The Last Human Voice Podcast

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. It's a simple question. Or is it? Is the Voice industry on the verge of collapse for its human creators or is just evolving into something new? Are jobs being lost or created? Are agencies declining or blossoming? Mathilde poses the question for Marcus and Annette to mull over. Are we heading for a VO Garden of Eden... or on our way...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. This time, we revisit cloning from a fresh - and positive - angle. Elinor Hamilton and her husband, Phil Sayer, lived and worked side by side as a VO team. When Phil died in 2016, Elinor had to navigate maintaining the business they had built as a couple, bringing up their two boys and processing her own grief... all with Phil's voic...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Our very own Dr Mathilde Pavis, along with colleague (and former LHV guest) Dr Dominic Lees, has written a policy report. Their report is titled AI Human Avatars: Opportunities and Risks for UK Businesses and Services. The report was launched in Westminster, at an event hosted by Mark Seward MP, in a committee room full of politicians, ci...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. The all-singing, all-dancing, Tilly Norwood has been back in the spotlight, this time as a would-be pop princess. Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA negotiations with the US producers' alliance have been rumbling on. The connection between the two? Synthetic performance. In the previous deal, SAG secured reasonable protection on replicas but nothi...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. We turn our attention this time to ElevenLabs, which is storming ahead of the competition as a platform for AI content creation and, in particular, voice generation. Eleven Labs has been keen to define itself as working ethically with the people whose voices are the foundation of their entire model. Those consenting humans are, they insis...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. We talk a lot about licensing our own data for AI training, often in the context of actors and performers. In this episode, we explore what that can look like for authors. Our guest is Julie Trelstad, Head of US Publishing at Amlet AI, a marketplace where publishers can control how their work is used for AI data training. She also has her...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Imagine your digital self being stripped down and sold for parts. Far from science fiction, this is now an everyday fact for many performers.  For Voice Artists, it means being asked to "sell" their voices as digital skins to be laid over another's performance.  What's the appeal for brands and advertisers? What are th...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Did people with ears hear it before it went out? That's the Question of the Week, as we consider Amazon's release of some much-loved animé titles, badly dubbed with AI-generated voices. Amazon withdrew them, but that doesn't mean the end of AI dubbing.  So,is it possible to make AI dubbing work for performers? What do the u...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. We like to open a season with a bit of industrial action and this season is no exception. At the time of recording, Equity UK was awaiting the results of an indicative ballot on strike action. Would performers be prepared to refuse to be scanned on set? The outcome on 18th December 2025 was a landslide. Turnout was high (over 75%) with a...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. We bring Season 2 to a close with some reflections on the long-running soap opera that is our collective relationship with AI. Each of us chooses what we consider to be a Win in the saga so far, as well as one Fail and one Prediction. In the best soap opera tradition we have heroes and villains, school bullies, an evil twin, a dream seque...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. A brand new Government report has landed.  Same old, same old? We think not! The Report into British Film and High-End Television has been published by UK House of Commons' Culture, Media and Sport Committee. At more then 100 pages, it's not a quick read, so we've gone in first for you. We focus in on what it says about IP...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. The third international AI Summit has graced the Grand Palais in Paris.  Mathilde was the recipient of a golden ticket and can therefore spill the beans on what actually happens at these global summits. What was it like to be an invited guest, milling about with tech bros and world leaders? What - if anything - do summits like these achie...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Late in 2024, the UK government launched a Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence.  The questions - all 47 of them - asked a range of questions, including whether UK Law should allow free access to protected content for AI training.  It also made it clear that it had a preferred option. What it probably hadn't anticipa...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. In Season 1,  we delved into what happens to our digital remains once our mortal bodies are well and truly shuffled off.  This time, we take a different posthumous angle with heritage researchers Dr Jenny Kidd and Dr Eva Nieto MacAvoy from the University of Cardiff.  Museum professionals and curators care deeply about authenticity, truth,...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Another year, another strike. On our very first episode, back in 2023, we covered the actors’ union strike in the US. We return to the topic as SAG AFTRA is leading what may become the longest strike in the history of the union. To give it its full name - The Interactive Media (Video Game) Strike. The main sticking point? Yep - AI. Tim Fr...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. The use of AI to enhance actors' accents in the film The Brutalist  has made headlines and drawn considerable negatve backlash. Away from sensationalist takes and knee-jerk reactions, the response may be less about the use of AI and more about the transparency of where and how it is used.  Sociologist Dr Jenn Chubb and Law Professor...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Ah, the excitement of Tax Return season! In this episode, we double down on the joys of Tax. Specifically, we're talking about tax relief in film productions. Why? Because, in a departure from the previous government, Labour recently introduced new rules that mean AI-related costs are subject to tax relief. Sam Radclyffe is an Entert...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Between 2020 and 2024, the UK has had four Prime Ministers and a long running  game of Musical Chairs in the relevant government departments. What we still don't have is a unified, coherent policy on AI and Artists' Rights.  In this episode, our guest is Nicola Solomon, a solicitor, consultant on policy and law in the creative i...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Dr Mathilde Pavis has questions. A lot of questions. Which she likes to spring on her unsuspecting co-hosts.  In the previous episode, Patrick Messe from United Voice Artists talked about the difficulty of engaging policymakers and regulators on Artists' Rights, when there are wars happening and governments collapsing. It's a fa...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. One of our previous guests, Patrick Messe, of United Voice Artists returns for a crossover episode between The Last Human Voice and Mic Rider Deep Talk, Patrick's own podcast. We talk about the Brussels Effect, kicking off our chat in Germany, which allows us to do some Compare and Contrast. What impact has the EU AI Act had since it...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Mathilde hijacks this episode with a question directed at co-hosts, Marcus and Annette. No warning. No prepping. They hesitate, they prevaricate, they talk about moving to Alaska. But do they answer the question? You'll have to listen to find out.

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Most discussions about AI start with topic of "data mining".  But how many of us are clear about what it is and how it works? And how can we be expected to care about something if we don't understand what it is? Even leaders, decision makers, artists, creatives - all of us - need a safe space to go and learn about it withou...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. In the first episode of Season 2, we look at the role of AI in Journalism.  Are journalists facing a vicious cycle of generating click bait to drive revenue to keep media companies afloat to pay journalists to generate more click bait? Is AI making it worse - or might it offer a more positive future for journalism? Our guest, Pete Pachal...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Copyright Law is in our sights as we reach our Season 1 finale.    Dr Andres Guadamuz is a Reader in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Sussex and the Editor in Chief of the Journal of World Intellectual Property. He is also the brain and pen behind the online publication ‘TechnoLlama’. He joins us to answer some of our many q...

Get in touch to submit a question or send us your feedback. Let's talk about death.  Have you considered how you want your digital remains (yes, that's the correct term) to be treated after you're gone? Photos on Facebook, TikTok videos, LinkedIn profiles, demos, self-tapes, emails sent and received; everything you have ever uploaded or shared, whether personally or professionally,...