The woman voice on TikTok
TitTok took without permission the voice of Bev Standing for their text to speech, text to voice software.
Somehow TikTok came across Bev Standing’s voice and illegally used it in their platform.
The story is:
back in November, Bridget Real sent me a video, a TikTok video through messenger and said: Is this your voice? And I went, oh – Yes it is. And then sent me another one. What about this one? And I went. Oh, that is my voice too. And the next thing my daughter sent me one, and then someone else in the family sent me one and it wasn’t quite as polite.
So I downloaded TikTok and I figured out how to use the text to speech feature, and lord and behold there I was.
I had people recognize my voice and go… But how do you know is you? That’s not all you.
I did a text to speech job three years ago where I read 10,000 sentences and will just jump right in..
For all of you that have used TikTok’s text to speech… I read 10,000 sentences like this. And this is the TikTok voice, and it is unmistakable. So I knew instantly where the voice had come from, the problem is TikTok is not my client.
The question is, How did they get it? I don’t know.
That was three years ago and it was for a gentleman that contacted me directly, and he was in Edinburgh Scotland. And I agreed to do the job, and I asked him what it was for and he said translation, in three languages and in -US English. And I said, I would like to be the voice of a translation.
I knew it would be dissected, and knew it would be taken apart for translation. When it came out that I was the text to speech voice I wen.. Wait a minute, that’s not it. That’s not what I agreed to. And again, TikTok is not my client.
You can’t do it in the music industry, you can’t do it in the art industry, you should not been able to do it in the voice industry.
We don’t know, they could’ve used your voice and you just haven’t heard it yet. And it shows up one day without your knowledge and authorization, and it is just wrong.
This is such an important case for all voice work artists.
I feel like this was handed to me on a silver platter because somewhere The Universe went: She is going to say something, let it be her. I don’t know.
I believe for standing up for what’s right, in a positive way. I’m not bad mouthing anybody, I’m not throwing any negatives out there. This is technology, I don’t go back in this business…
So when you started you would go into studios, you’d go into auditions.. and very very quickly it started to be like you could do your jobs from home and people panicked.
Video by Toby Ricktets on Youtube, subscribe to his channel.