Tim DaviesCEO Projekt Rising - The expert AI partner for SMEs

The ethical concerns around voice cloning technology

16 Jul 2024

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Short transcript excerpt of a conversation about ethical and copyright issues in voice cloning. Speakers discuss that while using actual actors' voices without permission can infringe copyright, voice actors can produce similar-sounding voices; they reference a recent controversy where OpenAI's ChatGPT voice was criticized for sounding like Scarlett Johansson and was pulled.

So you talk about Hollywood actors and actresses being used. They have been on strike, haven't they, because their voices and things will be used.
Yeah. So we can't actually use their voices, but we can use people who've got voices similar to them in style and nuance.
Yeah, yeah.
If you take somebody else's voice without their permission, that's obviously a copyright infringement. But there are an awful lot of very highly capable voice actors who will produce voices which sound similarly like. And that's what's recently happened with the ChatGPT voice launch, where there was a bit of a pushback because the voice sounded just like Scarlett Johansson from her role in her. And OpenAI claim it wasn't her voice, it was her voice actors. But they've still had to pull it due to the pushback. So now you can't talk with Scarlett Johansson on OpenAI's products. Unfortunately.