Seems like people outside our little bubble have been talking more and more about vocal synthesis technology lately, and it's generally not very positive. Between that whole nonsense with Troy Baker and "voice NFT's" last week or so, and now apparently some Star Wars show using a neural network to synthesize a young Mark Hamill's voice, there appears to be a growing fear among the general media-consuming public that voice actors are at increasing risk of being replaced by these automated systems. I'm currently reading the replies to a Twitter thread about the Mark Hamill situation, and I keep seeing terms like "dystopian", "bone-chilling", "nightmarish", "bleak", "horrifying", etc. Several are even outright saying that the underlying technology is wholly terrible in and of itself and shouldn't exist, which I'm sure most here would disagree with, myself included. But I do think there are legitimate ethical concerns about the potential uses for this kind of software. VOCALOID et al. come with end user agreements for a reason.
I'm generally of the opinion that technology itself is morally neutral*. It's the things that people/corporations do with that technology that can be good or bad. It's just a tool. An easy example is nuclear power: One the one hand, it can be used as an incredibly clean, safe, and efficient source of electricity. On the other hand, it can be used to create some of the most devastating weapons humanity has ever conceived. It's not the technology itself that I think people should be fearful or distrustful of, rather we should be concerned about what people, particularly those with power, do with it. And really, that has much less to do with any given tech itself than with the wider societal systems that we live in. Specifically, ones that value profit and growth over literally anything else, and are willing to screw over as many people they need to do so. And given that context, I completely understand and empathize with the immediate gut reaction many are having to the idea of Disney and other giant corporations using computers to recreate their most beloved and iconic characters in a way they find uncanny. I just wish people would direct their anger where it really belongs: at the rich assholes using every tool available to get as much money as they can while sharing as little of it with the rest of us as possible. Not at a computer.
*There are exceptions to my rule, like uh, electric chairs... or blockchain :B