The Simpsons is sometimes an insightful satire about the absurdities of family life and the media landscape in modern America, sometimes a slapstick comedy about Homer putting his body through hell for his latest feat of stupidity, but whatever it is on any given week, the show is always anchored by its voices. Other than Dan Castellaneta, no other person has spoken life into as many characters as Hank Azaria. Recently, the man who has voiced more than 150 Simpsons characters wrote an op-ed in The New York Times explaining his fear and sorrow at the prospect of artificial intelligence potentially recreating the voices he’s spent decades developing.
Titled “Can Characters Come Alive Without People?” the piece by Azaria—known for voicing memorable Simpsons characters like Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, and Apu Nahasapeemapetilon—lays out a possible future in which human voice actors would be replaced by artificial intelligence trained to replicate those iconic characters’ voices. He explains a sick irony in the fact that his decades of Simpsons voice acting that has been enjoyed by billions of people over the show’s illustrious 36-year run could essentially help train A.I. to replace him.
“I imagine that soon enough, artificial intelligence will be able to recreate the sounds of the more than 100 voices I created for characters on The Simpsons over almost four decades,” he writes. “It makes me sad to think about it. Not to mention, it seems just plain wrong to steal my likeness or sound—or anyone else’s.”
He does suggest there are aspects of voice acting that A.I. could possibly make easier. “When I know that a certain line needs a laugh, but I’m not sure how to get one, I’ll try different things. I’ll make a list of eight or nine ways to try it,” he wrote. “The A.I. model may not know what’s funny or what timing is, but it could do a million different takes. And it could be told to do them as I would — and it might be pretty convincing.”
Even with that slight concession to A.I.’s benefits, he uses his lengthy op-ed to shine light on how nuanced voice acting is, and how it won’t be easy to replicate without humans. To him, voice acting is more than simply reading lines, it’s a marriage of someone’s voice and their acting abilities. Crying real tears to give life to a character’s sobs; running in place while recording lines for a character who’s running; stuffing a lighter in his mouth to convey the sound of a cigar-chomping character; these are all actions Azaria has implemented to make the characters we love appeal to us on a human level.
“I’d like to think that no matter how much an A.I. version of Moe or Snake or Chief Wiggum will sound like my voice, something will still be missing—the humanness. There’s so much of who I am that goes into creating a voice. How can the computer conjure all that?”
The existential threat A.I. poses to actors is why certain regulations were put in place in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) signed after the writers and actors’ strike of 2023, making actors’ consent a necessity before digital replicas of their voice and likeness are created. Even with these safeguards, however, loopholes still exist where an A.I. model can be trained by using an actor’s performance under certain contractual clauses.
Azaria’s concern is real, and his fears could be the reality of what we hear and see on our TV screens in the future. I’m sure The Simpsons episode satirizing it all will be amazing.
