Striking actor Stephen Fry says his voice was stolen from the Harry Potter audiobooks and replicated by AI
Striking actor Stephen Fry says his voice was stolen from the Harry Potter audiobooks and replicated by AI
The actor told an audience in London that AI was a “burning issue” for actors.
The actor told an audience in London that AI was a “burning issue” for actors.
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His voice wasn't stolen, it's still right where he left it.
Fair enough. It's not theft, it's something else.
But that's just semantics, though.
The point is that his voice is being used without his permission, and that companies, profiteering people, and scammers will do so using his voice and the voices others. He likely wants some kind of law against this kind of stuff.
It's emotionally charged semantics.
It’s emotionally charging to hear your own voice saying things you did not. Dismissing a victim describing what happened because they’re emotional about how they were wronged doesn’t make sense to me.
How is this different from a human doing an impersonation?
Because it can be done fast, reliably and at scale.
This, and it's not a human. All these analogies trying to liken a learning algorithm to a learning human are not correct. An LLM is not a human.
Our entire society would collapse if we couldn't do things fast, reliably, and at scale.
Yes, but if “things” is replaced by scamming artists, that’s a shitty society
Artists aren't being scammed. They're being replaced by automated systems. It's the same thing that happened to weavers and glassblowers. The issue isn't that their job is being automated. It's that people replaced by automation aren't compensated. Blame the game, not the players.
It’s much closer to having glass blowing artists designs, perfectly replicated in an automated fashion, and at scale— and without compensation to the artist. I would argue that it is tantamount to being scammed.
In this specific case, it's more like a bunch of glassblowers were being paid to make designs on behalf of a company. Then they went on strike, and the company decided it would be cheaper to replicate their designs with an automated system than to meet the workers' demands.
The strike came after the jobs began to be replaced. They can currently mimic a few glass blown designs, and the strike is aimed at making sure that glass blowers don’t give more ammo to the animators.
Yes, but this is a new tool with new implications.
I don't think it's a particularly odious mental challenge to understand that we're not upset about the general concept of doing things at scale, and that it depends on what the thing in question is.
For instance, you'd probably not be terribly upset about me randomly approaching you on the street once - mildly annoyed at most. You'd probably be much more upset if I followed you around 24/7 every time you entered a public space and kept badgering you.
Can you seriously not answer that question yourself?
well, you seem to have trouble doing it
You could say it’s not, which means in US law at least, it’s settled and they could be sued.
You know what the difference is, trying to act otherwise is just being obtuse.
There was a difference between complete duplication and impersonation for the purposes of satire.
Can't fake timbre.
Largely? The lack of convincing emotional range.
If you made a painting for me, and then I started making copies of it without your permission and selling them off, while I might not have stolen the physical painting, I have stolen your art.
Just because they didn't rip his larynx out of his throat, doesn't mean you can't steal someone's voice.
We're getting into samantics but it's counterfeit not stolen.
It would be more like if you made a painting for me, and I then used that to replicate your artistic style and used that to make new paintings without your permission and passed it off as your work.
Well, I just printed a picture of the Mona Lisa.
Did I steal the Mona Lisa? Or did I just copy it? Reproduce it?
You’re also not causing da Vinci to potentially miss out on jobs by copying it. You’re also not taking away his ability to say no to something he doesn’t want to be associated with.
That's fine. I'm not arguing this is a bad thing, I'm just being pedantic about the word theft.
Having your voice used to say things you didn't say is a terrifying prospect. Combined with deep faking takes it one step further.
But is it technically theft?
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Yes, actually. In the same way as copyright infringement or identity theft could be considered so.
Wow the court obviously got this one wrong. Imitation is in no way stealing someone's voice.
Not to mention with billions of people walking around is anyone's voice really unique? I have met hundreds of people in my life who sound so much alike it is hard to distinguish them.
Your link didn't say anything about theft...
The idea obviously doesn't apply to the public domain.
Jfc the pedantry.
I think it was a joke
No, the use of words matter when having a debate. "Theft" is an emotionally charged word that has a lot of implications that don't actually map well to what's going on here. It's not a good word to be using for this.
Seems to map pretty well. I’ve looked up a handful of definitions of theft and looking at it from an emotionless perspective it seems to fit. To take something without permission or the right to. I don’t really see where the removal of a finite resource is required.
Thats why I figured that comment was just a dad joke.
When you steal something the person you stole it from doesn't have it any more. That's why copyright violation is covered by an entirely different set of laws from theft.
This isn't even copying, really, since the end result is not the same as anything in the source material.
Lots of people may want it to be illegal, may want to call it theft, but that won't make it so when they take it to court.
“When you steal something the person you stole it from doesn't have it any more.”
Idk “identity theft” is a crime but you don’t actually remove the persons identity from them either. And also digital reproduction like in the case of piracy doesn’t remove a copy from the author but that is also illegal and is also considered theft. So I'm not really sure where you’re getting this idea that something isn’t both considered theft and a crime if it doesn't remove a copy from the original owner, there are multiple examples to the contrary.
And also digital reproduction like in the case of piracy doesn’t remove a copy from the author but that is also illegal and is also considered theft.
