A scorching potato: There’s been one other occasion of AI getting used to impersonate somebody’s voice with out their consent. On this event, it is YouTuber Jeff Geerling who’s the sufferer. He claims his vocal abilities had been pilfered and used to advertise a tech firm’s (now eliminated) tutorial movies.
Raspberry Pi skilled Geerling posted a shorter-than-usual video on his YouTube channel yesterday titled ‘They stole my voice with AI.’ In it, he performs a clip from a tutorial video posted on Elecrow’s channel that includes a voice that sounds nearly equivalent to Geerling’s.
Geerling notes that as he does discuss a number of the matters lined in Elecrow’s tutorials, it is pure that folks may assume he agreed to voice these movies. He is even lined the corporate’s merchandise – he posted a assessment of the CrowPi 2 just a few years in the past. Geerling emphasizes that he did not have a nasty relationship with Elecrow previously.
It is extremely possible that the voice utilized in Elecrow’s movies was created by feeding Geerling’s personal content material into an AI voice creation software. The top product was then used to relate the collection of instructional movies. Nonetheless, none of this may be confirmed.
Geerling says he is uncertain what to do, as there isn’t any authorized precedent for unauthorized voice cloning, regardless of President Biden beforehand calling for it to be banned. There’s, nonetheless, precedent for not utilizing somebody’s voice in business work with out their consent: Bette Midler vs. Ford Motor Firm, which concerned an impersonator of the actress/singer being utilized in Ford commercials through the Eighties.
Geerling additionally faces the issue of attorneys’ charges and whether or not non-consensual voice cloning is in opposition to YouTube’s phrases of service.
All of Elecrow’s movies that Geerling highlighted are actually inaccessible, and there does not seem like any others that use a voiceover that sounds just like the YouTuber. It appears all of the publicity has had an impact.
The scenario brings to thoughts that of OpenAI and Scarlett Johansson. When introducing the brand new GPT-4o mannequin in Might, the corporate confirmed off a really practical voice assistant that sounded just like the Marvel’s Avengers star. Making the scenario even murkier was that Johansson had been approached by OpenAI to voice the newest ChatGPT replace, to which she had refused. The AI agency eliminated the voice after the actress employed authorized counsel.
In January, Ned Luke, the actor who portrays Michael De Santa in GTA V, blasted an organization for utilizing his voice with out permission to create a Michael AI chatbot.
