Striking actor Stephen Fry says his voice was stolen from the Harry Potter audiobooks and replicated by AI

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• ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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  • anteaters@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Poor man’s voice was stolen and now while he cannot use it anymore you make mean jokes :(

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    • yanyuan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well, he shouldn’t have made this deal with that sea witch!

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• FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  His voice wasn't stolen, it's still right where he left it.

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  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Fair enough. It’s not theft, it’s something else.

    But that’s just semantics, though.

    The point is that his voice is being used without his permission, and that companies, profiteering people, and scammers will do so using his voice and the voices others. He likely wants some kind of law against this kind of stuff.

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    • Hubi@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How is this different from a human doing an impersonation?

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    • FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It's emotionally charged semantics.

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  • Th4tGuyII@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    If you made a painting for me, and then I started making copies of it without your permission and selling them off, while I might not have stolen the physical painting, I have stolen your art.

    Just because they didn't rip his larynx out of his throat, doesn't mean you can't steal someone's voice.

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    • drekly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well, I just printed a picture of the Mona Lisa.

      Did I steal the Mona Lisa? Or did I just copy it? Reproduce it?

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    • andthenthreemore@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      We’re getting into samantics but it’s counterfeit not stolen.

      It would be more like if you made a painting for me, and I then used that to replicate your artistic style and used that to make new paintings without your permission and passed it off as your work.

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  • irmoz@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Jfc the pedantty.

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    • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think it was a joke

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  • liquidparasyte@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    FaceDeer stop being an inhuman techbro about ai for 5 minutes challenge

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  • HeartyBeast@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What word or phrase would you prefer is used to describe the harm done to him?

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    • FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      "Copied" or "mimicked" would be more accurate.

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    • gregorum@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Copyright infringement

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• uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  When I read striking actor Stephen Fry my brain responded Why yes he is! Rather!

  Am I a bad person?

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  • drislands@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Oh man I didn’t realize that WASN’T what it meant until I read your comment…

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  • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Found the Hugh Laurie!

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  • nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think he would be rather pleased.

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• mycroft@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I think it’s important to remember how this used to happen.

  AT&T paid voice actors to record phoneme groups in the 90s/2000s and have been using those recordings to train voice models for decades now. There are about a dozen AT&T voices we’re all super familiar with because they’re on all those IVR/PBX replacement systems we talk to instead of humans now.

  The AT&T voice actors were paid for their time, and not offered royalties but they were told that their voices would be used to generate synthentic computer voices.

  This was a consensual exchange of work, not super great long term as there’s no royalties or anything and it’s really just a “work for hire” that turns into a product… but that aside – the people involved all agreed to what they were doing and what their work would be used for.

  The ultimate problem at the root of all the generative tools is ultimately one of consent. We don’t permit the arbitrary copying of things that are perceived to be owned by people, nor do we think it’s appropriate to do things without people’s consent with their “Image, likeness, voice, or written works.”

  Artists tell politicians to stop using their music all the time etc. But ultimately until we really get a ruling on what constitutes “derivative” works (and that an AI is effectively the derivative work of all the content that makes up the vectors that represents it.)

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  • Squids@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think a more interesting (and less dubious) example of this would be Vocaloid and to a greater extent, cevio AI

    Vocaloid is a synth bank where instead of the notes being musical instruments, they’re phonemes which have been recorded and then packaged into a product which you pay for, which means royalties are involved (I think there might also be a thing with royalties for big performances and whatnot?) Cevio AI takes this a step further by using AI to better smooth together the phonemes and make pitching sound more natural (or not - it’s an instrument, you can break it in interesting ways if you try hard enough). And obviously, they consented to that specific thing and get paid for it. I mean obviously that consent doesn’t go beyond the voice bank (a lot of voice providers are established VAs and singers), but that shouldn’t be too hard to understand, right?

    (There’s also FOSS voicebanks but that adds a different layer of complication to things like I think a lot of them were recorded before the idea of an “AI bank” was even a possibility)

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  • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I don’t think permits and concent alone can be used in labor relationship, because the unbalance position of power employees and employers have with each other. Could the workers really negotiate better working conditions? They really can’t, not without an union anyway.

