Voice Actor Alleges Unconsented Use of AI-Generated Voice on ScotRail Trains

May 27, 2025

Scottish voice actor Gayanne Potter alleges unauthorized use of her voice data in ScotRail's AI train announcements through a synthetic voice system called 'Iona'. She had agreed to limited use by ReadSpeaker, but claims she was not informed about its application in the system. Despite this dispute, ScotRail continues to utilize the voice. This incident underscores the importance of responsible AI governance and adherence to safe and secure AI practices.

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This incident serves as a Map case within the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.610, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.594, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.592, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: scotrail
Alleged developer: readspeaker
Alleged harmed parties: gayanne-potter, voiceover-artists, individuals-affected-by-unauthorized-biometric-data-use

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1081

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

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