British actor Stephen Fry is the latest to express horror about the prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) being misused to spread disinformation – he says his voice was stolen from Harry Potter books to create an AI version to say things he has never said before.
What Happened: Fry revealed that his voice from Harry Potter audiobooks was used to create an AI version to say things he has never said before without his consent.
See Also: Hollywood Wants To Use AI Replicas Of Actors For Eternity And Give Them Just One Day’s Pay
At Thursday’s CogX Festival, Fry revealed that an AI system mimicked his voice to narrate a documentary. He played a clip for the audience to show how convincing it was, expressing shock and horror.
"I said not one word of that—it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me," Fry said after playing the clip, reported Fortune.
"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," he added.
Fry explained that the AI voice narration was created using a mashup of words he used to narrate the seven volumes of Harry Potter books. He called it a "flexible artificial voice" and said it was used to stitch together a coherent sentence.
It Could Have Been Anything, Warns Fry: While AI-powered voice technology could prove useful, Fry has a warning for everyone – he says the AI documentary narration was done without his consent or knowledge, something his agents were angry about.
"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," Fry said.
Fry warned that producing convincing deepfake videos using AI won't take long. However, deepfake AI videos have existed for a while now, with the Tom Cruise version being one of the most prominent examples of it.
Fry's warning also comes at a time when over 160,000 members of the SAG-AFTRA union have been striking for several months now against Hollywood studios – one of the bones of contentions that led to this strike is the use of AI in script writing as well as using the likeness of actors in the future.
Fry's AI voice is not the first and won't be the last instance of AI being used to create nonconsensual content. It remains to be seen how this is dealt with going forward.
Image Credits – Shutterstock
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