In June 2023, Paul Skye Lehrman and his partner Linnea Sage were driving near their home in New York City, listening to a podcast about the ongoing strikes in Hollywood and how artificial intelligence (AI) could affect the industry.
The episode was of interest because the couple are voice-over performers and - like many other creatives - fear that human-sounding voice generators could soon be used to replace them.
This particular podcast had a unique hook – they interviewed an AI-powered chat bot, equipped with text-to-speech software, to ask how it thought the use of AI would affect jobs in Hollywood.
But, when it spoke, it sounded just like Mr Lehrman.
That night they spent hours online, searching for clues until they came across the site of text-to-speech platform Lovo. Once there, Ms Sage said she found a copy of her voice as well.
They have now filed a lawsuit against Lovo. The firm has not yet responded to that or the BBC’s requests for comment.
One day someone will invent a new internet with no bots, and people can be assured they are talking to a real human again. We will call it PersonNet!
Or we could go talk to our neighbors again like in the old days. Until the Boston Dynamic new Serialized Human Interface Technology robots start living 20 to a home and infiltrating neighborhoods to subvert dissidents and advertise for their corpo overlords.
Hmmm. Guess ill just live in my mind then.
Almost sounds like a sort of robotic gentrification… Hrm. Mildly concerning.