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• banana_meccanica@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It just the beginning for sure. This future will be the end of artist and still everyone will clapping to AI productions like fools.

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  • Lmaydev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No one cared when spreadsheets replaced a huge chunk of office workers.

    If the results are the same what’s the issue.

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    • MBM@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Making art is something people enjoy, for one thing. Good art also has something of the artist in it, something to it other than “it was made from this prompt”.

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    • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The people who lost those jobs cared.

      If not for the wages, people hardly have any attachment to most office jobs. But when it comes to artistic endeavors, a lot of people dream of being able to make a career in those fields. Frankly, that sort of comment itself seems like it comes from envy, like artists ought to be taken down a peg for daring to work with something they are passionate about. I couldn’t think of a single artist who bragged about being above automation.

      As someone who works of in an office job, if AI could free me to work on something creative that would be wonderful, but if it will instead replace already existing creatives and leave us both without anywhere to work, that is not really helping anybody but executives profiting over it. What benefit does that even add to my life? Remixed porn? Meme generators? It’s not the same level of benefit as industrial automation, if any. The human element of art enriches it in an unique way that AI trying to distill a style from countless samples won’t be able to do.

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    • gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s not the same as any job. It’s putting your face in your words behind something you cannot consent to. If someone spoofed your username and started posting offensive things, I’ve no doubt anyone would be upset. That’s just your username. Now add your real life photo, your face, and your voice.

      You would have to be a sociopath not to care if suddenly your friends and family received a video of you performing offensive acts or shilling for a political cause you are vehemently opposed to.

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    • c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      AI will annihilate most data entry workers in the next few years as well.

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• banneryear1868@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Studios basically want to own the personas of their actors so they can liberate the human element and just use their images. There’s been a lot of weird issues with this already in videogames with body capture and voice acting, and contracts aren’t read through properly or the wording is vague, and not all agents know about this stuff yet. It’s very dystopian to think your whole appearance and persona can be taken from you and commodified. I remember when Tupac’s hologram performed at Coachella in 2012 and thinking how fucked up that was. You have these huge studios and event promoters appropriating his image to make money, and an audience effectively watching a performance of technological necromancy where a dead person is re-animated.

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  • Metatronz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Did Tupac’s estate agree? Or receive compensation?

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    • Glytch@ttrpg.network ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Who cares if his estate agreed to it? HE didn’t. His estate shouldn’t have the right to make money off of things he never actually did.

      Let the dead stay dead, it’s just an excuse to not pay new, living artists.

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  • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It took me a minute to realize that you said Tupac, not Tuvok.

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    • shyguyblue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Great, another holodeck episode…

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• Damage@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  “it wasn’t me planning the terrorist attack over the phone, it was someone stealing my voice with an AI”

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  • ripcord@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is, unfortunately, the world we are about to be in.

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  • MBM@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I guess voice recordings will have as much value as text messages

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  Among those warning about the technology’s potential to cause harm is British actor and author Stephen Fry, who told an audience at the CogX Festival in London on Thursday about his personal experience of having his identity digitally cloned without his permission.

  Speaking at a news conference as the strike was announced, union president Fran Drescher said AI “poses an existential threat” to creative industries, and said actors needed protection from having “their identity and talent exploited without consent and pay.”

  As AI technology has advanced, doctored footage of celebrities and world leaders—known as deepfakes—has been circulating with increasing frequency, prompting warnings from experts about artificial intelligence risks.

  At a U.K. rally held in support of the SAG-AFTRA strike over the summer, Emmy-winning Succession star Brian Cox shared an anecdote about a friend in the industry who had been told “in no uncertain terms” that a studio would keep his image and do what they liked with it.

  Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff during a panel event at this year’s Dreamforce conference that he had concerns about the rise of AI in Hollywood.

  A spokesperson for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the entertainment industry’s official collective bargaining representative, was not available for comment when contacted by Fortune.

  ---

  The original article contains 911 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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  • maggio@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Good bot

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• nxfsi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Don’t worry, ““artists”” only complain about ai when open source ai gets released.

