A YouTuber had his voice cloned via AI technology by a company which then used it to narrate videos on its channel.
Jeff Geerling, an engineer who makes videos about Raspberry Pi computers and general electronics, was shocked when he discovered a manufacturer named Elecrow, headquartered in Shenzhen, China, was putting out videos with a voiceover that sounded suspiciously similar to his own.
“I was initially in disbelief; I thought it sounded like me, but I went to my wife and kids, and asked them if they would listen to the video and see what they thought; all of them, including my three-year-old, thought it was me, and were confused why I’d even ask about it,” Geerling tells Forbes.
The YouTuber was only made aware of his likeness being used after one of his subscribers tipped him off about the eerie similarity between Gerrling’s voice and the one on Elecrow’s channel.
“I felt a little betrayed as well, because I have communicated with Elecrow many times in the past, and they even proposed an ongoing business relationship since my YouTube audience is directly in the same field that they target with their products,” Geerling also tells Forbes.
Naturally, Geerling complained to Elecrow which responded swiftly, apologizing for its actions and blaming it on a member of its staff who was attempting to make the company’s videos more popular.
“We sincerely apologize for the unauthorized cloning and use of your voice,” writes Elecrow’s CEO Richard Lee. “These videos were produced and released without proper internal review by our company, which is a serious oversight for us. We have promptly removed all related videos and assure you that similar incidents will not occur again.”
Geerling says he finds the apology sincere and appreciates Lee taking responsibility.
“It is hard to guard against AI voice and image theft, with the tools that we already have today. But AI video and speech generation services may need to have stricter safeguards in place besides just a terms of service checkbox when creating voice or video clones,” Geerling tells Forbes.
While there’s seemingly been no harm done from this particular episode, it does speak to a dark future where anyone can clone a person’s likeness using AI tools. And it’s not just voice-only, yesterday Mark Zuckerberg showed off a technology that is capable of fully recreating influencers as AI figures that can be spoken to as if they were the real person.