The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
"A Woman Made Her AI Voice Clone Say 'Arse.' Then She Got Banned"
From the MIT Technology Review (Jessica Hamzeou):
Both Joyce Esser, who lives in the UK, and Jules Rodriguez, who lives in Miami, Florida, have forms of motor neuron disease—a class of progressive disorders that result in the gradual loss of the ability to move and control muscles….
AI is bringing back those lost voices. Both Jules and Joyce have fed an AI tool built by ElevenLabs recordings of their old voices to re-create them. Today, they can "speak" in their old voices by typing sentences into devices, selecting letters by hand or eye gaze…. It's been a remarkable and extremely emotional experience for them—both thought they'd lost their voices for good….
[But at one point,] Joyce typed a message for her voice clone to read out: "Come on, Hunnie, get your arse in gear!!" She then added: "I'd better get my knickers on too!!!"
"The next day I got a warning from ElevenLabs that I was using inappropriate language and not to do it again!!!" Joyce told me via email (we communicated with a combination of email, speech, text-to-voice tools, and a writing board)…. "… [B]ecause the next day a human banned me!!!!" …
Joyce contacted ElevenLabs, who apologized and reinstated her account. But it's still not clear why she was banned in the first place….
Thanks to Jordan Brown for the pointer.
