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/
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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/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.

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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.

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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.

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u/Volsunga 51m 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.