The Mary Sue: Stephen Fry is warning others about the dangers of artificial intelligence after he found his voice was “stolen” and used in a documentary without his permission from his narration of Harry Potter audiobooks. While Fry is best known as an actor, comedian, and broadcaster, he has also devoted much time to narration work. Most notably, he read and recorded all seven Harry Potter novels so they could be released in the UK as audiobooks.
4 comments:
This would be absolutely terrifying. For an actor to have their likeness stolen and used against them is terrifying for both personal and professional reasons. The fact that women already have to deal with terrifying situations like revenge porn and being filmed without their permission and now to also have to worry that some disgusting pervert is creating deepfake porn of them and distributing it all over the internet. It is such a violation. And then for those famous women who are victims of this deepfake porn to then have to lose employment opportunities to the same type of technology that hurt them so deeply. Additionally, voice actors, who work so hard and do so much amazing work are being targeted to be wiped out by this voice stealing AI for the profit of the production companies. If the executives at these companies get away with this it will destroy a huge part of the entertainment industry in such a terrible way that we may never recover.
I agree with Jessica - this is terrifying, and only reinforces what the SAG-AFTRA and WGA members have been saying. AI is dangerous and a threat to actors and writers alike. Using someone’s voice without their permission is abhorrent. As Stephen Fry states, what if his voice was used to say something horrible? AI could be used to steal jobs from actors and writers, but could also be used in more dangerous ways with politicians and policy makers. Although I do think AI can be a useful tool, like all powerful tools it can be detrimental in the wrong hands. It’s looking more and more like laws will need to be put in place to protect not just actors and writers, but every citizen. We already have to deal with inaccuracy and lies across the internet, and this will only create a more untrustworthy world and untrusting people.
This reminds me of the song that people were pushing for it to get a Grammy that used Drake’s voice through ai. It just recently was rejected by the Grammy’s, but as ai gets less and less noticeable, and as long as the voice isn’t someone recognizable, it might get through next time. This is a really scary thought and I really hope it doesn’t get to that point. People have such a disconnect to celebrities that they forget they are real live people and that they are affected by the things people do with their likenesses. They have a right to not have works made with them in it without their permission or compensation. Especially the porn being made is rampant and goes to show how little people acknowledge that celebrities are people. It is absolutely disgusting and hopefully as ai technology advances so does technology set in place to take down the unauthorized deepfakes.
It’s wild to me that less than six months ago I read an article that was warning that even though it was easy to detect what was narrated by AI or humans, it would become impossible. While we haven’t reached the point where it’s impossible to tell, it seems we are getting close. The arts industry as a whole needs to come up with more intense regulations about how and when AI can be used in ethical ways. Since it is apparent that AI generated work will be a part of the future, clear consent of the voice actors must appear prominently in their contracts. Some argue that authorization to use their voice for AI development was buried in the contract’s fine print. This is not okay. Authorization needs to be upfront and in fact, I believe consumers should be informed when purchasing narration by synthetic voice. Companies should not be able to exploit artists’ work without compensation.
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