AI “stole his voice”. Harry Potter voiceover shocked
British actor Stephen Fry has warned that AI has “stole his voice”. The celebrity presented a clip to the audience with words he never said. As he pointed out, all that was needed was… the Harry Potter audiobook.
Stephen Fry – actor, comedian and writer known, among others, for the series Blackadder or roles in the films Sherlock Holmes and the Hobbit trilogy – is sounding the alarm, warning against AI. A famous Briton showed how easily his voice was copied and warned that there would be more victims like him.
AI ‘stole Stephen Fry’s voice
During the recent CogX Festival, Fry presented to the audience a clip purportedly featuring his voice, in which he appears as the narrator of a historical document. However, these were appearances, because the actor had never participated in a similar project. – I didn’t say a single word like that, it was all a machine. Yes, it shocked me too, he said at the end of the screening.
He said that Internet users used AI tools to clone his voice and used it in a completely unauthorized way. As the celebrity suspects, users used Harry Potter audiobooks for this purpose, because Fry read as many as seven books from the series as a voice actor.
Stephen Fry warns other actors – there will be more AI deepfakes
– The (resulting) AI model of my voice is flexible enough to adjust the voice modulation to fit any sentence. So I can be made to say anything, from calling for an attack on Parliament to pornography. All this without my consent and without my knowledge, the Briton emphasized.
The actor also warns that he is not the last celebrity whose voice or appearance will be stolen in a similar way. He adds that the development of AI will soon allow for “full deepfake videos that are equally convincing.”
The ongoing strike of Hollywood actors and screenwriters is, among other things, about the dangers associated with the use of AI in the entertainment industry. Members of the SAG-AFTRA union are currently fighting against the exuberant ideas of movie studios.
One of them is the idea of a one-time fee for background actors to have their faces scanned. Their digital likeness would then be used in numerous productions – without their consent or further payment.
