Aoni Production, a famous voice acting company, has just announced that they’ve entered into a partnership with CoeFont Co. to develop a global strategy using AI voice technology.
Details Around The AI Partnership
According to both companies, the AI voice technology will be used first to translate original voice data belonging to the voice actors of Aoni Productions into multiple languages. So far, the cited languages are English and Chinese. Some of the ways this technology will be implemented will be to provide high-quality AI voice for voice assistant software (Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant) and voice navigation equipment such as medical devices. The aim of this is to democratize the use of voice recognition technology with familiar voices.
Is This The Future Of Voice Acting?
They acknowledge that there have been cases in Japan and overseas where AI has been illegally trained and have emphasized the need for rules to be in place. However Aoni Productions stresses that this is the first step to “enhance voice potential” while protecting their rights. For this reason, they will not be using the technology for acting roles such as anime or foreign language movie dubs. The initial collaboration will feature just 10 voice actors of which the full roster has yet to be announced. The only names we’ve seen so far are Masako Nozawa and Banjo Ginga. The former is best known for being the voice of Goku in Dragon Ball and Kitaro in GeGeGe no Kitaro. While the latter has voiced roles in Mobile Suit Gundam and Fist of the North Star.
A sample video has already been made with the AI voice technology imitating Masako Nozawa’s voice in English and Chinese. Will this collaboration create more efficiencies within the industry and more opportunities for other businesses to leverage the power of voice acting? Or will this be a huge detriment to voice acting careers? Only time will tell.
