Thomas Burt was halfway through a voiceover contract when he was told his voice had been cloned and he would no longer be needed for the job.
The Sydney-based voiceover actor was working full-time in the industry for more than a decade before his work dried up so drastically he had to make a complete career pivot.
โAI has completely pushed me out of the industry,โ he says. โI still do [voiceover work] on the side these days, but itโs hard to trust people.โ
At his peak, Burt, who has been in the voiceover industry for 15 years, says he was bringing in six figures a year. โI never thought Iโd get to that point as an artist or actor, so I was crazy-proud,โ he says. โNow I sell storage to pay my rent.โ
While Burt says people have been talking about the threat of AI for at least the past four years, he says it wasnโt until 2024 that things started declining rapidly.
โThat was when I started seeing more and more AI training jobs out there,โ he says. โThey were getting voice actors to participate in their own demise.โ
That was the year Burt felt the impact personally for the first time.
โThe real visceral moment, that kick in the pants, was my voice being cloned,โ he says. โA previous client took recordings that we completed together, cancelled the contract and fed those recordings into an AI model.โ
The same year, Burt lost 40 per cent of his annual turnover. Now, he says it is down 90 per cent.
โIt was a really dramatic decline, and itโs only gotten worse from there,โ he says. โMy mental health took a massive hit, and itโs been a really slow process rebuilding my life.โ
Workers in the arts, including Burt, are among the first to have their jobs upended by AI as people increasingly use it to complete jobs that were once done manually, wiping out swathes of work.
Itโs not the only industry likely to be affected, and questions are being raised about the ethics and legality of using peopleโs work to feed into AI algorithms โ or even getting them to effectively train their own replacement.
Companies such as Mindrift, CrowdGen and Outlier offer roles in which people can help train and improve AI.
But there are also more sinister cases where employers are getting workers to use AI without them knowing they are about to be replaced by AI, according to Australian Council of Trade Unions national secretary Sally McManus.
โWe had a few instances last year with the banks where workers trained up chatbots that then replaced them,โ she says.
The countryโs biggest bank, CBA, last year backtracked on its decision to axe 45 roles, apologising after finding the customer service roles it had initially planned to cut were not redundant after it introduced an AI-powered โvoice-botโ.
McManus, who used to be a sceptic about AIโs impact on the workforce, says it is now front of mind, with these sorts of practices becoming more widespread, especially in areas such as law where junior and administrative roles are being replaced by AI.
โI donโt think weโre talking about 10 yearsโ time,โ she says. โWeโre talking about a couple of years time before thereโs quite significant impacts on knowledge workers.โ
AI is already causing some companies to hit pause on recruitment. Tech giant Atlassian has quietly frozen hiring for swathes of engineering and related roles as the $31 billion software firm weathers a brutal tech sell-off and investor jitters over artificial intelligence. The slowdown began in early February, with some candidates in final interview stages reportedly iced out. Internally, the message is that this is a โtemporaryโ reset to focus on critical roles โ think AI, customer-facing sales and graduates โ rather than a permanent retreat from headcount growth.
Publicly, Atlassian insists the move is not about replacing humans with algorithms, even as its own AI features become central to the product pitch and analysts warn that AI could shrink the very pool of software developers who use its tools.
Telstra, meanwhile, is in the midst of a sweeping AI-first overhaul that will cut up to 650 roles, with hundreds of jobs offshored to India as part of a $700 million AI and data partnership and broader Connected Future 30 strategy. Telstra says roles are being โrestructuredโ and not directly โreplacedโ by AI, but its own guidance concedes the telco expects to have a smaller workforce by 2030 as automation kicks in.
Last year, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman told a Federal Reserve review that โentire classesโ of jobs would disappear. Pressed about what these jobs could be, Altman said customer support staff were an example of a role that would be โtotally, totally goneโ.
Dario Amodei, chief executive of another AI firm, Anthropic, told Axios last year that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, with unemployment skyrocketing to 10 or 20 per cent.
Westpac chief economist Luci Ellis wrote last year that concerns about AI causing mass employment were overblown, but that the impact would cary depending on occupation and experience level.
โClerical and administrative work will be more susceptible to AI automation โ caring occupations and trades, less so,โ she said. โHistory shows that new technologies reduce the share of employment in the affected industries, but economy-wide production and employment rise.โ
While there is no overarching national law covering AI in the workplace in Australia, many employees in Australia are covered by awards or enterprise agreements that mandate consultations when major changes, such as the introduction of new technology, are likely to have a significant impact on employees.
McManus says she has her eyes on employers who are being secretive with their use of AI and that the unions will be chasing them down through the courts and industrially.
โWe are putting corporate Australia on notice,โ she says. โWeโre going to start ramping up pressure on employers across Australia on their legal obligation to consult workers when they introduce AI, not when they decide theyโre going to sack people.โ
Burt, who describes his own experience as an โincredible violationโ, says that while he wasnโt prepared for his particular circumstances, it was an issue that required broader change.
โMy contract was written before any of the technology existed, and quite frankly, I didnโt think we would have to cover ourselves with an incredibly strict contract,โ he says. โWe need to see more transparency in data systems about where people are getting [their inputs] from.โ
For now, Burt is resigned to continue working outside of voice acting to make ends meet. โI donโt think the industry will exist in any meaningful way in 10 years,โ he says.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.
Millie Muroi is the economics writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was formerly an economics correspondent based in Canberraโs Press Gallery and the banking writer based in Sydney.Connect via X or email.
David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.
