this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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Hopefully it's apparent to all parties involved that the machine designed to commit plagiarism and launder that plagiarism through plausible deniability, should be treated with the highest amount of suspicion possible.
Or more simply put, "If you didn't steal his voice, Sundar Pichai, where did you get it from?"
Don't worry they didn't steal his voice, they stole thousands of voices and combined them into one voice that sounds like that one guy. Very different
They say they used a paid actor. Of course, even if that's true, it's not particularly hard to find someone with a similar pitch, accent, and timbre, and then finish fixing it to make sure it's as confidently soothing as the NPR voice you wanted to steal in the first place. I suppose in one sense it's not utterly different from hiring a soundalike, but now the soundalike is damn near perfect (the clips in the article are VERY similar and feel more like the difference in recording equipment than anything else) and doesn't need to actually be available to perform for new impressions. Yet another example of "withstand motion for summary judgment, string it out, lobby against future guiderails" as the totality of Silicon Valley's legal philosophy.