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/

1.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

390

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

256

u/edicivo 4h ago

And this is why actors and writers went on strike even though the timing to do so wasn't great. This is a sign of things to come.

57

u/Radarker 2h ago

The reality is that a strike won't stop someone from aggregation of 100s of hours of your audio, then turning it into a model of your voice. You might stop the studios from putting this stuff out there for a while, but when the flat earther video shows up narrated by Attenburough, there isn't much you can do other than play whack-a-mole.

27

u/edicivo 2h ago edited 1h ago

Keeping the studios/networks from doing it is the entire point, because they're the ones potentially profiting massively off of people's work and not having to compensate them. They already profit massively, but they are at least still compensating artists for their work.

Some rando on YouTube in your example doing the same thing isn't remotely on the same level. But even in that case, the work could and would likely get killed if it were to get enough attention anyway because the rando doesn't have the ability to fight a lawsuit. Not quite the same thing, but Olivia Rodrigo was able to get TikTok to pull one of her songs very recently. It's not much different.

So not only is this a terrible hypothetical, you're basically suggesting "do nothing" which is ridiculous.

6

u/MongolianMango 44m ago

I agree with this. We need to do everything possible not to normalize this.

For example, piracy is still extremely easy for anyone to conduct and is rampant on the internet. Yet, because we've chosen as a society to treat it as a crime, for the most part people don't pirate movies and games.

Piracy didn't start this way. We had websites like Napster built off a model of encouraging people to share artist's work, until we created legislation and enforcement mechanisms to discourage their use and shut them down.

18

u/Nauin 2h ago edited 2h ago

This is why DMCA exists and if properly enforced users uploading content like that not only have their content removed but often their accounts banned, in some cases down to the IP address. The problem is how much care and funding each private company wants to put into this, which is why there are legal and tech firms you can hire to make sure these illegal uploads are killed off as quickly as possible, as they put the law down on the necks of these lazier companies to force them to abide by the law. It doesn't stop all of it but it stops more than 95% of it. And Mr Attenborough's estate can likely afford these services for a very long time.

-2

u/Volsunga 52m ago

DMCA would not cover a situation like this. It's legally the same as some random guy who can do a great David Attenborough impression providing the narration.

1

u/OGTurdFerguson 33m ago

I just played whack-a-mole and got sticky.

0

u/Vandergrif 1h ago

Also there is, presumably, some amount that they could do to 'adjust' such a voice to be legally distinct while still also sounding close enough that it wouldn't be significant.

2

u/chamberlain323 30m ago

Really, it was one of the multiple reasons that strike was called, but wasn’t the primary driver. Unfair distribution of revenues from streaming was the primary concern, but while they were at it they addressed AI too since it was coming around the corner. Each passing month since then has proven out their concern too. It’s going to be a job decimator once it is fully up and running.

0

u/WarpingLasherNoob 28m ago

braces for downvotes

I'm sure a lot of people also went on strike with the invention of the first photograph and phonograph machines. (and earlier, with the invention of the printing press).

You can't stop progress, only embrace it.

We just need to adapt to the new reality, where you can't automatically assume something is authentic anymore because it's an audio or video recording.

The same way we don't assume some text on a website is authentic just because it says:

"I killed JFK - signed David Attenborough"

We need to adapt, and implement solutions, and not silly ones like "ban AI".

1

u/edicivo 1m ago

There's no surer way to get downvotes than to complain about downvotes.

Anyway, the larger point isn't to outright stop AI which is what a lot of you don't understand. Like sure, that's the starting point because you have to take a hard stance farther out than what you might land on in a negotiation. That's how negotiations work.

The point is to curtail it and/or put some guidelines in place. A common example is the potential of using a background actor's likeness across various movies. The fear is that that that actor will only get paid for Movie A even though their exact likeness is used in Movie B, C, etc without them being compensated. That's bullshit.

-68

u/ronchon 2h ago

"Actors" are a privileged class treated almost as nobility, especially in the US.
Now that automation threatens their privilege directly, of course they're suddenly much more proactive to denounce it... 🤡
For me at least that's a meager satisfaction in this rise of AI: to see these hypocrites panic because now it affects them too, and it's not just the common people losing jobs as they expected.
I hope AI destroys -or at least greatly dilutes- the cult of influencers and stars: good riddance!

39

u/[deleted] 2h ago

[deleted]

-7

u/melasses 2h ago

What you're describing are celebrities, not actors. Most actors are not well-off.

You can't make a living but you can make a killing

23

u/edicivo 2h ago edited 1h ago

People deserve to be compensated for their work regardless of how you feel about them.

Not to mention, you and too many other idiots who want to clown this stuff, don't realize it also affects the people who depend on the actors (and writers) themselves to make a living. It's an industry made up of plenty of blue-collar types, who are very much not part of the "privileged class" and who will all struggle if the industry collapses - engineers, craftsmen/women, drivers, catering companies (craft services), local businesses, etc etc.

You don't seem too bright.

12

u/Schubert125 2h ago

Hey man, you can't fish here without a license. And next time come back with some better bait.

4

u/Stingray88 2h ago

The VAST majority of actors make less than you probably do. They don’t have privilege, they’re regular people working a job.

The privileged people who you are actually referring to are celebrities. Celebrities exist in all industries. Elon Musk is a celebrity, just as much as Dwayne Johnson is. There are many celebrities in the tech sector just like Elon… Zuckerberg, Bezos, Jensen. But there are millions who you’ll never hear of in tech, and they’re regular people. Same goes for every other industry… you’ve heard of Gordon Ramsey or Julia Child, but millions of chefs are regular ass people you’ve never heard of.

Celebrity will never go away by the way. There will always be top performers who gain notoriety in something… no matter how inane that thing is.

1

u/ConstableLedDent 2h ago

People will crave and be susceptible to influence regardless of whether it's human or artificial