Why Every American is Invited to African American Projects

This has been a question Voice123 has dealt with quite often...We should shed some light on the various reasons.

There are two sets of reasons.

One 'technical', the other 'ethical'.

The SmartCast filtering by no means is always 100% perfect, nor has it ever claimed to be.

That said, for African American projects, draw many complaints from talents who find themselves invited to them.

The main 'technical' reason is the simple word 'American'. Here is more:

*If you are American, you are an American.

*There are many African American talents on Voice123. There is a different sound they can produce that Caucasian talents sometimes cannot.

*However at the same time, African American talents do have the ability to always sound Caucasian, and vice versa.
(Just ask our QA Manager's wife. She is African American, but you probably could not tell if you heard her voice.)

*That said, you cannot single out an American voice and call it 'African' because calling or asking for an 'African' takes on an entirely different meaning for voices from North, South, West, or East Africa.

Ethically speaking...
*To filter African American talents out of all projects not labeled for their specific voice is completely unfair if you are an African American that can do Caucasian voices. The spots that require an 'African American' voice do not come around very much, so to then force talents to only be allowed to submit one voice or the other, I don't think I need to tell you, is segregation and discrimination...more so in voice overs because it is a 'faceless' industry.

Want better filtering, tell the system, dont wait for it...
*This type of thing can be cleared up with something used in the accent field. You fill out your profile as you would any internet form when you are claiming you can do something. Whether or not you can is the responsibility of the user.

As it is with all artificial intelligence there is going to be some things that simply cannot be covered. Being that, out of the 3500 talents auditioning on Voice123, 2900 of them are North American, we have the accent field to describe your nationality or accent.

If you ever find yourself invited to something completely wrong for you, and it will happen, the greatest filter in the world is your power of choice.

---

---