I don’t want to call them hypocrite because they are in that special position to protect not only theirs but all their fellow VA’s jobs. now before you “rage” let us exam the logic:

• if someone steal [your wage making tool], they should be locked up forever.

Now, we all know how that happens when machines and assembly lines over take the world. The computer technology and recent AI advancement spring up a “mix up” art trend that are open to the public unlike anything before. Just like the “mix” in music, before it was popular and get recognized, people slam the artists as they didn’t “create” any of the original clips they mixed in. And it took the music creators to recognize the talents they shown, and the fans that voiced out. It does not have to be just one version, it can be mixed to different flavor. Same thing for AI art like mid journey/stable diffusion, or maybe in the future for music, video, etc. They are developing and thus under going that “soulless” period, but eventually with enough dedication it will all come through. Just look at the CGIs 20+ years ago compare to today’s, they replaced/displaced a lot of union works.(miniture sets, stop motion artists, costume designers, animatronics designer/operator, the list goes on.) And yet every thing you see is like hundreds of people putting their works together.

The same will be happening to VA, I didn’t mean AI reading the scripts, but essentially, a voice altering tool that you can have an actor that can’t go low enough to do darth vader or a guy trying to act for pikachu but no way to have cute voice(despite his soul is 95% pikachu), it will enable them to do good jobs deliver VA and open to “consumer level” as well should the tool become more mature. Then you can do all kinds of voice range, pro will still have their advantage as they can nail the emotion with years of experience.

I mean there was already tons of youtube artists that “cover” songs, instruments, or even doing the impressions to the artist/actors/VAs they loved. AI tool is just going to open up that more so if you have some accent, the tool can fix for you.