Actor Stephen Fry says his voice was stolen from the Harry Potter audiobooks and replicated by AI—and warns this is just the beginning
Actor Stephen Fry says his voice was stolen from the Harry Potter audiobooks and replicated by AI—and warns this is just the beginning
AI may be a buzzword on Wall Street, but on the West Coast it’s at the center of Hollywood’s biggest labor dispute in more than 50 years. Among those warning about the technology’s potential to cause harm is British actor and author Stephen Fry, who told an audience at the CogX Festival in London on Thursday about his personal experience of having his identity digitally cloned without his permission.
“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,” he said.
Actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, which has around 160,000 members, went on strike last month over pay, working conditions, and concerns related to the use of AI in the film industry. It joined the Writers Guild of America—a union representing thousands of Hollywood writers—which went on strike in early May, marking the industry’s biggest shutdown in more than six decades.
A key sticking point for actors on strike is the possibility that studios could use AI to make digitally replicate their image without compensating them fairly for using their likeness.
Speaking at a news conference as the strike was announced, union president Fran Drescher said AI “poses an existential threat” to creative industries, and said actors needed protection from having “their identity and talent exploited without consent and pay.”
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.”
Fry—who has appeared in movies including Gosford Park, V for Vendetta, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—is the narrator of the British Harry Potter audiobooks, while actor Jim Dale narrated the American version of the series.
“What you heard was not the result of a mash up, this is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence,” Fry told the audience at CogX Festival on Thursday.
“It could therefore have me read anything from a call to storm parliament to hard porn, all without my knowledge and without my permission. And this, what you just heard, was done without my knowledge. So I heard about this, I sent it to my agents on both sides of the Atlantic, and they went ballistic—they had no idea such a thing was possible.”
Fry added that when he discovered his voice was being used in projects without his consent, he saw it as just the beginning of an emerging threat to creative talent, warning his angry agents: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” “This is audio,” he said he told them. “It won’t be long until full deepfake videos are just as convincing.”
As AI technology has advanced, doctored footage of celebrities and world leaders—known as deepfakes—has been circulating with increasing frequency, prompting warnings from experts about artificial intelligence risks. Fry warned on Thursday that those technologies only had further to go.
“We have to think about [AI] like the first automobile: impressive but not the finished article,” he said, noting that when cars were invented no one could have envisioned how widespread they are today.
“Tech is not a noun, it is a verb, it is always moving,” he said. “What we have now is not what will be. When it comes to AI models, what we have now will advance at a faster rate than any technology we have ever seen. One thing we can all agree on: it’s a f***ing weird time to be alive.”
Not the first
Fry isn’t the only famous actor to publicly vocalize their concerns about AI and its place in the film industry.
At a U.K. rally held in support of the SAG-AFTRA strike over the summer, Emmy-winning Succession star Brian Cox shared an anecdote about a friend in the industry who had been told “in no uncertain terms” that a studio would keep his image and do what they liked with it.
“That is a completely unacceptable position,” Cox said. “And that is the position that we should be really fighting against, because that is the worst aspect. The wages are one thing, but the worst aspect is the whole idea of AI and what AI can do to us.”
Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff during a panel event at this year’s Dreamforce conference that he had concerns about the rise of AI in Hollywood.
“We have a real chance, if we are irresponsible, of cannibalizing ourselves and creating this digital god that we’ll bow to, and we’ll all of a sudden become tools of this tool,” he said.
Meanwhile, Star Trek and Mission Impossible star Simon Pegg has called AI “worrying” for actors.
“We’re looking at being replaced in some ways,” he said at the rally in London in July. “We have to be compensated and we have to have some say in how [our image is] used. I don’t want to turn up in an advert for something I disagree with… I want to be able to hang on to my image, and voice, and know where it’s going.”
A spokesperson for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the entertainment industry’s official collective bargaining representative, was not available for comment when contacted by Fortune.
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I love Stephan, and I understand why he's upset, but I hate copyright and think the entire world would be better off without trademarks, copyright, etc. It's the one thing I agree with China on. It only serves to hinder innovation and make people obscenely rich from small efforts.
They serve a purpose for companies. Consider if we didn't have unique usernames, someone could post threats under the name "Jokedeity" and there would be confusion over where the liability sat. Copywrite and Trademark is a protection for both producers of things and content, and for the users. It's an attestment to the source and quality, and identifies liability in the case of failures.
I'm fine with that. Prove it was me. There are websites I've tried to use this username on and it was already taken.
