Indiana Jones and the Ancient Circle may not have an Italian dubbing, the work would be stopped

According to what was reported on Reddit by Outside_Flower_5946, a user who claims to be a professional voice actor, the work on the dubbing of Indiana Jones and the Ancient Circle in various European languages, including Italian, would be stopped because many interpreters would have refused to sign the contract proposed by ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda, which includes the granting voice actors’ rights to generate voice lines via AIeven in future unrelated projects.

According to the user, as a result, “the dubbing work for Indiana Jones and the Ancient Circle in Germany, Spain, Italy and France they are at a standstill” and if the problem is not solved quickly “the game might come out with subtitles” and English dubbing.

The alleged clauses proposed by ZeniMax

The user in question attached to their statements a screenshot of part of the alleged contract proposed by ZeniMax Studios to potential Indiana Jones and the Ancient Circle voice actors, which states “Performer agrees that Publisher has the right and permission to use new lines of dialogue (i.e. not previously performed by Performer) for the Product that are generated through artificial intelligence technology which has been specifically trained with the materials (“AI Dialogue”).

Also from the contract extract, we learn that the hired voice actor will receive different compensations based on the use of the AI. For “a fair amount of AI performances” it speaks of compensations equivalent to hourly performances or based on recorded voice lines; for “unlimited use of AI performances” or for “additional productions”, instead, it speaks of a “payment of a reasonable compensation negotiated” in advance.

“Basically, they are asking me and all the actors involved how much we would like to be paid to have full rights to clone and use our voices without asking permission anymorewith no control over what the voices will say and how the lines will be delivered. We are more than our voices, we are actors. They are trying to take our jobs, emotional jobs, and make the machine do it. If we sell our voices now, tomorrow we will be unemployed.”

Since we cannot verify the veracity of the source and the information shared, for now we invite you to take this information with a pinch of salt, awaiting official communications on the matter from Microsoft and ZeniMax.

In the past we have seen a trailer for Indiana Jones and the Ancient Circle dubbed in Italian, but this does not mean that the dubbing in our language is already ready and complete for each character. In any case, it is not difficult to believe that it is all true: after all, SAG-AFTRA, the union of voice actors, has started a new strike a few days ago precisely because of concerns regarding the use of AI in this work environment.