Konami has had to quickly backpedal and delete two videos from the recent Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship, as it contained a stolen voice.
Last month, Konami announced that it would start using AI commentators to get around language barriers. Now, it has had to erase videos because they contain a stolen copy of a voice actress’s voice.
Hibiku Yamamura got onto X, formerly Twitter, to state that she had found her voice being used in official Konami broadcasts without her permission:
“No matter how I listen, it’s unmistakably my voice. But it’s clearly not me—my voice is reading text I’ve never read before. Somewhere out there, without my knowledge. And countless people who don’t know this are listening to that narration…
“When I think that the AI narrations casually playing on X, Instagram, YouTube, and the like might include voices used without the person’s intent, it makes my chest feel heavy, and it’s become hard to open social media.”
This happened because Konami adopted to use the “open-source speech synthesis model “Anneli””. In its statement, Konami states:
“We respect all creators and have decided to start investigating the situation and stop publishing the following videos using the corresponding speech synthesis model.”
It’s not just Yu-Gi-Oh; generative AI just keeps stealing people’s likenesses
This is part of the wider Aivis Project, which focuses on voice replication. However, as with many other generative AI projects, it’s built on stolen data. There have now been multiple instances of voice actors, influencers, or other content creators discovering that they’ve had their likeness or voice stolen by another company.
Last month, The First Descendant from Nexon was found to be using the likeness of video maker, DanieltheDemon. Elsewhere, a New York judge has allowed for a voice-over lawsuit to go ahead, after two artists found their voices stolen by an AI start-up.
It has also been reported that after a massive round of layoffs, Microsoft is insisting that companies that it snapped up and gutted, like Candy Crush developers, King, pivot to use AI.
Generative AI is reaching a critical boiling point, as the tech industry wrestles with exceedingly high costs with little return. For instance, it’s projected that Microsoft will make around $15 billion this year from its $90+ billion AI investment. Meanwhile, generative AI image and video tools are poised to be sued into oblivion, as data sets that they’re trained on contain tons of copyrighted materials.
As we reported last month, even studios with successful titles like AFK Journey are turning to generative AI to try to lure players in with false advertising.
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