Sam
Jeff GeerlingThey stole my voice with AI
Elecrow—an electronics company that makes Pi and ESP accessories—used an AI voice for multiple tutorial series which sounds _almost exactly_ like me.
I never consented to have my voice used to promote Elecrow's products.
YouTube
Update: The CEO of Elecrow responded to my email about the unauthorized voice cloning early this morning.
I will be posting a video with more details and my reaction either tomorrow or Wednesday, but here's a snippet of the email.
honk if you want to honk 
@geerlingguy The "internal training": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auzfTPp4moA
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll (Official Music Video)
JustChomik@geerlingguy Good thing they responded like that. Or responded at all...
Travis@geerlingguy Honestly, that was a much better response than I was expecting.
citizenk4te@geerlingguy A good first step, but what about the place where they have uploaded your voice? Some LLM is now trained with it. You need to ask for a "removal" (I know almost impossible) there as well in order that no one else is getting a voice record of you without knowing.
Michael Horne@geerlingguy That looks nicely comprehensive.
Ernie Smith@geerlingguy It sounds like they did the right thing here. I’m happy they realized they were in the wrong.
Mika@geerlingguy almost certain this response was prepared using AI too lol
maybeanerd@geerlingguy crazy how they just namedrop and blame a specific person. As they mentioned later, this is a structural issue If they don't review outgoing content at all. Hope the person who created the content isn't fired or otherwise excessively punished for this. There's not a single person at fault here.
bigiain@maybeanerd @geerlingguy Agree. There’s a whiff of throwing some non management staff member under the bus there. Not “evidence”, but enough to seem suspicious. I’d be interested to have Jeff reach out to the person blamed there, to see if they consider that email a fair characterization of how this all played out…
JP@geerlingguy That’s a great response. I hope they continue in such a constructive and collaborative way!
Thank you for sharing, none of us needs more excuses to moan about companies, and this looks to be a great example of a company doing the right thing (even if after being caught out!) 😊
Thank you for sharing, none of us needs more excuses to moan about companies, and this looks to be a great example of a company doing the right thing (even if after being caught out!) 😊
I can’t believe its not @twcau@geerlingguy Well, that seems like a decent response - if they do everything they say they will.
David Penfold 
@geerlingguy Decent response, but possibly of the "sorry we got caught" variety.
__Miguel_@davep
Honestly, I also read it as such.
That and "OMG, he said the magic word" (aka "lawyer"), "let's get ahead of this before he actually sues us".
Especially because you really only need a judge to say you can't use an LLM to generate someone's voice without their consent once for that whole thing to start collapsing.
@geerlingguy
NAB 🇬🇧🇪🇺🔶
@geerlingguy Wow. Now that's a response and a half. I'd have put money on no reply or a "we can do what we want" comment. But this. Wow again. Almost makes me want to go and buy something from them!
Just a shame I'm surprised by a company doing the right thing.
Just a shame I'm surprised by a company doing the right thing.
Blender Fox@geerlingguy Commendable in that they put their hands up admitting they were caught. But most likely literally only BECAUSE they were caught.
Graham Sutherland / Polynomial@geerlingguy that's a refreshingly frank response.
Vincent@geerlingguy they should not put all the blame of the boots on the ground. Bad management leads to bad stuff. Look to the top to find point the finger.
I feel very sorry for the person at the bottom getting the blame. Where was the manager in all of this, where was the director?
Root Moose@geerlingguy This is a solid response. The fact that they offered compensation tells me they are a decent org and likely the scenario described is the truth.
I can totally see it - in tech the marketing peeps need to be kept on a short leash in order to keep them from over promising and doing stupid sh!t to get visibility.
Richard@elecrow - guessing you thought this was sorted in the past - you and your tech managers can't take your eyes off them! o7 Bt/dt
@geerlingguy Of course - now for follow-through...
Leandro (Cerberus1746)@geerlingguy Wait, wait, wait.
Using AI voice is now so normalized in marketing that they just do it without even thinking twice, asking management or anything?
Guillaume Rossolini@geerlingguy I couldn’t remember where I heard their brand name, but then it came to me: they were the ones who made the Sino:bit with Naomi Wu, weren’t they?
Greg Bell@geerlingguy @davedarko I was sure not expecting that!
Gord@geerlingguy Dang, that sounds like they're doing the right thing.
gary@geerlingguy I blame rsj - he sounds just like you and probably sold the rights for a free sawzall
@gary_alderson Heh, just wait until someone subpoenas him :D
@geerlingguy he will plead the fifth
@geerlingguy I’m pretty sure this is the YouTuber equivalent of a Weird Al parody—a sign you’ve made it—except there’s nothing to laugh about.
Bummed you’re dealing with this.
Greg Stolze@geerlingguy I wrote this story in 2011. http://www.gregstolze.com/fiction_library/EmilySpeaks.PDF
Matej Lexa@GregStolze @geerlingguy
Somehow the link fails me. This one worked for me though: http://gregstolze.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Emily.pdf
And congrats on the story! Read everything in one breath.
Somehow the link fails me. This one worked for me though: http://gregstolze.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Emily.pdf
And congrats on the story! Read everything in one breath.
