Famous voice actor: "AI is our greatest enemy; with just one line from me, it can dub an entire film"
Legendary voice actor Héctor Cantolla sat down with us at Celsius 232 to talk about his career, share some anecdotes, and discuss his current role, and he didn't mince his words...
Rarely have we felt so excited - and perhaps even a little daunted - during an interview as we did during the one we recently had at the Celsius 232 Festival in Avilés (Asturias, Spain) with Héctor Cantolla. He may not be very well known outside Spain and the Spanish-speaking world, but Cantolla has been one of the leading voices in Spanish film and television dubbing for over 60 years. He has been (and still is, as he remains active at the age of 80) the voice of, amongst others, Charles Bronson, Marlon Brando, Clint Eastwood, and Alan Rickman, to name but a few of his roles. The fact is that with every register, every note, it is as if you were transported to a cinema or to your sofa at home.
Regardless of the fact that his work has focused on Spanish cinema and television, his global knowledge of the sector and the history of the industry he has been part of since the 1960s lends his words a much more serious tone, which is precisely the one he uses to assess the world of cinema today and that of voice acting. We discussed all this in an interview in Spanish, which you can find with subtitles below.
Of course, amidst so many anecdotes and reflections, we couldn't help but ask him about the major issue currently affecting his profession: how he views the role of AI and how he coexists with it. His response came as forcefully as a hammer blow on the table:
"Artificial intelligence is our greatest enemy. With just one sentence from me - just one sentence - an entire film can be dubbed."
"With a single line. That's artificial intelligence. So, it's our greatest enemy. Our biggest concern right now is an enemy we must defeat. Because now, for example, every time we dub a film, we have to sign a document stipulating that our voices are exclusively for the medium we're working on, which is that film. And you can't take lines out of it and use them for other media, such as, for example, artificial intelligence.
"They take a line of mine from there and another film comes along, and with just one line they've dubbed the whole film. Therefore, our greatest enemy to be defeated is artificial intelligence. I mean, it could leave us out on the street."
In the interview, Cantolla also talks about the unusual situation facing the film industry due to licensing issues, the devaluation of his profession in dubbing, and shares some truly interesting anecdotes about the end of Franco's dictatorship and his work during the era of censorship.