Stephen Fry has cautioned against the use of the AI, using his own experience to highlight possible dangers.
Speaking at the tech-based CogX festival in London, he played a clip of a history documentary that faked his voice, without his knowledge. It appears as though the actor is narrating the show but the AI-generated voice was actually created by technology learning from Fry reading all seven of the Harry Potter audiobooks.
“I said not one word of that, it was a machine,” Fry told attendees, as reported by the Guardian. “Yes, it shocked me. 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.
“It could… 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.
“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 is not the only actor raising concerns about the use of AI. Both the WGA (the writers’ union) and SAG-AFTRA (the actors’ union) are currently striking, with part of the reason being AI generation of content.
As a self-described “proud member” of SAG-AFTRA, Fry himself is not taking part in new projects during the strikes.
Moving even further with AI, Fry went on to warn that deepfakes are not too far away. Indeed, some very convincing deepfakes have already surfaced online, largely for comedic purposes.
Deepfake technology can manipulate footage or images to create photos or videos of people not based on reality. This means that a video could both look and sound like someone who has no idea their likeness is being used.
Some examples include an entirely fake collab between Drake and The Weeknd. Drake’s label swiftly took the music down, but not before it was listened to thousands of times.
For Fry, the unknown areas that AI could grow into and the unforeseen problems it could cause are his main concern.
“We have to think about [AI] like the first automobile: impressive but not the finished article,” Fry explained. “Tech is not a noun, it is a verb, it is always moving.
“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.”
