A Voice Talent Agency Shut Down. Its Owner Says AI Bears Blame

A voiceover talent agency with a years-long history of political work has closed its doors. Its owner says that artificial intelligence is partially to blame.

Lisa Ristau told Campaigns & Elections that she made the decision to shutter Impressive Talent in December amid mounting challenges for the business. Pay rates for voiceover and on-camera talent have been steadily decreasing, she said, and “severely delayed” payments from vendors also strained the company.

There’s also the increasing presence of AI in the creative world. Ristau said that she saw more and more clients shifting to AI voiceovers, especially for ad demos. Ad makers typically hire human talent to voice rough cuts of ads before finalizing the product. In some cases, the actors that voice the demos are hired to voice the final ad. 

But Ristau said that kind of work has begun to taper off as ad makers and casting directors turn to AI voices. 

“With AI — I’m just one person, of course, but I feel that it is a threat to this business,” Ristau said. “Frequently, clients are shifting to AI for whatever their needs are. I don’t know what effects AI will have in the long run, but I also don’t agree with those saying everything’s okay and it’s going to be the best year yet.”

Ristau isn’t alone in her concern about the rise of AI in creative industries. Talent agents and voiceover actors who spoke to C&E last year expressed similar fears that the emerging technology could eat into their work, at least eventually. 

Services like ElevenLabs and Speechify can effectively clone a person’s voice with only a few seconds of sample audio, and there are few safeguards in place to prevent a voice from being replicated without the original speaker’s knowledge.

At the same time, the Trump administration has moved to undercut some state-level regulations on the AI industry, heightening concerns that the technology could advance, largely unchecked, while costing jobs across various industries. 

Ristau, who launched Impressive Talent in 2017, acknowledged that there were other pressures that drove her to close her agency. For example, a lot of productions are moving abroad, she said, allowing brands and ad makers to pay cheaper rates. 

Still, AI is “a big factor,” she said. 

“I want my talent to succeed,” Ristau said. “But AI is a free for all right now, and I don’t know where things are going to end up.”