No, it is considered copyright violation. That's a crime too (well, often a civil tort) but it is not theft. It's a different crime.
If you want something to be illegal there needs to be an actual law making it illegal. There isn't one in the case of AI training because it isn't theft and it isn't copyright violation. This is a new thing and new things are not illegal by default.
Calling it "theft" is simply incorrect, and meaningfully so since it's an emotionally charged and prejudicial term.
You skipped the identity theft part because I guess it kinda takes all the wind out of your argument lol.
Even then, “Theft” isn’t a single unique crime or law that’s distinct from copyright infringement, it’s an umbrella term. What you’re thinking of as the crime of “theft” is “larceny”, which actually does refer to taking physical property specifically. But Stephen Fry didn’t use the term Larceny here.
Copyright infringement when dealing with the theft of intellectual property is a type of theft. And since the rights to your voice and or performance is a thing you can own, it can easily be considered theft. It doesn’t need a new law, it’s just a new way to commit an old crime.
You skipped the identity theft part because I guess it kinda takes all the wind out of your argument lol.
I skipped it because it's not related to what's going on here. "Identity theft" is fraud, not just impersonation. People impersonate other people with no problem, eg this Dolly Parton impersonation contest that was the first hit when I went googling for "look-alike contest". You could perhaps use AI voice emulation as part of an identity theft scheme, but the crime is in how it's used not in the emulation itself.
Copyright infringement when dealing with the theft of intellectual property is a type of theft.
No, it is emphatically not a type of theft. That's the fundamental point you keep missing here.
Judges have explicitly and specifically said that this is not the case. In Dowling v. United States the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that copyright infringement was not stealing. This is a legal matter, which is not subject to personal opinion - it's not theft. Full stop.
The fact remains that in the case of identity theft, it is not the case that the thing being stolen must be a singular finite thing that is removed from your possession, which directly contradicts your original statement, which your entire argument depends on. You claim that it isn’t theft because his voice is “still where he left it”. Well in the crime of identity theft your identity remains right where you left it. This is the point you keep missing.
As for the Dowling v. United States ruling, it’s not the case that the judge held that copyright infringement isn’t theft, you’ve misinterpreted it entirely. What was held was that “Copies of copyrighted works cannot be regarded as "stolen property" for the purposes of a prosecution under the National Stolen Property Act of 1934.”
That is a very narrow ruling that clarified the definition of stolen property only as it applies to potential prosecution over law unrelated to copyright infringement. Like I said, there are different types of theft, and this ruling simply solidified the difference between crimes of the nature of theft, and larceny.
The point is loss. You have to show you were damaged. In this case fry isn't losing anything.
He’s losing work and the effectiveness of his strike. Either they want his voice and they’d pay for it if he wasn’t striking, in which case his literal voice is working against his figurative one against his will, or they just need a voice and there was no fucking reason to steal a real person’s.
You have to prove that in court. And no he's not losing work cuz theres no one paying in the first place. Chatgpt didn't get a job over him. No one said oh we don't need him to do this voice-over we have ai.
Also Remember we are not talking about replicating his voice we are talking about training an AI with it. Technically different subjects.
He has to prove it in court if he wants accurate compensation, but that’s not really on the table atm.
Did you read the article? I’ll quote the relevant section.
During his speech at CogX Festival on Thursday, Fry played a clip to the audience of an AI system mimicking his voice to narrate a historical documentary.
“I said not one word of that—it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” he 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.”
They are replicating his voice.
FaceDeer stop being an inhuman techbro about ai for 5 minutes challenge
What word or phrase would you have used in the headline ?
"Copied" or "mimicked" would be more accurate.
Hornswaggled?
I’ll go for ‘captured’ which is both figuratively and literally accurate
Copyright infringement, which, in this context, is still a seriously concerning crime.
It's not copyright infringement. You can't copyright a style, which is basically what a voice amounts to.
This is something new. It's a way of taking something that we always thought of as belonging to a person, and using it without their permission.
At the moment the closest thing is trademark infringement, assuming you could trademark your personal identity (which you can't). The harms are basically the same, deliberately passing off something cheap or dodgy as if it was associated with a particular entity. Doesn't matter if the entity is Stephen fry or Pepsi Max.
It is, as a matter of fact. When Fry recorded his voice for those audiobooks, they were copyrighted. Reproducing the contents of those works as they have is, arguably a violation of copyright.
And when you compare Steven Frye to Pepsi Max, that’s a false equivalence, because you’re comparing a copyrighted material to a trademarked brand which are two different things.
Still, to your point of theft, nobody is taking anything from anyone. They are using something without permission, and that still falls squarely as copyright infringement, not theft.
Reproducing the contents of those works as they have is
This did not occur.
When they reproduced Fry’s voice with an AI based on what they captured from the copyrighted audiobook, that’s precisely what happened. Just because you refuse to understand or admit it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
That's not reproduction of content so isn't a copyright violation. Not shouldn't be. Literally right now is not.
The whole reason people are so up in arms about this is that we do not currently have laws or even standards that accurately police this kind of thing.
That is not for you to decide. That is for a court to decide. By the letter of the law, and how current copyright law is written, it very clearly is.