Did a tech giant clone this artist’s voice for AI?

my name's Greg Marston I'm a professional voice-over actor some 30 years or more and my voice is being used and copied and cloned Greg Marston is a canary in the computerized Coal Mine a David against the Goliath of big Tech as the Titans scramble to dominate the artificial intelligence market look something's happening in an AI llms such as chat GPT have taken the World by storm welcome to IBM think 2023 for over a decade IBM's Flagship supercomputer Watson was a Pioneer in artificial intelligence Watson what is Executor right same category 1600 answer in 2011 the computer made headlines beating humans on the Colts Us game show Jeopardy today IBM's Watson is a brand that provides business software helping IBM generate over 60 billion dollars a year one of Watson's services will turn your text into human speech but one of the voices it uses is a clone of Greg's used he says without consent hello my name is Connor my voice was described as polished and professional so you are corner effectively yes this website is revoisa a third-party site where you can buy AI generated voiceovers the companies said they bought the clone of Greg's voice from IBM and IBM obtained the Clone when Greg recorded a session for the company 20 years ago before this software was a developed product he now finds himself competing for work against the clone of himself now you decide a release form allowing IBM to use your voice surely that grants and permission to do whatever they like now in respect to the session that was recorded and the words that I spoke from the scripts that I was given but as far as I'm concerned not to carte blanche offer my voice and all of my characteristics and IP and so forth to the whole world and make money out of it do you feel that you were misled on what they were planning to do with your voice recording I feel that the usage of it today is nothing like what I was led to believe that it was when I actually did the session and so today I'm faced potentially with the situation where my voice is cloned and anybody can go and effectively buy the software to use it to have me say whatever they want under any circumstance for any reason and that's the disturbing part of the whole story this dispute is a fast growing conflict between the billion dollar companies who wield artificial intelligence and those whose labor it utilized who now find their livelihoods under existential threats Greg's Union is seeing more cases like his Greg's case highlights just how vulnerable performers are as we move forward with this Innovation and we are seeing more and more members get in touch with the Union to seek support I think if we don't see urgent action from the government there could be serious dystopian consequences for the creative industry but also broader Society Dr pavi is a legal academic looking at Gregor's case and the legislation being developed here on artificial intelligence she says that we're at the beginning of a standoff with big tech people will also make contracts very similar to Greg's without realizing so when you're using a social media platform you're uploading videos of yourself sound of yourself photographs and you would have clicked yes I agree to terms and conditions that will give a lot of permission to the social media platform to do what they want with your content today we absolutely need better rights clearer rights as to what happens to your voice or your face or your body when it's recorded in digital media precisely because AI is able to clone you make faithful reproductions of you in a way that is unprecedented great is now written to IBM asking for them to remove the clone of his voice from their database in response the company told us IBM is committed to fairness in the development and use of our artificial intelligence tools we are aware of the concern raised by Mr Marston and as we are discussing it with him correctly we have no further comment at this time on the south coast Greg who has asked for his voice to be returned knows he's up against a powerful tide if a voice is taken away from you or given to somebody else to sell and therefore your clients aren't coming to you anymore then you don't earn a living anymore Greg's maybe one story in one sector but this is a front line of a battle that will engulf us all

Channel: Channel 4 News

Views: 8,722

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Id: s-M1wWf4wvg

Length: 5min 11sec (311 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023