Daniel 🏳️🌈
@GregStolze @geerlingguy I think there is a typo in your link. It returns "page not found".
Cluster Fcku@geerlingguy yes that is your voice, and your voice is your brand; it conveys confidence, expertise and friendliness which you converted into viewer trust and perhaps revenue by all your own efforts. They wanted all that for their product without paying you or asking you. It's sleazy theft, not an honest mistake. An honest mistake is if they had hired you for promotional work and thought that includes your ai voice. You also earn an apology and compensation for honest mistakes. Just ask them.
@clusterfcku Have sent an email. We'll see what they say.
tomkeddie
Bornach@clusterfcku @geerlingguy
In addition is protecting brand trustworthiness, having your voice cloned by AI without your consent is personally distressing, even for those whose voice has become a national treasure
Meghadeep Roy Chowdhury 
@geerlingguy They probably found in their focus group that your voice is inherently trustworthy for anything RPi related, and stole it. Ridiculous.
David Honess@geerlingguy Wow, that is a bit outrageous, right?
circfruit@geerlingguy was it you or some other youtuber who complained from some other Elecrows fraudulent activity recently? You should defo demand taking videos down and demand royalties. Also this is no coincidence- electronics company using the voice of electronics tinker youtuber. 100% international!
Geoff Simmons@geerlingguy the “three dots for more“ icon on a playlist opens a menu including a “Report playlist“ option.
And there are “report“ and “dislike“ icons on every video. Instructions on the net for reporting a channel appear to be outdated and don‘t work any more, still looking around.
Users of YouTube have the option to report them, dislike them, and leave comments on their videos saying that you‘ve done so, and that you will boycott their products and hope for their bankruptcy.
@geerlingguy
Unfortunately the unethical use of AI voice clones has become commonplace and will need to be sorted out through a few high profile lawsuits. At some point David Attenborough or his estate will likely have to get involved to put a stop to videos such as:
https://bsky.app/profile/mmasnick.bsky.social/post/3l4pq62ohqe26
And
https://youtu.be/9JCyOmqguNg?t=7m36s
And
https://youtube.com/shorts/alfrNIrv0Sg
And
https://youtu.be/1CfLif6okfc
Unfortunately the unethical use of AI voice clones has become commonplace and will need to be sorted out through a few high profile lawsuits. At some point David Attenborough or his estate will likely have to get involved to put a stop to videos such as:
https://bsky.app/profile/mmasnick.bsky.social/post/3l4pq62ohqe26
And
https://youtu.be/9JCyOmqguNg?t=7m36s
And
https://youtube.com/shorts/alfrNIrv0Sg
And
https://youtu.be/1CfLif6okfc
@geerlingguy ugh. glad I ditched them as a PCB manufacturer.
Tim / Turious@geerlingguy it's vile and I hate that this is what tech has built for us.
Party Sam@geerlingguy Every person who is at least semi-public should know that in 2024 voice cloning is a very easy process and can be done in realtime on a powerful graphics card.
If you are posting your voice anywhere, you should be aware of this fact and take according measures. Probable request a video takedown for impersonation or something like that.
Tech Support 
@partysam It's not clear that it's against yt's tos, so reporting it might actually amount to a false report. It's not clear that it's illegal, so legal action is nebulous. The only thing that is clear (from my, and assumedly Jeff's position), is that this is amoral. Blaming the victim isn't particularly helpful, especially when there is little obvious recourse except asking nicely.
xs4me2And for that we need regulations…
Waseem@geerlingguy this is bad
leimon@geerlingguy A stolen voice eh. Wasn't that the power move of some famous villainess within a kids cartoon that involved a mermaid...
I suppose they don't even feel like they are the bad guys. What interesting times we live in.
Josh Biggs@geerlingguy nice shirt :)
@biggsjm first road win of 2024! Just took... a whole season to do it lol
@geerlingguy it wasn’t pretty but the win eliminated SKC! That first goal was awesome though.
@biggsjm ha, and we get to play them next week!
Erik Uden 🚩@geerlingguy holy shit WHAT
Jeff Codes 🤨@geerlingguy
This is really messed up. I hope you're able to get them to pull the content.
This is really messed up. I hope you're able to get them to pull the content.
Nahga@geerlingguy
That sucks. I’m not even sure what kind of legal steps to take. Best of luck finding a resolution to this.
That sucks. I’m not even sure what kind of legal steps to take. Best of luck finding a resolution to this.
Howley 🏳️⚧️@geerlingguy how do we know this video isn't with AI voice 🧐
In all seriousness tho, this is pretty messed up
In all seriousness tho, this is pretty messed up
@geerlingguy I have a feeling that things will get much worse before getting better. Did you also know that Google themselves use your content for their AI results in the search engine? Indeed they do.
garpu@geerlingguy that is beyond shitty
poleguy looking for lost tools@geerlingguy Hmm. Since the legal system is too slow and expensive you should weaponize the youtube rules: do a lip-sync version of a section of their videos, post them as a 'song', and then claim copyright infringement on their version?
It might be more fun than talking to lawyers.
Any youtube rules weaponization experts out there?
aikayparrot@geerlingguy AI regulation should be a thing. Its gearing up to be a serious problem in the wrong hands.