Stephen Fry ‘Shocked’ After Discovering AI Ripped Off His Voice From ‘Harry Potter’ Audiobooks

Raquel 'Rocky' Harris
·2 min read
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Stephen Fry and his agents were mortified after they found out artificial intelligence ripped off the actor’s voice from “Harry Potter” audio books.

“I’m a proud member of [actors’ union SAG-AFTRA],” Fry said at the GogXFestival, per Fortune. “As you know, we’ve been on strike for three months now. And one of the burning issues is AI.”

The actor then played a snippet of his narration.

“I said not one word of that — it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” Fry said, who served as narrator for the “Harry Potter” series in between 1999 and 2007. “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.”

He added: “What you heard was not the result of a mashup. This is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence.”

AI and how it will be utilized has been a major pain point in the writers’ and actors’ strikes, among other issues. Many actors, writers and creatives are concerned of the abuse that could come with the implementation of artificial intelligence, particularly when it comes to use of image and likeness or completely being replaced by the technology.

Fry went on to break down the many ways in which AI could manipulate his voice and be added to any type of content without his consent or awareness.

“It could therefore have me read anything from a call to storm Parliament to hard porn, all without my knowledge and without my permission,” Fry said. “And this, what you just heard, was done without my knowledge. So 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.”

He continued: “You ain’t seen nothing yet. This is audio. It won’t be long until full deepfake videos are just as convincing.”

For all of TheWrap’s WGA strike coverage, read here.

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