You're right, but as someone who's done a lot of sound editing/foley work I can't help having mixed feelings at seeing yet another job skill automated away. Good part - in a few years this will be good enough for commercial use which will save sound editors all sorts of tedious dull work and free them up to do more exciting creative stuff. Bad part: the tedious dull work was also what paid the bills. The easier it is to do that stuff automatically, the less people are willing to pay for good quality work.
Rather than now being able to make a living do the sort of fun really creative stuff like inventing new sounds for teleportation devices or dramatic natural phenomena, editors are more likely to be asked to work for free on the theory that they'll gain great exposure for their creativity. That's generally a very bad bargain. If past trends in the electronic dance music market are anything to go by, increasing automation will not reward true creative talent but rather just lead to an arms race to have the latest sound libraries, synthesizers etc. and just be the first to market with big splashy new sounds that offer superficial novelty.
Ability to provide high-value equipment below normal rental cost frequently trumps considerations of talent in the film industry. Similarly there are plenty of crappy directors of photography out there who get hired regularly because they own a pile of nice lenses and related camera equipment, and hiring them plus their camera package looks economically attractive on paper because it's hard to quantify photographic talent.
I have so much respect for foley artists. Artist being the operative word. People don't appreciate the hard work and creativity that goes into making the perfect sound.
As someone who's worked in the film industry (visual fx & CG) I'm subject to the same problem, but all tedious jobs from the industrial revolution on have been automated away one by one. I can understand the lament for something you worked hard on, and this isn't to take that away from you, but most job skills do actually have less value in the market over time, right? The other way to look at it is that what counts as good quality work changes and improves continually over time, higher and higher quality becomes available for the same price. Jobs are continually being reinvented, and people always get to work on the interesting parts that can't be automated. Something that took many people to do one decade only takes one person the next decade. This has been true for hundreds of years from farmers to accountants to cooks to car makers ... This "problem" is here to stay, our economy hasn't crashed yet, and there are as many creative people as ever.
the tedious dull work was also what paid the bills. The easier it is to do that stuff automatically, the less people are willing to pay for good quality work.
Rather than now being able to make a living do the sort of fun really creative stuff like inventing new sounds for teleportation devices or dramatic natural phenomena, editors are more likely to be asked to work for free on the theory that they'll gain great exposure for their creativity. That's generally a very bad bargain. If past trends in the electronic dance music market are anything to go by, increasing automation will not reward true creative talent but rather just lead to an arms race to have the latest sound libraries, synthesizers etc. and just be the first to market with big splashy new sounds that offer superficial novelty.
Ability to provide high-value equipment below normal rental cost frequently trumps considerations of talent in the film industry. Similarly there are plenty of crappy directors of photography out there who get hired regularly because they own a pile of nice lenses and related camera equipment, and hiring them plus their camera package looks economically attractive on paper because it's hard to quantify photographic talent.