they don’t want to.” But then the company will only hire people willing to work those longer hours, and it becomes the default. Great applicants will have to give something up to negotiate it out of their contracts. That’s the sort of abusive bargaining positions that union negotiations exist to prevent.

I could be wrong, though. There could be some detail or rate that they negotiated that everyone is unhappy with.