Put the shoe on the other foot. You bought a "Coke" and it poisoned your child. Who do you sue for the manufacturing failure?
Coke company that bottled it? That's easily the weakest strawman I've ever seen. Like, do you honestly believe people in China have no way to handle companies putting poison in bottles? Check out the Behind the Bastards episode on baby formula to see what happens when you have no accountability for companies and know that the country would not be as strong as it is today if that were still commonly happening.
Good luck figuring out who bottled it if everyone can use the logo and bottle design.
So you're really just going to pretend certain countries don't exist just fine, exactly like this? Chinese citizens can and do sue companies for issues when they arise. Your imagination and indoctrination are getting the best of you. You're picturing a world where you walk down the street and there's two identical Starbucks next to each other and only one is the "real" one. That's silly fantasy bullshit, and deep down, you know it.
You didn’t answer my question of who you sue when anyone can use the logo and bottle design.
I brought up one question and your essay couldn’t answer it.
You sue the person who sold it and let them work out who was at fault. That's the way it's always worked in the USA.
If there are multiple companies using the same trademarks how do you know which company to sue?
You ignore everything I say and then cry when you suggest I ignored one thing you said. I would sue the company that bottled the drink, as I DID state before. There are shipping labels, everything shipped in America is heavily tracked, and like a million other things. THIS IS A FANTASY YOU'RE TRYING TO PRETEND IS REAL.
How do you prevent multiple companies from having the same name?
Would the shipping label be copyrighted so it couldn’t be forged?
Why would you have to? What's your obsession with labels? Go pick up an edible product in your home, you see all those random marks printed on it with numbers and letters you don't understand? Those aren't just for fun, they can tell you where a product comes from and when it was made, and that's ALREADY IN PLACE, so this weird strawman you're stuck on, literally means nothing to me.
Coke company that bottled it?
Fly-by-night company that makes knockoffs and sells to distributors. Distributors are confused because they look identical and they lie and say it's from Coca-Cola company. They do this for dozens of brands and have heavy metals in many of their products.
By the time people figure out a product has been tainted by this copycat, they are gone and it's difficult to tell if a rep if from the actual company or this copycat.
Congrats. Now you know what it's like trying to buy products on Amazon, who doesn't care about copycats. Now your family has been poisoned and needs a new liver.
I'm American. I don't know where you're from, but there are so many points in that fantasy you just concocted that absolutely would be the stopping point here in America. You guys really need to take a second and step back and realize that if all this shit you're fantasizing was possible, we'd already be fucked. There are so many rules and regulations that would prevent this from happening, that have NOTHING to do with copyright. Shipping in America is HEAVILY regulated and the fines are extreme, not at all worth the risk of purposefully putting out dangerous product.
How are artists protected without copyright? Do you really believe what artists do is small effort and thus don’t deserve protection.
Without copyright people get rich with even smaller effort. If I write a book and publish it online some big publisher will just steal the work and republish, print and sell it under their own name and because there is no copyright there is nothing I can do.
I don't care if they're protected. Honestly. I don't care. I don't charge for any of the music or art I've ever produced and I don't buy art. I literally just do not care even 1% about artists crying about their lost money.
Why don’t you care? Why would people even make art if their work would just get stolen? In a world without copyright only the rich would be able to make art full time. And it’s not just about art. Stuff like software is also under copyright.
I don't really think you should be able to make art full time and make a living from just that.
What the fuck
I guess I better let my mate and his band know. Sorry guys, but you shouldn't be making money from art - go work in a Tesco and stack shelves, cunts.
I am not an artist, I don't support artists or believe artists should be supported
Good job man you did it
It's fine if you don't care and don't care if your art or music you've produced is stolen. But I hope you understand that there are many people who do appreciate art and who, after spending a big chunk of their precious time making their art, they want to have a say on where, when and how their art is used. Because it's something they created and put their heart into.
If you spend days, weeks, months, working on a project, even if it's not art-related, and someone walks by and steals what you've worked hard for and claims it as their own or does whatever they want with it without your consent, how would you feel about that? Do you feel like anyone should just be allowed to do that? If you spent that much time working on something and it only takes a few seconds for someone to steal or copy what you made and then starts earning money off of that while you're not getting anything in return, would you feel like your hard work was in vain, or would you be okay with that?
I think China has a nuanced position on the issue. It's not a free for all over there. Unless we're talking about some instances of private-public cooperation in business.