Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Actor Stephen Fry's voice was stolen via AI from audiobooks he'd narrated & used for a documentary
A number of news stories on this.
From Deadline: https://deadline.com/2023/09/harry-potter-uk-audiobooks-narrator-stephen-fry-warns-ai-ripoff-1235548993/
Artificial Intelligence is a big sticking point in the current Hollywood strikes. Author and actor Stephen Fry understands why, as he’s been victimized by an AI version of his voice being used in a documentary without his participation.
Speaking at the CogX Festival in London on Thursday, Fry played a clip of an AI system mimicking his voice to narrate a historical documentary.
“I said not one word of that—it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” he 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.”
-snip-
“What you heard was not the result of a mash up, this is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence,” Fry said.
Speaking at the CogX Festival in London on Thursday, Fry played a clip of an AI system mimicking his voice to narrate a historical documentary.
“I said not one word of that—it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” he 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.”
-snip-
“What you heard was not the result of a mash up, this is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence,” Fry said.
More on his acting background and what he said, from another article: https://winteriscoming.net/2023/09/18/documentary-uses-ai-steal-stephen-frys-voice-harry-potter-books/
Between Blackadder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, V for Vendetta, The Hitchhikers’s Guide to the Galaxy and much more, actor Stephen Fry has crossed the threshold into living acting legend. One of his most popular endeavors in recent years is as the narrator of the Harry Potter audiobooks in the UK, which spawned a pretty famous meme comparing the books to the Harry Potter movies:
-snip-
Reading all seven of the Harry Potter books aloud and recording it represents a fair amount of work, but modern AI systems can replicate someone’s voice very quickly, and then have them read whatever it is the person who replicated it wants. We can argue over how well the digital clone compares to the real thing, but the technology is there.
-snip-
The implications of this are troubling, as Fry had no difficulty imagining. “What you heard was not the result of a mash up, this is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence,” he said. “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.”
We don’t know what this documentary is, possibly because Fry’s agents got on the case and crushed it. But at this point there’s basically nothing stopping people from using AI to clone someone’s voice and then using it for whatever they feel like doing. “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Fry warned. “This is audio. It won’t be long until full deepfake videos are just as convincing.”
-snip-
Reading all seven of the Harry Potter books aloud and recording it represents a fair amount of work, but modern AI systems can replicate someone’s voice very quickly, and then have them read whatever it is the person who replicated it wants. We can argue over how well the digital clone compares to the real thing, but the technology is there.
-snip-
The implications of this are troubling, as Fry had no difficulty imagining. “What you heard was not the result of a mash up, this is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence,” he said. “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.”
We don’t know what this documentary is, possibly because Fry’s agents got on the case and crushed it. But at this point there’s basically nothing stopping people from using AI to clone someone’s voice and then using it for whatever they feel like doing. “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Fry warned. “This is audio. It won’t be long until full deepfake videos are just as convincing.”
I looked at a number of stories on this and couldn't find anything on who had misused AI and Stephen Fry's voice that way, whether it was some dimwitted AI enthusiast with no respect for actors, or a legit professional filmmaker who really should have known bettter and who should have to pay for this ripoff. And have their identity publicized as well.
10 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
In a way, this doesn't surprise me at all.
I'm sure the publishers are already thinking about how much money they can save by using AI instead of professional narrators. The stories are human-written (for now) but the narration will be taken over by automation.
That doesn't make it right, and I hope Stephen Fry is able to sue the companies who are doing this.
