AI takes YouTuber's voice — alleged offending videos have now been unlisted: Updated

Geerling's snapshot of the Elecrow videos
(Image credit: YouTube / Elecrow / Jeff Geerling)

Update 9/23 07:34 PT

Elecrow has responded to our request for comment with this statement

"On the morning of September 23, our company received an email from Jeff messaged that our ESP series tutorial videos may infringed upon his voice cloning rights, along with the video content. First of all, We recognize that this is a very basic and serious issue, and have promptly launched an internal investigation. Through the investigation, we found out that the video was made by one of our employees." The employee was "not fully familiarized with our company culture or received enough training." The statement goes on to say that the employee did not consider the "copyright issue" and that the infringing videos were released without management approval.

Elecrow's CEO has responded directly to Geerling and offered compensation to Geerling for the issue. We have reached out to Jeff Geerling for his comment.

Elecrow has removed the videos, citing that it is a "direct response to the error in our work". Internal training with the marketing team will see an improved content review mechanism that will prevent future infringements.

Original Article

Renowned Raspberry Pi expert and YouTuber Jeff Geerling joins Scarlett Johansson on the list of people impersonated by AI. In his latest video, Geerling compares his own voice to an AI-generated voice used in a series of Elecrow tutorial videos.

They stole my voice with AI - YouTube They stole my voice with AI - YouTube
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In Geerling's video, entitled "They stole my voice with AI", Geerling talks about how he thinks his voice was cloned. There is no evidence, but Geerling believes that the AI voice was trained on his videos and then used to narrate a series of Elecrow tutorials for the Raspberry Pi Pico and the ESP32. Topics that Geerling also covers in his videos. Geerling has covered Elecrow's products on his channel, reviewing the CrowPi 2, and he states that he "didn't have a bad relationship with them [Elecrow] in the past."

As of checking on September 23, 2024, all of the Elecrow videos that Geerling links to, have been made unavailable, possibly due to the highlighted situation. Looking back through Elecrow's videos, we cannot find any videos that sound like Geerling. But, many AI-generated voiceovers are being used in its product videos.

Earlier this year, an "eerily similar" clone of Scarlett Johansson's voice was used as the basis of OpenAI's "Sky" AI voice. According to an NBC report, Johansson was approached by Sam Altman in September 2023, as he sought to hire her to voice the GPT-4o chatbot. Johansson ultimately declined but was then alerted to "Sky" and its vocal similarities. Geerling comments that because of this, he thought that companies were being "very careful with the AI voices that they use". According to Geerling, he is unaware of any legal precedent for the unauthorized use of AI voice cloning. There is precedent for "not using someone's voice in commercial work without their consent", covered under the US Supreme Court case between Bette Midler and Ford Motor Company. Middler versus Ford covers the user of a Bette Midler impersonator used in a series of Ford commercials in the 1980s.

Geerling was keen for Elecrow to take down the videos, and it seems with the video series now being unavailable that they have complied. We've reached out to Elecrow, offering a right to reply. We will update this story with a response.

Les Pounder

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

TOPICS
  • Giroro
    You can't copyright your voice.

    Even if things change so you could, how would that even work? How famous or influential should somebody be before special rights kick in to let them stop people/robots from sounding similar? What metrics should we use to determine how famous somebody is? Should we make a national registry of protected famous people? If so, who gets to decide who's allowed on that list? What about somebody who's natural speaking voice sounds exactly like a celebrity? What about parody? What about public figures?

    No, how it works is that uppity celebrities and influencers get to use their amplified voices to cry victim from their ivory towers, and companies get to choose to back down when they think the complaining might hurt their bottom line. It's annoying, but anything else we can try will just make life worse for the low caste non-elite, non-celebrities like me and you. On the plus side, this means we can just completely ignore the drama. These people could solve their problems by building giant robots to fistfight on the moon, for all that their pretentious bickering and drama will ever affect me.
    Reply
  • drinking12many
    There is an interesting argument to be made on this, what if someone does sound like someone else? For example, there are comedians etc that do a darn fine job impersonating people. What if my natural voice sounds very close to someone else and they use my voice. I don't see long-term how most of this gets resolved in a legal respect as unless you can prove the AI was trained on that specific voice ie through court discovery etc. What if it wasn't? Then can they continue to use that voice? I get it that people should have some say but with billions of people on the planet its not unfathomable that many of us sound similar. If they try to use it as a celebrity endorsement then sure absolutely, but if it just somewhat sounds like someone I think that's harder to say it deserves compensation.
    Reply
  • Notton
    Giroro said:
    You can't copyright your voice.
    That's correct

    But what you do have is publicity rights, as in you get to determine who can profit off of your voice.
    There is established case law in Sinatra v Goodyear (1970)
    Reply
  • derekullo
    Giroro said:
    You can't copyright your voice.

    Even if things change so you could, how would that even work? How famous or influential should somebody be before special rights kick in to let them stop people/robots from sounding similar? What metrics should we use to determine how famous somebody is? Should we make a national registry of protected famous people? If so, who gets to decide who's allowed on that list? What about somebody who's natural speaking voice sounds exactly like a celebrity? What about parody? What about public figures?

    No, how it works is that uppity celebrities and influencers get to use their amplified voices to cry victim from their ivory towers, and companies get to choose to back down when they think the complaining might hurt their bottom line. It's annoying, but anything else we can try will just make life worse for the low caste non-elite, non-celebrities like me and you. On the plus side, this means we can just completely ignore the drama. These people could solve their problems by building giant robots to fistfight on the moon, for all that their pretentious bickering and drama will ever affect me.
    The reason the "famous or influential" are doing this is their voice/appearance/likeness is how they make their money.
    If Youtube was suddenly flooded with AI videos of Jeff Geerling and Scarlett Johansson moving to Antarctica and starting a peach farm in a homemade bio-dome and asked for donations to keep the power on so they don't die, people may not believe it is fake ... I've watched stranger shows :p
    This would have the real possibility of watering down their brand/image.

    Taken a step further the "famous or influential" could be rendered unneeded, no pun intended, if they refused to appear in a movie and are simply CGI/AI inserted, appearance and voice included.
    Reply
  • Air2004
    derekullo said:
    The reason the "famous or influential" are doing this is their voice/appearance/likeness is how they make their money.
    If Youtube was suddenly flooded with AI videos of Jeff Geerling and Scarlett Johansson moving to Antarctica and starting a peach farm in a homemade bio-dome and asked for donations to keep the power on so they don't die, people may not believe it is fake ... I've watched stranger shows :p
    This would have the real possibility of watering down their brand/image.

    Taken a step further the "famous or influential" could be rendered unneeded, no pun intended, if they refused to appear in a movie and are simply CGI/AI inserted, appearance and voice included.
    Anytime that an AI voice is used in a commercial/movie/song that sounds like its impersonating a celebrity/politician/sports figure ect. A voice over should have to come in with a warning that the following voice is AI generated blah blah blah before actually using said voice... that may stop the shenanigans.... also, a visual warning should appear on screen while said voice clone is speaking.
    Reply
  • ottonis
    Oh yes, right, an "employee" is to be blamed - probably the cheapest possible excuse since "the dog ate my homework".
    Reply