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  • Sneptaur@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Get your head out of your ass. Their voices are their art and to replicate that is not only disturbing it’s morally wrong. Especially if you do so for profit.

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    • nxfsi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Nobody complained about copyright when Microsoft had the only image ai in the game, only when the open source stable diffusion came out did they start screeching about how ai was “stealing their jobs”.

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    • c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s only wrong when done for profit.

      Otherwise you’re just having their material as data for an algorithm and a personal use case.

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  • pjhenry1216@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    AI can very easily be abused and I don't see how this is related to the tech being open sourced or not. Fighting to ensure you aren't exploited is fine and I support anyone to fight against exploitation.

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    • Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I don’t get why so many people feel the need to defend big corporations this much. It’s not like they’re going to share the profits with the people who dwfend them, nor do they probably care.

      If anything, the industry will just use whatever they can to exploit more people.

      Without maintaining and creating protections, they will roll back until there are almost none. Our current labor rights didn’t come for free. They were fought for.

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  • SickPanda@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    They downvoted him because he spoke the truth.

    It’s funny how all (or at least most of them) of the parents of those “artists” told them to do/learn something real and now they get their recipe for their bad choice.

    I’ve discussed with someone about how pictures made by stable diffusion is not Art while there are literally “paintings” where the “artist” just jizzed on the canvas which then got declared as Art. I trolled him by sending him multiple generated anime pictures and asked him which is “Art” because he said he could recognize Art. He chose one and fell into the trap. 1

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    • pjhenry1216@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      ChatGPT is why the public is scrambling about AI. AI art has been around awhile and there's always been complaining because its lame compared to real artists. This has fuck all to do with it suddenly being open source AI.

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• MargotRobbie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  See, I’m pulling the smartest move right now: AI can’t take your job if you use AI to take your own job first.

  Besides, I think Hollywood is pretty behind on tech overall. The current state of the art voice generator quality is still pretty bad, it’ll be a very long time before it can replace actors in quality (if ever): if you train the AI voice on audiobooks, the generated voice is going to sound like someone narrating an audiobook, which really doesn’t sound natural for dialogues at all.

  I think then the key point isn’t to ban generative transformer based AI: once the tech out of its box, you can’t exactly put it back in again. (heh) The real question to ask is, who should own this technology so that it does good and help people in the world, instead of being used to take away people’s livelihood?

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  • Piers@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Wrong. The real question is why do we presuppose that the output of creatively driven individuals must generate profit for a capitalist economy to have sufficient value that those people be permitted the basic necessities of life? Frankly I suspect most of our most valuable contributors to culture are never given the opportunity to be bad enough long enough to develop into their potential.

    This whole “oh no, AI is going to take away our liveihoods” notion fundamentally accepts the false notion that people are only deserving of a functional life so long as the primary activities of that life is ultimately to contribute towards increasing the wealth of a tiny percentage of individuals.

    It’s the same mistake that leads us to massively undersupport educators and carers and will have people freaking out about how they’ll “earn a living” once robots are able to do everything we practically require to be done.

    People are fundamentally entitled to a living. If someone is being denied one, then look at the system that causes that not the specifics of that particular flavour of how it’s happening.

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• vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Paywall.

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• bernieecclestoned@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I haven’t seen him in anything for ages, is being on strike a euphemism?

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  • HeartyBeast@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Looks like he’s been busy with quite a few upcoming projects https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000410/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_stephen%2520fry

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    • bernieecclestoned@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Oh cool. I knew he had a job in cricket but thought he’d retired from the media as he used to be on TV all the time

      lords.org/…/stephen-fry-launches-mcc-campaign-to-…

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  • 5BC2E7@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    He can’t do much as an actor without a voice.

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    • bernieecclestoned@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Most of his work in progress is voice though

      m.imdb.com/name/nm0000410/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7…

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• anarchotaoist@links.hackliberty.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This is from a guy who advocates Linux as it is Open Source! The only violation here would be if another used that voice claiming it to be Fry. That would be fraud. Otherwise there is no issue.

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