A voiceover artist discovered her voice was being used without permission for ScotRail's AI train announcements after originally recording material for accessibility purposes in 2021.
Voiceover artist Gayanne Potter discovered that her voice was being used for ScotRail's new AI train announcement system called 'Iona' without her knowledge or consent. Potter had originally recorded voice material for Swedish company ReadSpeaker in 2021, understanding it would be used for text-to-speech accessibility tools and translation purposes. However, in 2023 she discovered ReadSpeaker had created an AI voice model called Iona using her voice data and was marketing it commercially. ScotRail deployed this AI voice system on various train routes including Class 156 diesel trains north of Inverness, High Speed Trains, and Class 380 trains in Ayrshire and Inverclyde starting in July 2023. Potter has been in legal dispute with ReadSpeaker for over two years attempting to have her voice data removed, but the company claims they have a valid contract. Potter feels 'violated' and argues she could not have consented to AI voice synthesis technology that didn't exist when she made the original recordings. She is seeking legal action to have the voice removed from ScotRail trains and wants the company to employ human announcers instead.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that memorize and leak sensitive personal data or infer private information about individuals without their consent. Unexpected or unauthorized sharing of data and information can compromise user expectation of privacy, assist identity theft, or cause loss of confidential intellectual property.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed