SAG-AFTRA announced it is teaming with online talent marketplace Narrativ to provide the guild’s 160,000 members with the option of working with the New York-based AI startup to license their voice replicas for use in digital audio advertising. The deal would make it easy for voice actors to be considered for replicant work and get compensated, according to SAG-AFTRA, which emphasizes that performers will control the particulars, including whether to make their voices available, brand approval and fees. Narrativ also represents visual likenesses, but the SAG-AFTRA announcement is limited to voice work.

Narrativ has agreed to “informed consent and compensation requirements, along with other crucial AI guardrails,” the union announced in a news release that describes the tech agency as “an online marketplace where brands can create audio ads using artificial intelligence.”

Narrativ is “a marketplace for talent and their agents to license, manage and protect their audio likeness while giving advertisers the ability to easily purchase that likeness for ad creation for podcast platforms, music services and similar platforms.”

The model also enables talent to better control “their AI likeness and passively generate income.”

“Because Narrativ generates audio and video ads from text, advertisers can generate ad reads ad infinitum,” the company explains, adding that advertisers can “experiment with audio and video” to determine what message triggers “the highest ROI for a particular audience.”

The AI aspect is meant to be more of a convenience than an appropriation. Rather than asking “Can you hit it with a bit more angst,” the director or technician will simply adjust the prompt. And SAG-AFTRA has ensured that the fees, which can be negotiated on a project-by-project basis, cannot be lower than the negotiated minimum for commercial contracts.

The collaboration was approved by members of “both the SAG-AFTRA Commercials Contracts Standing Committee and the National Executive Committee,” and sets “a new standard for the ethical use of AI-generated voice replicas in digital advertising,” the group says.

“Every ad created via the Narrativ platform will generate a pension and health contribution for the performer or performers,” writes Variety.

“Not all members will be interested in taking advantage of the opportunities that licensing their digital voice replicas might offer, and that’s understandable,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator. “But for those who do, you now have a safe option.”

“Earlier this year, SAG-AFTRA struck a similar deal with AI voiceover company Replica Studios that set out terms for use of AI in video games” and also helped record labels including Warner, Sony, Universal and Disney come up with tentative contract terms protecting musicians from AI technology, Silicon Republic reports.