Product reviewer and content creator Marques Brownlee is no stranger to calling companies out for bad products and features. This time, Brownlee has a warning for a company using his likeness through the power of artificial intelligence.
What Happened: Brownlee, who often reviews technology products, recently shared on his social media account that a company cloned his voice using artificial intelligence to promote a product.
"It's happening. There are real companies who will just use an AI-created rip of my voice to promote their stuff. And there's really no repercussions for it other than being known as this scummy shady company that is willing to stoop that low to sell some product," Brownlee tweeted.
In the tweet, Brownlee, who is also known as MKBHD, shared an Instagram post from Dot, a company that offers networking products. The Instagram post is from February and uses Brownlee's voice, as reported by The Express Tribune.
The post by Dot was later deleted.
While most users were quick to tell Brownlee that it's easy to figure out it's not him talking about Dot's products, others were skeptical about the reasons why companies make voice cloning technology available in the first place.
Why It's Important: The controversy surrounding using Brownlee's voice to sell products follows his own backlash over a product release.
Brownlee recently launched Panels, a wallpaper app that charges $12 a month or $60 a year for phone wallpapers hand-picked by the content creator.
The product reviewer went on to address the controversy and recently said he "failed on the price," as reported by The Verge.
"If I was reviewing this app, I would not have been very nice," MKBHD said of his own product.
To rectify the complaints about price, Brownlee is adding more features for the free version of Panels. Subscription versions of Panels still exist with monthly fees of $1.99 for the Standard tier and $11.99 for the Unlimited tier.
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Photo via Wikimedia courtesy of Ramsey Cardy/Collision via Sportsfile
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