Extract from ABC News
This week Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson was shocked to hear her own voice used in tech company OpenAI's ChatGPT software.
However it wasn't actually her voice she was hearing; it just sounded like her, and OpenAI has since deactivated the sound-alike.
The actor had been approached by OpenAI to provide her own voice but declined.
It highlighted the growing issue of voice-cloning companies using AI technology to recreate the voices of humans.
And according to voice actors approached by the ABC who don't have Johansson's fame and clout, it can be difficult to prevent.
Jordan Fritz, a freelance voice artist from Western Australia, said business had been pretty good; he has done about 1,000 voiceovers for YouTube videos over the past few years.
But Mr Fritz told the ABC that a colleague had recently reached out to alert him that his voice was appearing on videos on channels he had nothing to do with.
He said he was frustrated but not surprised.
"I've been monitoring the rise of AI when it comes to voiceover work and how good it's been getting the last few years," Mr Fritz said.
"I've been seeing all the music covers online, with people basically recording a Drake song and then being able to use his voice, so it wasn't surprising."
Mr Fritz said he had already started losing work as a result of AI voice cloning.
"Over the last probably six months to 12 months I've seen like a 90 per cent drop in those smaller jobs like the YouTube channels.
"Even one of the bigger companies I work for mentioned that they had toyed with the idea of basically recording their original recording and then using AI to shift it to an Australian accent.
"I think a lot of people are shifting towards AI."
'Nothing I can do about it'
Mr Fritz is not alone with several voice actors speaking to the ABC about how they have had their voices cloned without consent.
To clone a voice, a company will mine — or scrape — the internet or a dataset to train software, like ChatGPT, to mimic a voice.
Sometimes it is similar to Mr Fritz's situation: someone they've never heard of has simply ripped their voice from the previous work they've done and used software to clone it.
But in Cooper Mortlock's case, he was working for a company and told he wasn't needed anymore, only to find later they were using a clone of his voice without his consent.
"Hearing my own voice being puppeteered back to me with a performance that I would not consider acceptable or good in any way was one of the most violating experiences I've ever had," he said.
"Someone took away a part of me and used it without my knowledge or consent or choice.
"I can't tell you the feelings that ran through my bones when I heard it."
Mr Mortlock said there was nothing he could do about it.
"We sent a cease-and-desist [letter] and they lawyered up and they said, 'We didn't use AI technology, and even if we had we would be within our rights to based on the contract'," he said.
"We don't really have a legal defence."
Now Mr Mortlock has had to change the contracts he signs but he fears that might not be enough — once a voice is on the internet, it's essentially available free for anyone to use with or without consent or even your knowledge.
"One of the actors who played the narrator for [the video game] Baldur's Gate 3 found out, because of how prevalent her voice is in the game, that her voice had been taken and used to write a rape story, which is incredibly horrific and violating," Mr Mortlock said.
And the voice actors approached by the ABC said they feared for the future of voice acting as a viable industry.
Thomas Burt has managed to live relatively comfortably off his voice acting; he used to do a lot of voiceovers for e-learning videos, the kind of thing you might watch as part of your training for a new job.
That work has plummeted and Mr Burt has seen a 40 to 50 per cent reduction in his income.
"A decent income in voiceover is gone for the future," he said.
"It's a bit like blacksmithing. We still have blacksmiths but I'd hate to be a blacksmith and try to rent an apartment in the inner west of Sydney."
After 15 years in the industry, Mr Burt was shocked at the pace of change. He said it had really only been a couple of years since voice cloning started to take over.
The situation, he said, had been disastrous for his mental health.
Mr Burt is also a voiceover teacher and is nervous about the future for his students.
"I don't know how many years the industry has left."
Cooper Mortlock is concerned about his livelihood but also what he sees as an inevitable reduction in quality stemming from the use of voice cloning.
"The machine might be passable. It might be good enough in some cases, but that's looking at the minimum viable product," he said.
"That's not how great projects are made. That's not how masterpieces are created."
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