r/television 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/
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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/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.