Stage and voice actress Sara Poyzer was unwittingly informed that she had been replaced by an artificial intelligence, the Mamma Mia star revealed on Tuesday.
Poyzer posted the text of an email message he received from an anonymous production company saying his voice services were no longer needed by the BBC because the broadcaster had given permission to use AI-generated voices instead.
“Sorry for the delay,” the message said. “We have received approval from the BBC to use AI-generated voices, so we no longer need Sara.”
“Sobering,” she commented with a sad face emoji. She tagged the Twitter accounts of the BBC Arts channel and Equity, the British trade union representing professional performers and other creative workers.
Fans and fellow actors reacted to Poyser’s plight with a mixture of sympathy and anger.
Artist and media personality Nathan Wyburn responded on Twitter: “It’s happened to me many times with myself and art projects.” “I’m sorry this happened!”
Composer Rob Lord added: “It’s absolutely terrible.” “We need to do something about this ASAP, starting with hiring you for this job!”
A representative for Poyzer did not immediately respond. detoxification Request for comment. The BBC confirmed this: deadline It says it will use AI to narrate a “highly sensitive documentary” where the contributor is “close to death and currently unable to speak.”
It doesn’t seem like Poyzer was a contributor to the problem, and it’s unclear why her voice actor was sought out in the first place.
“We have been working closely with the family to explore how best to represent the contributor’s voice at the end of the film,” the BBC said. “With these very special circumstances and the family’s wishes in mind, we agreed to use AI for short segments to recreate voices that can no longer be heard.”
The broadcaster said the use of AI will be prominently revealed when it appears in the film.
The controversy is not new to the BBC, which admitted on Tuesday that it had used generative AI to create marketing images for the new season of Doctor Who.
“We followed all BBC editorial compliance processes and the final text was checked and approved by a member of the marketing team before being sent,” the BBC said in a statement, adding: “We have no plans to do this again.” Please promote Doctor Who.”
Despite the BBC’s contrition over the use of AI in Doctor Who, the network has not changed its overall stance on the use of generative AI. Voice Squad, the voice acting agency that represents Poyzer, condemned this.
Voice Squad said: “We are extremely disappointed with the response from the production company, especially as this is a BBC project.” daily mail. “The BBC has always championed the quality of its factual and dramatic broadcasts.
“As a voice talent agency, we believe AI is dangerous to the entire industry, eliminating the work of artists who have spent three years training at drama school and years of honing their craft,” the company added.
Using artificial intelligence to replace human talent was one of the key sticking points of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike, which lasted several months last year after the technology rapidly advanced and spread after OpenAI released a public version of ChatGPT in late 2022. It was. .
By 2024, AI will be widely used to create AI-generated images, music, video, and audio. AI tools like Runway, Murf, and OpenAI’s Sora have revolutionized content creation. Whether it’s a script, a book, a song, an image, or a video, things that used to take humans days or weeks to create have become easier using technology.
Yesterday, Open AI announced an example of voice cloning enabled by its new speech engine, which requires only 15 seconds of recorded speech to produce a convincing copy.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.