If you can’t trust the voice of David Attenborough, what can you trust? | Zoe Williams

The world’s best-loved naturalist has had his voice cloned – and misused – by AI. Soon, we won’t believe anything we hear unless we are in the same room as the speaker

It sounds too fanciful and too outrageous to be true, but nothing is too outrageous for the world the tech bros have bequeathed us. The BBC has revealed that various websites and YouTube channels are using AI to clone the voice of David Attenborough and get him to say things – about Russia, about the US election – that surely he would never say.

It’s not the first time it has happened to a celebrity – Scarlett Johansson refused to license her voice to ChatGPT and accused them of creating it anyway, in a character called Sky. ChatGPT’s developer, OpenAI, said Sky was “a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice”, but it pulled the voice “out of respect for Ms Johansson”. Elsewhere, lawyers continue to tussle, using precedents that pre-date the existence of AI by several decades, which is to say with one hand tied behind their back.

If you can’t trust the voice of David Attenborough, what can you trust? | Zoe Williams

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