BBC presenter’s likeness used in advert after firm tricked by AI-generated voice
Exclusive: Liz Bonnin’s face used on insect repellant advert after deal negotiated via WhatsApp and voice notes generated by AI
There was something strange about her voice, they thought. It was not unfamiliar but, after a while, it started to go all over the place.
Science presenter Liz Bonnin’s accent, as regular BBC viewers know, is Irish. But this voice message, ostensibly granting permission to use her likeness in an ad campaign, seemed to place her on the other side of the world.
The message, it turns out, was a fake – AI-generated to mimic Bonnin’s voice. Her management team got hold of it after they saw the presenter’s face on online ads for an insect repellant spray this week, something for which she did not sign up.
“At the very beginning it does sound like me but then I sound a bit Australian and then it’s definitely an English woman by the end. It’s all fragmented and there’s no cadence to it,” said Bonnin, best known for presenting Bang Goes The Theory and Our Changing Planet.
“It does feel like a violation and it’s not a pleasant thing,” she added. “Thank goodness it was just an insect repellant spray and that I wasn’t supposedly advertising something really horrid!”
