Imagine finding out that someone used AI to recreate your voice without your concern. Such is the nightmarish reality that all of us are living in right now. Many celebrities are often targeted by AI recreations of their voices, a somewhat amusing but also horrifying feat. Unfortunately, most aren’t willing to speak out against this trend, often for fear of backlash. Case in point, what just happened to the prolific voice actor, Erica Lindbeck.
As pointed out by GameRant, Lindbeck, who has a long list of voice acting credits like work on Fire Emblem Engage, God of War Ragnarok, and Persona 5, took herself off of Twitter after calling out an AI cover song for recreating her voice performance as Futaba Sakura, a prominent character in Persona 5 and its spin-off titles.
It’s unclear when and how everything unfolded but it’s believed this all started after she criticized the AI cover song, which apparently resulted in the internet piling on the cover song’s creator – a situation that Lindbeck would have preferred to avoid.
The satirical song, Bo Burnham’s Welcome to the Internet, contains explicit words and ideas, so it’s only fair for Lindbeck to express concern about the rendition that uses her voice and performance.
However, we still don’t know what exactly made her want to delete her Twitter account in the first place.
In the aftermath, many have expressed their support for her, with a majority agreeing with her stance against the use of AI against her concern.
More importantly, though, this incident has shed even more light on a delicate subject. The prevailing argument right now is that model training, which is a term used to refer to when AI software is trained by showing them something to use as a reference, doesn’t exactly infringe copyright. After all, it’s no different than, let’s say, an artist looking at other works of art for inspiration for their next piece or a writer reading another person’s work to get ideas on how to tackle their next article and so on. Even if someone trained an AI on Futaba Sakura, this doesn’t reproduce the work in question. Thus, there’s no harm done. But, in this case, the AI is used to generate Fubuka Sakura’s voice, which may be infringing on Erica Lindbeck’s ownership of her voice, or whoever might own the copyright to the voicework done for Fubuka Sakura.
In any case, it’s a tricky topic that’s causing a lot of tension in multiple industries. At the moment, there’s legitimate concern about how companies will rely on AI to do what they want. Marvel Studios recently caught flack for using AI to create the intro sequence for Secret Invasion, which obviously didn’t sit too well with fans. On the other hand, Valve has drawn the line on where it stands regarding AI-generated content in video games, putting the burden of proof on the developers.
Regardless of public opinion, companies, and even individuals, will likely not stop using AI however they see fit.
As for Lindbeck, it remains a mystery if she’s returning to Twitter, but this wouldn’t be the first time that toxicity online has forced a voice actor to go on a social media blackout and this certainly won’t be the last.
