You may not know the name of Hank Azaria, but you know his voice. He is a very underrated actor, who is probably best known for his voices on The Simpsons: Moe Szyslak, Police Chief Wiggum, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Professor Frink, Snake, Comic Book Guy. In fact, he’s done about 100 different voices in The Simpsons.
Being an icon as is Azaria, he was recently asked about A.I. He put some of his famous voices into A.I. to see if they could replicate them. Here is a video.
It’s scary, isn’t it? But as Azaria says, it’s far from perfect. When he performs his voice, he changes his face, body and entire personality, which is something A.I. cannot do. It’s just a pale imitation.
A.I. reads what it is given, but there is no emotion there. Azaria does say though:
“There’s a humanness that the A.I. can’t do right now.”
It can’t do it at the moment, but these things change and evolve. It seems like every company on the planet is putting a lot into A.I. even window cleaners probably. That video showed it reading a script, in his voice. How long will it be before they can add emotional responses?
Good or Bad?
This means that when someone like Azria dies, they could carry on making The Simpsons without him. This isn’t a good thing, as we know, Hollywood will flog a dead horse for years.
Does it mean that jobs, like acting, will be a thing of the past at some point? Making it in Hollywood is very hard work, especially since Harvey Weinstein is now in jail. For a new actor trying to make it big, there must be a thousand, maybe ten thousand, trying to do the same thing.
Now A.I. is here and it seems it can replicate voices, a lot cheaper than paying an actor. It is scary out there, and trying to get a break, is getting harder and harder.
Do you think that actors, like Azaria will soon be out of a job? Or is this just a storm in a teacup?