ADR Spotting Post-AI Voice Cloning: Has the Conversation Changed?

Hey everyone, Naomi Blackwell here. I’ve been running sound on some narrative features and commercials lately, bouncing between my ALEXA Mini gigs and some more indie stuff on a Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2. I’m usually behind my 888 with an MKH 50 when I’m on set.

Lately, I’ve been wondering about ADR spotting sessions. We're all well aware of how good AI voice cloning has gotten. It’s almost uncanny. I haven’t personally encountered a director or producer bringing it up explicitly in a spotting session yet, but it feels like it must be impacting the conversation. I’ve been in a few sessions where a line that would definitively be an ADR call just a few years ago now gets a longer pause, almost like they’re weighing another invisible option.

For example, we just wrapped a project where a character's critical line was slightly garbled by a passing truck (even with my best efforts and the Forza 720B’s hum a good distance away). In the past, that’s an automatic ADR flag. Now, I find myself anticipating a different kind of discussion.

So, for those of you routinely in ADR spotting sessions, how has the rise of AI voice cloning changed the dialogue, if at all, with directors and producers in just the last couple of years? Are they advocating for it more, or even just discussing it as a viable alternative to traditional ADR?