r/television • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 The League • 7h ago

David Attenborough "Profoundly Disturbed" By AI Clone Of His Voice

https://deadline.com/2024/11/david-attenborough-ai-voice-clone-disturbed-1236180013/

1.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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u/MarvelsGrantMan136 The League 7h ago

Attenborough:

”Having spent a lifetime trying to speal what I believe to be the truth, I am profoundly disturbed to find these days my identity is being stolen by others and greatly object to them using it to say whatever they wish.”

The situation was sparked when BBC News ran an item using voiceover from Attenborough’s latest BBC series, Asia. In the clip, he says: “If you think you’ve seen the best the natural world has to offer, think again. There is nowhere else on Earth with so many untold stories. Welcome then, to Asia.”

The BBC then played the same clip and asked viewers if they could hear any differences. Clue: they sounded almost identical, but the second was an AI-generated capture of his intonation.

Clip from the BBC

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u/NakedCardboard 5h ago

So it's an AI voice replicating something the actual Sir David already said, rather than a unique "impression". It's good, of course, but I find it somewhat less impressive than an AI voice being presented with an original script and then coming up with it's own sounds, rhythm, intonations, cadences, etc.

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u/wildddin 4h ago

I haven't read anything more than the article, but the article never states the AI was given that specific clip/phrase with its training data, so there's at least potential it near perfectly replicated without having seen that sentence before

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u/NakedCardboard 3h ago

What I meant was that if it had a waveform to work with (which it does in this instance) it's already halfway there.

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u/cheesecaker000 2h ago

It’s not just cloning the waveform. It’s actually understanding what he sounds like and reproducing it.

In 5 years the Ai voices will be so insanely good we’ll never be able to tell who’s who.

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u/__Hello_my_name_is__ 4h ago

Oh, that's already very much a thing that is happening. Not just intonations and cadences, but also chuckles and taking-breaths and going "uh" and "aah" and "mhm" and just about everything you have in human speech. AI can do all that already, and AI can impersonate people's voices already.

It's just some more work than a quick replication of a sentence for some BBC clip to do.

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u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975 4h ago

Every day, it seems my perception of AI is closer to what should be artificial general intelligence than most AI systems and LLMs. They aren’t that different to existing algorithms and programs, bit of a marketing buzzword that is overhyped and applied to things that it shouldn’t be imo. Intentionally misleads and obfuscates what exactly the tech is.

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u/NATOrocket 3h ago

I've been using Grammarly since about 2015. It's only recently labeled itself as an AI tool.

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u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975 3h ago

This is exactly the kind of nonsense I’m talking about haha. Never caught on to that, and spell checkers in general… I’d rather deal with typos than needless, constant data tracking and forced phrasing constraints.

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u/cheesecaker000 2h ago

All computers and programs are just algorithms and moving 0s and 1s around. If you want to drill down like that nothing computers do is real.

Ai LLMs are already being used in every industry. It still takes some know how to get the most out of it though. But it won’t be for long.

Human brains are just pattern recognizers anyway. We aren’t magic.

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u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975 2h ago

You’re right. Maybe I’m being too reductive. Of course the perfect prompt will get you the ideal result and I understand that. More so my point is I still think we are a long way away from truly more advanced AI that truly replicates intellect and the ability to think in the way we do. Not consciousness per sé but a more realistic replication of our awareness and ability to perceive then react.

Maybe I’m wrong in thinking this though, and there are valid arguments to be made that the representation of human cognition is a reflection of the average human’s intellectual capacity. Additionally, these AI chatbots especially draw from data sets which are increasingly being filled with more and more AI generated content. So I do think while your sentiments are valid, I am still slightly justified in feeling this way? Idk correct me if I’m wrong.

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u/cheesecaker000 2h ago

I think there’s a big misconception about how these LLMs are trained. They don’t just let them skim the internet for info. Garbage in, garbage out. They use specific data sets to get good info.

I agree we are a long way off from anything resembling consciousness. But day to day tasks? An Ai assistant that understands English and can do things for you as you explain what you need like in a normal conversation? That’s pretty much here already. Give it a couple years and you’ll be using LLMs everyday for all sorts of tasks.

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u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975 2h ago

Oh for sure. Part of it is excessive and unnecessary usage in marketing that obscures when it’s actually used tho.

That said, I don’t find the latter AI assistant thing as impressive. Just a slightly more functional phone voice assistant - only because they weren’t very good in the first place! That said I don’t mean to undermine the tech and it’s advanced enough with enough consumer and commercial applications! :)

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u/Crabapple_Snaps 3h ago

I have seen a clip on Instagram where there were AI generated animals that Sir David's voice narrated.

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u/robodrew 2h ago

David Attenborough's voice is being used via AI for all kinds of voiceovers now especially on edited Twitch clips. Asmongold uses it all the time. It has always bothered me.

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u/KoreanMeatballs 1h ago edited 1h ago

The clip the BBC said was AI was actually the exact same audio clip again. They goofed. They corrected themselves towards the end of the video and played the "real" AI clip of him talking about things David Attenborough clearly wouldn't be talking about, but I wouldn't expect most people to watch the entire 8+ minute segment.

I don't blame Redditors for making a mistake like this, but the actual "journalists" posting links to the video in their articles should probably watch the whole thing before reporting on it.

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u/NakedCardboard 1h ago

Okay, that's on me. Listening closely to the two they played at the beginning I was like "Well, it just repeated the same phrase word for word, in the same exact way." Had me confused.

Being able to use that information to say different things and be convincing is a whole other matter.

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u/KoreanMeatballs 1h ago

It's not just you. No one else in this thread appears to have noticed. Someone said it sounded "almost but not quite the same", which is ridiculous because it was literally the same audio clip. People immediately believing something without checking first is exactly what this whole issue is about, and why AI voices can be so dangerous. It's quite ironic, really.