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Stephen Fry 'Shocked' to Discover AI Stole His Voice and Replicated It Without Consent
Last edited Tue Sep 19, 2023, 09:24 PM - Edit history (1)
Variety link: https://variety.com/2023/film/news/stephen-fry-ai-stole-voice-harry-potter-audiobooks-1235727795/
Stephen Fry recently revealed at the CogX Festival (via Forbes) that his voice from the “Harry Potter” audiobooks was taken by AI software and replicated without his consent, much to the horror of both himself and his agents. “I’m a proud member of [actors’ union SAG-AFTRA]. As you know, we’ve been on strike for three months now. And one of the burning issues is AI,” Fry said before playing a clip of his voice narrating a historical documentary. Only it wasn’t Fry’s voice. It was an AI replication of his voice.
“I said not one word of that — it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” Fry said. “They used my reading of the seven volumes of the ‘Harry Potter’ books, and from that dataset an AI of my voice was created, and it made that new narration.”
“What you heard was not the result of a mashup. This is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence,” Fry added. “It could therefore have me read anything from a call to storm Parliament to hard porn, all without my knowledge and without my permission. And this, what you just heard, was done without my knowledge. So I heard about this, I sent it to my agents on both sides of the Atlantic, and they went ballistic — they had no idea such a thing was possible.”
Fry served as the audiobook narrator for the “Harry Potter” series in the United Kingdom. He said the discovery of AI mimicking his voice led him to warn his agents, “You ain’t seen nothing yet. This is audio. It won’t be long until full deepfake videos are just as convincing.”
“I said not one word of that — it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” Fry said. “They used my reading of the seven volumes of the ‘Harry Potter’ books, and from that dataset an AI of my voice was created, and it made that new narration.”
“What you heard was not the result of a mashup. This is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence,” Fry added. “It could therefore have me read anything from a call to storm Parliament to hard porn, all without my knowledge and without my permission. And this, what you just heard, was done without my knowledge. So I heard about this, I sent it to my agents on both sides of the Atlantic, and they went ballistic — they had no idea such a thing was possible.”
Fry served as the audiobook narrator for the “Harry Potter” series in the United Kingdom. He said the discovery of AI mimicking his voice led him to warn his agents, “You ain’t seen nothing yet. This is audio. It won’t be long until full deepfake videos are just as convincing.”
- more at link -
I'm a big fan of Stephen Fry's audiobooks and I think this is theft.
All of today's actors and performers will live to see their work stolen and perverted into something else, and SAG/AFTRA must find a way to stop it from happening.
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