Documentary maker and natural historian Sir David Attenborough has criticised using AI to clone his voice.
Online outlets in the US have reportedly been using his distinctive tones to deliver news bulletins about certain issues, including the recent election and the war in Ukraine.
“Having spent a lifetime trying to speak what I believe to be the truth, I am profoundly disturbed to find that these days, my identity is being stolen by others and greatly object to them using it to say whatever they wish,” Attenborough, 98, told the BBC on Monday.
BBC News broadcast a side-by-side comparison of an original voice trailer for Attenborough’s Asia nature documentary series, released earlier in November, and a version fabricated by AI. Many viewers would have been hard-pressed to tell which was the real trailer.
There’s little recourse for Attenborough, though, thanks to the limited protections offered to people from AI incursions.
"Our privacy and copyright laws aren’t up to date with what this new technology presents, so there’s very little that David Attenborough can do,” Dr Dominic Lees, a deepfake researcher and filmmaking professor, told the Guardian.
BBC News also published a response from the unnamed website from which the fake Attenborough clip was sourced.
The flippant reply was delivered using the same Attenborough voice model heard in the deepfake clip. “I am not David Attenborough. We are both male, British voices for sure. However, I am not David Attenborough, for anyone out there who may be confused,” it read.
AI-generated voice technology has already infiltrated key creative industries and been used in deepfake scams.
In 2023, Amazon announced its Virtual Voice programme to let authors create an AI-generated audiobook version of their books. It targeted Amazon’s KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, the largest self-publishing platform.
It caused a backlash among authors, concerned that AI-voiced audiobooks could become the norm, and not just for self-published works.
The use of AI was also one of the core reasons for the SAG-AFTRA video game strike, which began on July 26, 2024.
“It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that thousands of video game voice and movement performers have been on strike for 116 days, following more than 18 months of negotiations which failed to produce an agreement that includes fundamental consent, compensation and transparency guardrails around the use of A.I,” reads a SAG-AFTRA statement published in the wake of The Game Awards 2024 nominations.
