Anti-AIOrganization

National Association of Voice Actors

Voice Actors’ Advocacy Organization

Nonprofit advocacy group founded in 2022 that fights unauthorized AI voice cloning — championing Tennessee’s first-in-the-nation ELVIS Act and arming voice actors with contract riders against synthetic-voice clauses.

Organization

navavoices.org

In their words

NAVA is not anti-synthetic voices or anti-AI, we are pro voice actor. We want to ensure that voice actors are actively and equally involved in the evolution of our industry and don’t lose their agency or ability to be compensated fairly for their work and talent.

— Tim Friedlander — Vice, 2023

The language can be confusing and ambiguous. Many voice actors may have signed a contract without realizing language like this had been added.

— Tim Friedlander — Vice, 2023

Biography

The National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA) is a nonprofit advocacy association co-founded in 2022 by voice actors Tim Friedlander and Carin Gilfry to promote and defend the voice-acting profession. It arrived just as cheap, convincing voice cloning collided with an industry of freelancers who mostly work without union protection — and it quickly became the loudest organized voice against unauthorized synthetic voices.

Consent, control, compensation

In February 2023, Friedlander told Vice that voice actors were discovering synthetic-voice clauses buried in their contracts — sometimes told they could not be hired without signing away rights to their own voices. NAVA’s answer was practical: a free AI contract rider that performers can attach to agreements, reserving consent, control, and compensation over any digital replica of their voice. The group also campaigns against platforms and studios that quietly harvest recordings for training.

NAVA became a driving supporter of Tennessee’s ELVIS Act, signed in March 2024 — the first US state law to explicitly protect a person’s voice from unauthorized AI impersonation as a right of publicity. The group has backed similar federal proposals like the NO FAKES Act, worked alongside SAG-AFTRA on performer protections, and in 2026 launched the Latin Association of Voice Actors (LAVA) to fight AI voice fraud in Spanish-language media.

Friedlander is careful to frame the fight narrowly: NAVA does not oppose synthetic voices as a technology, only their creation and use without the performer’s permission and pay. He has warned that working-class voice actors — those building careers around day jobs — will be the first displaced by synthetic voices.