«I had no idea AI could reproduce my voice»
When Martin Lewis discovered a Facebook ad featuring his deepfake When he urging people to sign up for «an Elon Musk-backed project», calling it «legitimate» and «a great investment,» he felt sick. His name and face have been featured in fraudulent ads for years, he told Today, but this was the first deepfake he had seen.
However, for Remy Michelle Clark's voice actor, having her voice used by a machine is old news. Back in January, a sound engineer she had worked with for years called to ask how she got started with AI voiceover site Revoicer.com. “He wanted to know if it was worth my financial outlay,” she explains over the phone from Ireland, her soft voice sounding like money even on a cell phone in a crowded café. «But I have never worked with this company.»
Clarke contacted Irish Equity and a media lawyer and was shocked to find herself unable to help. “They told me that I didn't own the copyright to my voice,” she explains. “How could something so fundamental and unique to humans not be mine? Everyone can take it and do whatever they want with it. I was completely powerless.”
In Ireland, a voice artist can earn around £2,000 for voicing a 30 second commercial. Revoicer offered Clarke's voice — online as «Olivia» — as part of a voice package available for a $67 annual fee.
Desperate, Clarke spoke to one of the industry's websites, Voquent.com, about her concerns and was contacted by US attorney Robert Sciglimpaglia, who had just sued TikTok for allegedly cloning the vocals of Canadian voice actress Bev Standing. Standing recorded her voice for a Chinese translation app that she said was sold to the owners of TikTok's Byte Dance. As the voice of the video platform's text-to-speech feature, she narrated cat videos, voiced sketches, and insulted people she'd never met. Skiglimpaglia secured an out-of-court settlement and told Clarke that he thought he could do the same for her.
A few thoughts on the recent media attention to my AI experience.
The full raving can be seen on my Instagram below: #voiceover #narrator #voiceover #AI #AIethicshttps://t.co/GQtWvsWfyT pic.twitter.com/Pz25o8Ai28
— R. M. Clarke (@RemieMichelle) 28 April 2023
«He read that I was working with Microsoft and we found that they sold my Revoicer voice files,» explains Clark. “I showed him the contract I signed with them in 2020 and he said it was career suicide. In fact, I gave them the right to do whatever they want with my voice. At the time, of course, I had no idea that AI would be able to reproduce my voice. I don't know if anyone thought he could do it.”
When I point out that if anyone suspects it's Microsoft, Clark changes the subject. “No company would ever think of using the voice of Morgan Freeman or Nicole Kidman — they are chasing a quiet voice-over working as a voice actor. This quality is not enough for a leading brand, but for smaller companies with younger consumers it is quite enough.”
However, artificial intelligence is already hunting for star names. A number of celebrities have experienced these verbal deepfakes, including Emma Watson, whose voice has been cloned and a recording of her reciting passages from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf has been uploaded.
And this is just the beginning. Voice cloning technology has existed as far back as 2010, when American film critic Roger Ebert, who lost his voice due to thyroid cancer, hired Scottish company CereProc to create text-to-speech software using samples of his voice. However, in 2022, ElevenLabs released Prime Voice AI online, allowing users to send voice files and text that the AI combined into speech. ElevenLabs is the tool of choice for so-called «modders» — video game players who use tools to modify characters and scenes in games.
The voice actors of the role-playing video game Skyrim were appalled that their voices were being used in pornographic scenes without their permission and posted requests on Twitter. “If you hear my voice in one of these situations, please let me know so I can ask it to be removed,” actor Ben Diskin pleaded. «I do not consent to the use of my biometric data for these purposes.»
Tim Friedlander, president of the US National Voice Actors Association, warns that the impact of generative AI on its industry is just beginning. “Voice actors unknowingly train their replacements,” he says.
“I have a friend who voices big-budget films,” says the former Hollywood executive who writes an industry advice column called Entertainment Strategy Guy. “If you've seen a Hollywood blockbuster, you've heard his work, but you wouldn't know it because he poses as famous actors as an anonymous sound engineer. He is called upon to rewrite dialogue, sometimes entire lines, pretending to be someone else in ADR. In the future, why do you need it? Once you have enough lines from a famous actor, most AI programs will be able to create reasonably good versions of those lines.”
That's why the current SAG dispute with Hollywood studios centers on the union's demands for effective «copy protection for the people.» SAG insists that an actor's face or voice cannot be cloned by AI without consent and payment. In the British Actors Union, Equity beat SAG to develop a model contract for voice artists in April 2022 after a member survey found that 65 percent of all Equity members were concerned about the threat posed by AI, rising to 93 percent. audio artists.
Critic Roger Ebert, whose voice was reproduced in 2010. Photo: AP
Voiceovers for cartoons, audiobooks, documentaries, commercials and video games are a useful and healthy source of income for performers from Morgan Freeman to comedian Ed Byrne, but for many professional actors it is the only source of income. According to Backstage.com, documentary narration for self-employed actors ranges from £200 to £300 an hour, audio books around £100 an hour and video games from £250 an hour, though as Clarke points out that in-demand artists can earn significantly more. There is little hard data on the amount of money voice actors make, but a 2017 survey by voices.com put the figure at £3.5 billion, a figure that will rise from then on as technology advances. companies and online advertising are expanding their use.
“Our members have performer rights and your voice is theoretically protected by the GDPR, although there is no case law yet to support this,” said Liam Budd, Equity's audio and new media industry representative. “The structure of copyright has not changed for 20 years, and there are participants who will sign an agreement 15-20 years ago under which all their rights are transferred for an unlimited period. Companies claim that this gives them carte blanche for this vote, we dispute this. It's a confusing situation.»
If SAG and Equity succeed in their campaigns and prove that it is illegal to use someone's voice in AI without their permission, it will give people their first real tool in our defense against AI. And this tool is already urgently needed not only by performers.
In early June, Lina Khan, chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, said her agency was criminals using cloning voices using artificial intelligence to make people think they are hearing the voice of a family member in trouble.
An Arizona mother, Jennifer DeStefano, told the US Senate that her daughter called her and begged, “These bad people got me. Help me! Help me!» as her phone was taken from her. A male voice then came on the line, demanding $1 million or he would «fill her stomach with drugs until she dies.» DeStefano was negotiating with the kidnapper when the police warned her that this could may be an artificial intelligence scam.She called her daughter and found out she was safe.Khan said that officials and legislators «should be vigilant as soon as possible» and that new laws regulating AI are being considered.
However, At the moment, artists like Clarke have taken over Microsoft and her voice has disappeared from the Revoicer site — which are fighting machines. «It's strange to think that actors and writers are the first to fight for the right to be human,» she muses. Perhaps this is just a delay in the day when we will all be replaced, but perhaps in the future people will understand how the struggle began.
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