• AIPressRoom
  • Posts
  • Actor Stephen Fry Livid After AI Rips Off His Voice With out Permission

Actor Stephen Fry Livid After AI Rips Off His Voice With out Permission

September 19, 2023

“It is a f***ing bizarre time to be alive.”

Into the Fry-ing Pan

In the case of voicing his issues over AI, English actor and broadcaster Stephen Fry is not mincing phrases.

As Deadline stories, Fry mentioned his AI issues onstage final week at London’s CogX Pageant whereas addressing the continued leisure strikes in Hollywood. AI has been a central challenge of concern for writers and actors alike.

Throughout his speech, Fry — who introduced himself to the gang as a “proud member” of the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA — grappled with AI’s potential affect on the leisure business, recounting how astonished he was to find that an automatic system had been used to duplicate his voice for a documentary’s narration with out his specific information or consent.

“I stated not one phrase of that — it was a machine,” Fry advised the gang as he performed a clip of the audio deepfake, in keeping with Deadline. “Sure, it shocked me.”

Harry Not-ter

Fry defined an AI was doubtless taught on the seven official UK-edition Harry Potter audiobooks, all of which he narrated. And though it is a comparatively tame use of AI, the actor was cautious to warn that the expertise might theoretically be used to generate a lot worse kinds of content material.

“It might subsequently have me learn something from a name to storm parliament to exhausting porn, all with out my information and with out my permission,” the actor continued. “And this, what you simply heard, was performed with out my information.”

Bizarre Time

Certainly, audio-generating AIs have already been used to generate a lot worse materials. Again in January, the beta model of a startup referred to as ElevenLabs’ text-to-voice AI leaked to 4Chan, the place — shock! — the cursed web site’s customers instantly abused the system to generate hate speech by cloning the voices of celebrities.

For his half, Fry thinks that that is just the start, telling the gang at CogX that we must always take into consideration AI “like the primary vehicle: spectacular however not the completed article.”

“Tech isn’t a noun, it’s a verb, it’s all the time transferring,” Fry continued. “What we now have now isn’t what can be.”

Per Deadline, the actor additionally referred to as consideration to the prevalence of visible deepfakes, noting that “it will not be lengthy till full deepfake movies are simply as convincing.”

“One factor we will all agree on,” the actor added, “it is a fucking bizarre time to be alive.”

Extra on AI and leisure: The A.V. Membership’s AI-Generated Articles Are Copying Instantly From IMDB