I know that AI voices are better than they were, but what if I want “Morgan Freeman” read my grocery list to me or “Sean Connery” read me a bedtime story. I guess this is two questions:
Do these exist? How many celebrities have had their voices deep-faked. How do I find one?
How close would a deep-fake be to fooling someone?
Bing Videos has some examples if you would like to see for yourself.
Well. I can easily be fooled. Especially a short quip or few words.
Some live people can imitate very well.
(Have you seen Ariana Grande mimic persons?)
So, if in real life its a easy thing, I’m sure “deep fake” (whatever that means) would be easy to accomplish.
Well, it’s good enough that Fortnite (the kids’ video game) now lets you voice chat with Darth Vader, which of course immediately led to the Sith Lord dropping F-bombs, and then a labor complaint from the SAG-AFTRA union for using AI voices without first bargaining with them.
You can create a voice clone of any recording using services like https://elevenlabs.io/voice-cloning, just by uploading an audio sample. It worked well when I tried it with Morgan Freeman, family members, etc. It was either free or very cheap, and just takes a few minutes. Anybody can do it without any technical know-how.
It’s not just voices, either; it’s too easy to deepfake convincing videos too. Politicians and pop stars etc. have apparently really been struggling with them: Deepfake statistics 2025: how frequently are celebrities targeted?. People clone Elon Musk a lot, Trump, Taylor Swift, Tom Hanks, etc.
I’ve noticed some Facebook ads/reels that sound remarkably like David Attenborough, in one case praising in detail a US Episcopal church’s denunciation of DJT, and in another pushing some ED pill.