Voice Actors Say AI is Being Used to Fuel a Nightmarish Harassment Campaign
upstart writes:
Sure, there's been a lot of attention being paid to deep fakes of celebrities and major public figures. Still, with the advent of free or cheap AI-based voice synthesization software, anybody who has had their audio uploaded to the internet runs the risk of being deepfaked.
Vice first reported that voice actors and other, ordinary folks are being targeted with online harassment and doxxing attacks using their own voice. Specifically, these attacks targeted people with YouTube channels, podcasts, or streams. Several of these doxxing attempts also hit voice actors, some of whom have been especially critical about AI-generated content in the past.
[...] A few of the reported posts explicitly said they were generated using tech available from ElevenLabs. The company's Voice Lab software lets users clone voices and then generate new audio based on a text prompt. Of course, this free program let users produce deep faked audio of prominent people like Joe Rogan and Justin Roiland saying sexist or racist epithets. After users reported examples of those deep fakes to the company, ElevenLabs announced they were making VoiceLab only available to users of the paid version and was introducing more identity verification for new accounts.
[...] Schalk said he believes that voice actor unions will soon need to get involved and steer the conversation for any major corporation thinking AI-created voice is a way to "replace actors for the sake of saving dollars."
Pollock said he has joined with other voice actors on Vocal Variants, a trade group representing voice actors and other performers trying to push back against AI-generated voices and promote work contracts that still allow actors the right to their voice. He and other voice actors said the next best thing for Their trade would be a law that codifies their right to their vocal likenesses.
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