Cissy Jones
Voice Actress and CEO of Ethovox
BAFTA-winning voice actress (Firewatch, The Owl House) who, after finding her voice cloned without consent, co-founded Ethovox — an actor-owned AI voice company built on consent, control and compensation.
Why this score
How the formula works →- +4.6proBuilds AI professionally
- +1.0pro2 pro-AI statements (forceful)
- ±0nuancedHolds a documented two-sided view
- ±0nuancedSupports AI only with conditions
Weights, statement counts, the ×1.25 multiplier for having a stake in an AI-impacted field, and the formula’s smoothing are already baked in — the points add up to the score (direction-free evidence pulls toward the middle instead): Firmly Pro-AI · 5.6/10
In her words
[My ETHOVOX co-founder and I] realize no one is going to build it but us, and no one is going to do it better than us. We’re working on building truly innovative technology without exploitation of our voices, our art, and people.
A.I. should be a choice. … Artists can, and should, be compensated for contributing to ethical A.I. development while also maintaining consent and control over their voice data.
Biography
Cissy Jones is one of video gaming’s most recognizable voices — Delilah in “Firewatch,” a performance that won the 2017 BAFTA Games Award for Performer, plus roles in “Life is Strange,” “Baldur’s Gate 3” and Disney’s “The Owl House,” where she voiced Lilith Clawthorne. Then fans started sending her clips of her voice saying things she had never recorded.
From cloning victim to AI company CEO
Discovering her voice had been cloned and used without consent pushed Jones into advocacy with the National Association of Voice Actors, where she helped articulate the movement’s three-word framework: consent, control, compensation. “They need to get active consent,” she told Screen Rant — and “anytime somebody uses that voice, I need to know I need to get paid.”
Rather than stop at protest, Jones co-founded Ethovox in 2024 and became its CEO — the only voice AI company owned and managed by voice actors. In October 2024, SAG-AFTRA signed a landmark agreement with Ethovox to build a foundational voice model for digital replicas with union-approved guardrails: actors are paid session fees plus ongoing revenue shares, and keep control over how their voice data is used.
Jones is explicit that her fight is against exploitation, not the technology: she argues investors can earn strong returns “alongside an entire community” rather than at its expense, and that if ethical actors don’t build the voice AI future, unethical ones will.
Quote sources
- SAG-AFTRA press release, 2024(sagaftra.org)
- UO Alumni Association, 2025(uoalumni.com)
Sources & further reading
- SAG-AFTRA: New SAG-AFTRA and Ethovox agreement empowers actors and secures essential A.I. guardrails (2024)
- Screen Rant: SAG-AFTRA, Cissy Jones and NAVA on AI (interview)
- Deadline: SAG-AFTRA inks deal with AI company Ethovox to build foundational voice model for digital replicas (2024)
- UO Alumni Association: In the studio with voice actress Cissy Jones (2025)
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/cissy-jones
