Hollywood legend Morgan Freeman lamented AI technology copying his voice, saying the auauthroized mimics rob him of his likeness.
The Se7en and Now You See Me Now You Don’t star revealed his thoughts on AI in an interview with The Guardian.
“I’m a little PO’d, you know,” he said. “I’m like any other actor: Don’t mimic me with falseness. I don’t appreciate it, and I get paid for doing stuff like that, so if you’re gonna do it without me, you’re robbing me.”
Morgan has been pursuing litigation against “many” of those using his voice, adding that he actually harnessed his voice under the advice of Robert Whitman, an instructor at the community college he attended.
“Well, I tell you, my lawyers have been very, very busy,” he said.
“If you’re going to speak, speak distinctly, hit your final consonants, and do exercises to lower your voice,” he recalled of the lessons Whitman taught him. “Most people’s voices are higher than they would be normally if they knew how to relax it. He taught that sort of thing.”
As Breitbart News reported earlier this year, actors expressed concern over the prospect of talent agents seeking to represent a digital actress named Tilly Norwood; Freeman said she represents a threat to real actors.
“Nobody likes her because she’s not real and that takes the part of a real person, so it’s not going to work out very well in the movies or in television,” he said. “The union’s job is to keep actors acting, so there’s going to be that conflict.”
Actor Sean Astin, who was recently elected as president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), said that the union will seek to protect actors in the age of generative AI.
“We’ve seen that coming for a long time… At SAG-AFTRA, we are in the vanguard. We are the absolute industry leaders at helping to shape policy in this space, at least in the entertainment space. Our lawyers help draft the language that’s in some of these AI protection bills,” he told Variety.
Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and can be viewed for FREE on YouTube, Tubi, or Fawesome TV. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow him on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
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