If AI will render some jobs obsolete, I suppose the first one will be audio book narrators and voice actors.
Just imagine hearing the final novel of ASoIaF narrated by Roy Dotrice and knowing that a royalty went to his family and estate, or if David Attenborough willed the digital likeness of his voice and its performance to the BBC for use in nature documentaries after his death.
The advent of recorded audio didn't put artists out of business, it expanded the industries that relied on them by allowing more of them to work. Film and tape didn't put artists out of business, it expanded the industries that relied on them by allowing more of them to work. Audio digitization and the internet didn't put artists out of business; it expanded the industries that relied on them by allowing more of them to work.
And TTS won't put artists out of business, but it will create yet another new market with another niche that people will have to figure out how to monetize, even though 98% of the revenues will still somehow end up with the distributors.
Sure, celebrities and other well-known figures will have more to gain here as they can license out their voice; but the majority of voice actors won't be able to capitalize on this. So this is actually even more perverse because it again creates a system where all assets will accumulate at the top and there won't be any distributions for everyone else.
I listed just one possible use, but I also see voice cloning and advanced TTS expanding access for evocative instruction, as an aid to study style and expand range.
Don't be afraid on their behalf. The dooming you're talking about applied to every one of the technological changes I already listed, and we employ more performers and artists today than ever in history.
When animation went digital, we graduated more storyboard artists and digital animators. When music notation software and sampling could replace musicians and orchestras, we graduated more musicians and composers trained on those tools. Now it's the performing arts, and no one in industry is going to shrink their pool of available talent (or risk ire) by daring conflate authenticity and performance with virtual impersonation. Performance capture and vfx also didn't kill or consolidate the movie industry - it allowed it to expand.
Art evolves, and so does its business. People who love art want to see people who do art succeed. I'm optimistic.
Do you think it will replace actors or that it might just reduce the burden on existing talent, like canned audio has done for decades? Will it make ADR easier or cheaper? Will it actually save anyone any money who wants to ever be able to hire a living actor again?
There are a lot of clever sounding, low probability arguments here, and I think a lot of people don't understand the work well enough to identify what are and aren't the elephants.
What you explained is that tech has changed the tools used by artists.
It's substantially different with AI-based TTS, though. It's not a tool for artists, but it's a tool for movie/game/book publishers to replace human voice actors. The AI will be much much more scalable and cheaper.
It's rare that you need a talent like Dan Castellaneta, Mel Blanc, etc.
Secondly, yes, VA licensing will become a thing – but that means that jobs that would previously be available to other lesser known voice actors, because the major players simply didn't have enough time to take those gigs, can no longer take them. A TTSVA can do unlimited recordings.
Thirdly, major studios that would require hundreds of voices for video games and other things don't have to license known voices at all, they can just create generate brand new ones and pay zero licensing fees.