"I spent almost a year trying to contact the bank through everyone
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:54 am
Dubbing actress Alena Andronova, as reported by the online resource IXBT, filed a lawsuit against Tinkoff Bank and is demanding 5,960,000 rubles, including 5 million in compensation for moral damages.
According to Alena Andronova, when fulfilling a regular order for voice-over of text, the bank did not warn that anyone could use speech synthesis with her voice. She wrote about this in her personal blog and shared the details of the story in a conversation with iXBT.com.
Andronova told the editorial france whatsapp resource staff of iXBT.com that she voiced a large amount of text in 2019 at the request of Tinkoff Bank. According to her, the contract used was the same as for voice actors and announcers. The voice actress was assured that the model would only be used for internal purposes, in particular, for a voice assistant in a call center, so she still completed the work in full. However, during the work, she learned that a neural network would be trained on the recording.
Later, she discovered that her voice was available on the bank's website and that it was used to voice game broadcasts, erotic chats, and commercial advertising. The editors of iXBT.com discovered that the voice called "Alena" is indeed present in the Tinkoff VoiceKit speech synthesis and recognition system, which allows anyone to voice any text for 820 rubles per million characters.
I could, and eventually received a response that I have no right to any claims, but the bank admits its guilt and is ready to pay me absolutely ridiculous compensation, approximately the cost of a month or two of my work, on the condition that I completely renounce all my claims. This option does not suit me. Therefore, I filed a lawsuit and will sue Tinkoff Bank," said Alena Andronova.
On August 30, the Savyolovsky District Court of Moscow registered Andronova's claim against Tinkoff Bank. The case documents are not yet available on the court's website, but the plaintiff told iXBT.com about her demands:
to oblige the bank to announce on its website that it used her voice to create speech synthesis technology and that this violated her rights to the inviolability of performance;
oblige the bank to take steps to remove her synthesized voice from all third-party websites;
oblige the bank to stop using her voice in speech synthesis technologies available to third parties;
to recover 5,960,000 rubles, including 960 thousand rubles in damages and 5 million rubles in moral damages.
Now Andronova, along with other voice actors and the Union of Russian Announcers, is going to seek legislative protection of voices. In the published petition, she proposes to protect a citizen's voice equally with his image and to prohibit the use of a voice recording for speech synthesis if it was not explicitly indicated among the purposes of the recording.
According to Kinopoisk, Alena Andronova has participa
According to Alena Andronova, when fulfilling a regular order for voice-over of text, the bank did not warn that anyone could use speech synthesis with her voice. She wrote about this in her personal blog and shared the details of the story in a conversation with iXBT.com.
Andronova told the editorial france whatsapp resource staff of iXBT.com that she voiced a large amount of text in 2019 at the request of Tinkoff Bank. According to her, the contract used was the same as for voice actors and announcers. The voice actress was assured that the model would only be used for internal purposes, in particular, for a voice assistant in a call center, so she still completed the work in full. However, during the work, she learned that a neural network would be trained on the recording.
Later, she discovered that her voice was available on the bank's website and that it was used to voice game broadcasts, erotic chats, and commercial advertising. The editors of iXBT.com discovered that the voice called "Alena" is indeed present in the Tinkoff VoiceKit speech synthesis and recognition system, which allows anyone to voice any text for 820 rubles per million characters.
I could, and eventually received a response that I have no right to any claims, but the bank admits its guilt and is ready to pay me absolutely ridiculous compensation, approximately the cost of a month or two of my work, on the condition that I completely renounce all my claims. This option does not suit me. Therefore, I filed a lawsuit and will sue Tinkoff Bank," said Alena Andronova.
On August 30, the Savyolovsky District Court of Moscow registered Andronova's claim against Tinkoff Bank. The case documents are not yet available on the court's website, but the plaintiff told iXBT.com about her demands:
to oblige the bank to announce on its website that it used her voice to create speech synthesis technology and that this violated her rights to the inviolability of performance;
oblige the bank to take steps to remove her synthesized voice from all third-party websites;
oblige the bank to stop using her voice in speech synthesis technologies available to third parties;
to recover 5,960,000 rubles, including 960 thousand rubles in damages and 5 million rubles in moral damages.
Now Andronova, along with other voice actors and the Union of Russian Announcers, is going to seek legislative protection of voices. In the published petition, she proposes to protect a citizen's voice equally with his image and to prohibit the use of a voice recording for speech synthesis if it was not explicitly indicated among the purposes of the recording.
According to Kinopoisk, Alena Andronova has participa