The way I see it;

  1. They don't have the consent of the woman they used as a model, and it's creepy to steal someone's voice like that.
  2. The old voice was authentic and actually sounded right.
  3. The new one mispronounces place names, e.g. Lochwinnoch as lockwinock. People who are new to these areas should be able to hear what they should sound like and not have the train that dropped them off misleading them.
  4. ScotRails response to people complaining has been "give it time" as in if they ignore the fact that people don't like it for long enough then eventually we'll be used to it and stop complaining.

The petition itself goes more into how using AI is undermining important cultural representation, I think meaning you have a strange vaguely Scottish robot that can't say any of the words right instead of a real person.

I'm not sure if petitions ever work, but this is something I personally feel quite strongly about, and I'm pretty sure a lot of others on this sub do too.

by Hopeful-Turnip-2820

19 comments

  3. 1. That’s between the artist and the company she worked for. Legally, ScotRail can’t and shouldn’t get involved.
    2. Hard agree.
    3. Ditto.
    4. The person on Twitter doesn’t have the authority to change this.

  4. In general principle I don’t think an AI voice is a terrible idea, it gives scope to quickly roll out specific voice messages about travel disruption etc, but they seem to have gone about it about as badly as possible. They need a voice generator of more ethical/legal provenance, and it needs to be properly trained on Scottish pronunciation.

  5. Not being funny here but it looks like the image has also been generated by AI and that would be hilariously ironic in the bad way.

  6. Yeh better get used to whole AI thing….its not going anywhere.

  7. I don’t like it either. I live on the largs line and don’t recognise half the station names she says

  8. I wish I had the time to care about shit like this.

  9. While I agree with them, it is a bit ironic that the photo they use is AI generated

  10. Eh I struggle to care sorry!

    1. They didn’t use her as a model, she sold her rights to a Swedish that doesn’t agree with their usage of it. ScotRail paid that company. I understand it’s a technical legal issue but to say ScotRail stole anything is misleading. 

    2. It sounded robotic and fake, I could tell you the exact intonation she uses for Waverly, Cupar Leuchars and Perth because they have always bothered me!!  The station names are injected into sentences with entirely different tones: “This is (happy upbeat) Leuchars (monotone professional). This train is for (happy upbeat) Edinburgh Waverly (street performer introduction style). The accent was also posh, naebdy speaks like that in the actual places. Not authentic, not right.

    4. That’s exactly what will happen, as it did with the current one. 

    (3. That’s actually really annoying  I’m ready to contradict and abandon my entire position because of that fact alone.)

  11. It actualy sound like someone taking the piss rather than a real announcment. Like whoever approved it didn’t bother to listen to it. “THis TRAin is for. GLASgow. CENtral”. Like news reporter voice but hammed up and sarcastic.

  13. Terminally online issue.

    It sounds just as shitty as their old voice, except now I get told the train is delayed for passengers being twats instead of a generic “signalling issue”.

    Who gives a shit? Some woman didn’t read a contract boo hoo.

  14. Wait so the AI is americanised? Pronouncing things like loch with ‘lock’ ?

  15. It’s not AI, it’s decades-old text-to-speech technology of the kind the BBC Micro had.  This petition is pish.

  16. As a not Scottish, I always appreciate when announcements have the least accent possible.

  17. I dislike this moral panic because it displays how little people understand about AI and AI voices, this woman’s voice wasn’t stolen in any capacity and what Scottish rail uses isn’t even AI. It’s a text to speech program that has been around for decades now.

    I’m surprised they even use real people for these voices, but there isn’t anything this person could do to stop them as they haven’t done anything illegal.

  18. I mean fair enough, they should not use her voice, but I am fine with Ai doing it. these people who had careers in the voice work will just have to find another job. facts are progress will always move forward as technology gets better. this will also save money as AI is far cheaper than paying royalty’s to a person.

    I mean how many jobs have died over the years, blacksmith, elevator operators, switch board operators.

  19. Oddly i met the woman whose voice was stolen the other day, very nice person and hopefully some legal stuff happening soon

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