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Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Celebrity, Morgan Freeman, News, Technology, Entertainment
Kit Roberts
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Celebrity, Morgan Freeman, News, Technology, Entertainment
Morgan Freeman has made his feelings clear about people who use generative AI to imitate his voice.
Freeman's voice is perhaps one of the most instantly recognisable in Hollywood, featuring in iconic movies such as The Shawshank Redemption and Se7en and lending his all encompassing voice to the March of the Penguins.
The star's signature buttery tones are incredibly distinctive and have earned him a huge reputation, even becoming so recognisable as to be parodied by himself in The Lego Movie.
But while parody is one thing, it seems that Freeman draws a strong red line when it comes to using AI to generate his voice.
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When generative AI becomes more popular, people would use it to create fictional scenarios like 'what if Picasso painted a Superman comic' and other similar scenarios.
So, it was maybe inevitable that a voice as instantly recognisable as Freeman's would be a frequent feature of this content.
However, the actor has made his feelings about this very clear.
Freeman, 88, opened up in a big interview with The Guardian which covered a number of topics over his long career.
Among them was the challenge that AI poses to working actors, musicians, and artists.
Needless to say, Morgan is not impressed with the ability of AI to mimic him.
“I'm a little pissed off... don’t mimic me with falseness," he told the outlet. "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."
The star was tight-lipped about details on how he would react to people who use an AI imitation of his voice, but did say: “Well, I tell you, my lawyers have been very, very busy.”
But it's not just in the context of his own voice that Freeman dislikes the use of generative AI in art.
Recently, the debate around AI was taken to another level by the publication of the 'actress' Tilly Norwood, who is actually entirely AI-generated, on Instagram.
Morgan said: “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 added: "The union’s job is to keep actors acting, so there’s going to be that conflict.”
Tilly Norwood was roundly criticized not just for the reasons that Freeman outlined.
Other critics highlighted that she is a young, attractive woman who is incapable of saying no, unlike a real person who can set boundaries about what roles or scenes they are willing to work in.