ElevenLabs’ Latest Release Highlights the Issue of Digital Necromancy
This offering by ElevenLabs is distinct from the ‘griefbots’ that are out there, Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, told The Deep View.
“Beyond the lack of consent, with its inherent lack of respect for people's autonomy, and beyond appropriation of something as personal as voice, there's the whole broader issue of misrepresentation,” she said. “This tech makes it easy to mislead people into thinking that key figures, in this case dead celebrities, said something that they never actually said. Given some people's affection toward such figures, that could be a boost to all kinds of messaging.”
Raicu said that this appropriation of dead celebrities as “vocal puppets to be played with” is part of a wider trend of tech companies trying to normalize the taking of all kinds of data without user consent.
Irina Raicu, director, Internet ethics, quoted by The Deep View.
The voices of legendary stars of stage and screen Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier are now part of the library of voices on Iconic Voices created by AI company, ElevenLabs. Photo by ElevenLabs.