- Scotland’s Railway Service has replaced the human train notification voice with an AI on some routes
- The voting technology is run by the Swedish company Readspeaker
- A voice actor claims the company is using its voice without permission, but Readspeaker says it has “extensive processed” these complaints
If you live in Scotland or have ever visited our beautiful country and traveled on a train, you’ve probably heard the domestic duck of the female voice announcing the station and other information.
However, Train Company Scotrail has now replaced the iconic voice with AI, which triggers uprising among commuters – and claims from a voice actor that Scotrail has stolen her voice.
The new AI advertisement is called Iona, and the robot voice has replaced the human that the majority of Scots have grown up with. Iona is currently rolling out on routes over Scotland, but has so far met with hostility.
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The AI votes use text-to-speech technology that allows train leaders to enter messages that are then spoken across the public address system of Iona.
It’s my voice!
After the initial setback against the AI voice, Scotrail replied at X, saying, “Give it time and it can grow on you.”
One person whom the voice does not grow is is the voice actor Gayanne Potter who has accused the Scottish government -owned train company of stealing her voice. Potter is a voice actor who did some work for the Swedish company Readspeaker in 2021.
Readspeaker is the company behind Iona, and at that time Mrs. Potter was told that her voting work would only be used for accessibility and e-learning software.
After a friend sent her a link to Readspeaker’s website, Potter recognized the voice and noticed similarities between her own tone and Iona, a persona that Scotrail markets as a red-haired Scottish woman, with a picture that also, of course,-I-generated.
Potter said to the BBC, “It’s my voice – I’m pretty sure it’s my voice.” Potter has been in a conflict with Readspeaker about the use of her voice for two years.
In response to the complaints, Readspeaker told the BBC, “The Reader Open is aware of Mrs. Potter’s concerns and has extensively addressed these with Mrs. Potter’s legal representative several times in the past.”
In the BBC report you can listen to a comparison between Mrs. Potter and Iona. There is no one who refuses that the voices are very similar, although the real question here is the protection of workers in the creative industry, and the awareness of how they sign their rights when producing work.
Potter said, “It’s hard enough for people in the creative industry to maintain careers, but to compete with a robot version of yourself just adds insult to injuries.”
This is just the latest controversy in the debate about who owns what in the rapidly evolving world of AI. Potter says she did not know at the time that her voice would be used to train a robot heard over Scotland. Now she can’t escape her ‘own’ AI voice.
