The rise of AI text, art, and voice creators has continued to raise alarm bells across various industries. Now, anime voice actors in Japan are also expressing their concern about AI potentially replacing them.
Recently, representatives from a Japanese artists association expressed their future concerns about AI replacing artists in various industries, including anime, films, television, and more.
These concerns come as more companies have begun experimenting with AI content-generation services in the country.
Anime Industry’s Experiments With AI Art and Writing
While AI content generation isn’t new, the field has seen a massive increase in growth over the last few months.
Earlier in 2022, the AI art generator DALL·E 2 by OpenAI as well as other related services have seen an uptick in usage and interest.
Since then, AI technology has been a constant talking point online, especially in the artistic field due to concerns about AI replacing artist jobs, as well as AI plagiarizing existing works.
Despite these issues, anime studios and production companies have begun experimenting with AI art.
For instance, Netflix recently released a short anime video that was made using AI.
The entire video isn’t made by AI though. Instead, Wit Studio (of Ranking of Kings and Spy x Family fame) animated the short but used AI art generation to help with the backgrounds.
This has caused some negative reactions from anime fans given the concerns about taking away work from artists.
On a more humorous note, One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda recently experimented with AI when he used a text generator to brainstorm ideas for a manga chapter.
RELATED: Studio Ghibli Creator Hayao Miyazaki Calls AI Art ‘An Insult to Life Itself’
Japanese Artist Association Expresses Concerns of AI Replacing Anime Voice Actors
Aside from art and text, AI voice generators have become a major cause for concern, especially due to their potential to disrupt the voice actor job market.
In response to this, Arts Workers Japan, which represents freelance VAs and musicians, held a press conference to discuss their concerns about AI.
The organization also sent a letter to Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs along with other agencies to call for more laws to help protect the rights of voice actors and other talents.
While AI might not be at the stage where it can replace voice actors, the technology is progressing at a rapid enough rate that makes it a major concern.
After all, AI voice generation has already been used to recreate the voice of a deceased voice actor for an audiobook.
If no laws are passed to protect VAs, there’s a danger that some voice actors in anime may lose their jobs.
Get the latest anime news and info by following us on Twitter @epicstreamanime.
READ NEXT: Should You Worry About AI Images?
Source: Crunchyroll
Explore new topics and discover content that's right for you!