India, Dec. 6 -- Who gave Dobby his squeaky charm, Yoda his gravelly wisdom, or Joker his quiet menace when they spoke to Indian audiences? Vinod Kulkarnni. Who voices some of your fav anime characters when they cross the border into India? Suvela Sharma. Who is the voice behind that Santoor, Malabar Gold or Himalaya ad? Shreya Shah. Some of the most familiar voices of our time belong to artists who go unrecognised. More people found their voice, literally, while they were stuck home in the pandemic. And better tech means a good voice can, literally, phone it in and pick up a paycheque. So how come voice artists are still not getting their due? Take a look. "People take the art of speaking well for granted; it's the most underrated life skill," says Darrpan Mehta, 50, one of the industry's most sought-after artists. Think of a Mercedes ad, designed to drift you off into your dream life. Or an Amazon sale ad aimed to trigger FOMO. Now, think of both these voices coming from the same human, evoking a different emotion each time. That's it. That's the magic. And still, voice artists are treated as the neglected child. Performers get a paltry Rs.4,000 or more per finished minute. "Experienced artists make Rs.5,000 to Rs.25,000 for TV commercials, dubbing, or long-format content," says Shreya Shah, 30, who's done voice work for seven years. In India, voice artists don't receive royalties. Their work is reused endlessly across TV, OTT, radio, and social media for a one-time fee, leaving the community insecure and underpaid. Vinod Kulkarnni, 59, has clocked several decades in the business. He voiced Dobby in two Harry Potter films; played Joker and Riddler in Batman movies; and recorded more than 1,500 episodes of Popeye the Sailor Man. "I've dubbed in Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese and more; but I don't do it anymore," he says. "Regional artists are losing their jobs to AI. To protect them, us multilingual actors follow AVA (Association of Voice Artists) regulations and refuse to dub in more than two languages." Voice artists are why many debutant actors (even Deepika Padukone and Rani Mukerji) sound seamlessly like they belong, even though their actual voices hadn't yet adapted to Bollywood. When animated or dubbed films hit big, it's the same voice artists who are cast aside in favour of recognisable screen actors in the sequels. Kulkarnni shaped the voice of Baloo and Kaa in the 1989 The Jungle Book series, but the 2016 live-action film cast big names such as Irrfan Khan and Priyanka Chopra for its Hindi dub. The big stars make more money too. Voice artists might get between Rs.30,000 and Rs.2 lakh for a film, celebrities make much more. "It's humiliating," Kulkarnni says. And they don't benefit from the recall value that film actors get. "We have to keep working to be remembered," says Suvela Sharma, 30, the voice of Little Singham in English and Hindi, Blossom from The Powerpuff Girls, and Nobara Kugisaki from the anime Jujutsu Kaisen. They're all concerned about a new player that has entered the game: AI. Bots can now scrape enough voice samples (human, animal, movie alien) to generate monologues without the use of a human. It's convenient enough to make a studio drop a human performer. But to a listening audience, something sounds not-quite-right. "The human voice can convey emotions in a way that feels raw and authentic," says Shah. "AI can mimic tone and pitch, but it's the feelings and expressions that make human voices stand out." Many artists are already selling the full rights to their voice to AI companies for as little as Rs.2 or Rs.3 lakh. Bots can use their recorded samples to mix-and-match endlessly and generate a speech, slogan, or even sexually-explicit rap. Veterans like Mehta, founder and organiser of India Voice Fest, and Kulkarnni are rallying the voice-artist community to protect their asset and be recognised more fairly. And yet again, no one knows how actual voice artists will fare in the future....