Check out This Voice Doesn't Exist, showing off some AI-generated voices that are explicitly not mimicking specific people. The anxiety locus moves from "impersonation, fake news, ID theft" to "replacing humans." One example is a passage from Lord of the Rings read in a plummy British accent; another is Miranda Priestly's monologue from The Devil Wears Prada delivered by a mean girl. There is a discussion of "Ethical AI," right after the list of everyone they propose to put out of business.
Our tools can already produce speech that's as lifelike as any human's and we expect the sphere of potential applications for artificial voices will only expand. Many of these new applications, including recording audio for news publications or commercials, will require that one voice be confined to, and identified with, a particular brand or use-case, and not be used somewhere else. Other use-cases, like storytelling and video games, prioritize flexibility and the freedom to experiment from early on in development. So rather than create a gigantic set of virtual speakers, we set out to let users have the final say on which voices best suit their purposes.
Book authors now gain not just the opportunity to easily convert their work to audio but they also retain artistic control over designing bespoke narration. … News publishers have increasingly ventured into audio and choosing distinctive voices to represent their publications is an important task…Video game developers can now voice a plethora of otherwise mute NPCs…Advertising creatives need voiceovers to suit particular campaigns