Morgan Freeman is unhappy with AI trying to recreate his voice, and it is keeping his lawyers “very, very busy”.
The Shawshank Redemption star, 88, says AI tools cloning his voice without permission is the same as robbing him.
“I’m a little PO’d, you know. I’m like any other actor: don’t mimic me with falseness,” Freeman told The Guardian.
“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.”
Asked if this has already happened, the actor said his “lawyers have been very, very busy” and found “quite a few” cases.
Freeman has lent voice to documentaries like March Of The Penguins, which won an Oscar, and more recently to nature programmes such as Life On Our Planet and Our Universe as well as several advertisements.
The Now You See Me star credited his voice and diction instructor at his Los Angeles community college for helping him develop his standout voice.
“If you’re going to speak, speak distinctly, hit your final consonants and do exercises to lower your voice,” he said. “Most people’s voices are higher than they would be normally if they knew how to relax it. He taught that sort of thing. It was Robert Whitman: I will never forget him.”
Freeman also slammed “AI actress” Tilly Norwood. “Nobody likes her because she’s not real and that takes the part of a real person, so it is not going to work out very well in the movies or in television,” the actor said. “The union’s job is to keep actors acting, so there’s going to be that conflict.”
Norwood is a white, brunette and brown-eyed virtual creation owned by Xicoia, a talent studio attached to the AI production company Particle6.
In September, multiple stars spoke out after Deadline reported that several Hollywood talent agents had shown interest in signing Norwood.
In the Heights star Melissa Barrera called the news “gross”. “Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a**.”
Matilda star Mara Wilson asked: “And what about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn’t hire any of them?”
In June last year, Freeman thanked his fans for alerting him that his voice had been recreated using AI.
“Thank you to my incredible fans for your vigilance and support in calling out the unauthorised use of an A.I. voice imitating me,” he wrote on X.
“Your dedication helps authenticity and integrity remain paramount. Grateful. #AI #scam #imitation #IdentityProtection.”
Freeman has joined a long league of creatives, including Scarlett Johansson and Emma Thompson, in decrying the use of AI tools in writing, acting, or filmmaking.
However, some people in Hollywood have embraced AI. Oscar winners Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine signed separate deals with AI audio company ElevenLabs this week to create synthetic versions of their voices for authorised commercial use.
Caine’s voice will be available through the company’s ElevenReader app, which converts text into speech, and through a new marketplace for approved clients.
McConaughey, who said the company has been investing in them for years, entered into an agreement to produce a Spanish-language audio edition of his newsletter, Lyrics of Livin’, using the company’s technology.
The 2023 strike by SAG-AFTRA, the Hollywood union representing 160,000 television and movie actors, was partly related to concerns over the rise of AI in filmmaking.
During the strike, SAG-AFTRA alleged that Hollywood studios were proposing the use of “groundbreaking AI” to scan background performers and offer them only a day’s pay while the companies would retain ownership of the scans and use them for any project they wanted.
Freeman also talked about his legendary career ahead of the release of his latest film, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, and said he did not plan on stopping anytime soon, even if the job had become less exciting over the years.
“The appetite is still there,” Freeman said. “I will concede that it’s dimmed a little. But not enough to make a serious difference.”
He said he had no current interest in retirement. “Sometimes the idea of retirement would float past me but, as soon as my agent says there’s a job or somebody wants you or they’ve made an offer, the whole thing just boils back into where it was yesterday: how much you’re going to pay, where we’re gonna be?”
Now You Don’t is the first entry in the series since 2016’s Now You See Me 2, and will see Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Morgan Freeman and Mark Ruffalo reprise their roles.
The film will be released in theatres on 14 November.
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