The Association of German Voice Actors (VDS) has asked the Federal Cartel Office to look at Netflix's dubbing contracts, heise reported on 3 September. It wants to know whether Netflix abuses its market power by making actors sign an Assignment of Rights agreement that covers AI training, digital editing and synthetic voices. The VDS also backs a data-protection complaint in Berlin by several actors, among them Matti Klemm, Jason Momoa's German voice.
VDS chair Anna-Sophia Lumpe says many actors sign only for economic reasons and may be training systems that replace them. Klemm argues consent is hardly voluntary when work depends on it, and that it is unclear what Netflix does with the recordings, older ones made before AI training was discussed. According to the association, some productions already use AI voices in place of actors.
The dispute has run since early this year: some actors signed, others refused and have not been hired since, and several Netflix originals came out without a German dub. The actors' union BFFS negotiated the AI terms now in the agreement and still backs working with Netflix, which the VDS says has not opened the dialogue it promised at the start of the year.
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