I was watching something on Netflix, and at the end, as usual, there was a couple of minutes of credits for all the different voiceover teams that translated the video into a dozen languages. And it struck me that Voiceover Artist is an occupation that’s about to be hit with one of the most spectacular cases of technological obsolescence ever.

The “deepfake” deep-machine-learning AIs that produced the recent ZuckFake can translate any video into any language, editing the images to sync the characters’ faces with the words in a language they don’t speak, while preserving each actor’s voice and intonation and, as much as possible after translation, pacing. It’ll be as if language packs could be installed in actors.

Step aside, buggy whip makers, and shoers of horses. The occupation of Voiceover Artist will be as dead as a doornail within just a few years.

And what the hell’s a “doornail”, come to think of it?