Stephen Fry ‘Shocked’ to Discover AI Stole His Voice From ‘Harry Potter’ Audiobooks and Replicated It Without Consent, Says His Agents ‘Went Ballistic’
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director Stephen Fry recently revealed at the CogX Festival (via Forbes) that his voice from the “Harry Potter” audiobooks was taken by AI software and replicated without his consent, much to the horror of both himself and his agents. “I’m a proud member of [actors’ union SAG-AFTRA].
As you know, we’ve been on strike for three months now. And one of the burning issues is AI,” Fry said before playing a clip of his voice narrating a historical documentary.
Only it wasn’t Fry’s voice. It was an AI replication of his voice. “I said not one word of that — it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” Fry said. “They used my reading of the seven volumes of the ‘Harry Potter’ books, and from that dataset an AI of my voice was created, and it made that new narration.” “What you heard was not the result of a mashup.
This is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence,” Fry added. “It could therefore have me read anything from a call to storm Parliament to hard porn, all without my knowledge and without my permission.
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