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Voiceverse NFT plagiarism scandal
2022 NFT plagiarism controversy From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Voiceverse NFT plagiarism scandal was a controversy in which the blockchain-based technology company Voiceverse was discovered to have plagiarized from 15.ai, a non-commercial generative artificial intelligence voice synthesis research project. Voiceverse marketed itself as a service that offered proprietary AI voice cloning technology that could be purchased and traded as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The incident, which occurred amid heightened controversy over NFTs in the gaming industry, began on January 14, 2022, when voice actor Troy Baker (who has been described as one of the most famous voice actors in video games) announced his partnership with Voiceverse, triggering immediate backlash over concerns about environmental impact, fraud, and predatory monetization in video games, as well as concerns that AI could displace human voice actors.
Later that same day, the creator of 15.ai (a pseudonymous MIT researcher known as 15) revealed through server log screenshots that Voiceverse had generated voice lines using 15's free text-to-speech platform, pitch-shifted the audio to make them unrecognizable, and falsely marketed the samples as their own technology before selling them as NFTs. Within an hour of being confronted with evidence, Voiceverse confessed and stated that their marketing team had used 15.ai without proper attribution while rushing to create a technology demo to coincide with Baker's partnership announcement, further exacerbating the already negative reception to the original announcement. In response, 15 replied "Go fuck yourself"; the interaction went viral and garnered a large amount of support for the developer. News publications universally characterized this incident as Voiceverse having "stolen" from 15.ai.
The next day, Baker appeared on a podcast and stated that his motivation had been to help independent creators who were unable to afford professional voice actors. Following continued backlash and the plagiarism revelation, Baker ended his partnership with Voiceverse on January 31, 2022. Subsequently, the incident was documented in multiple AI ethics databases as an instance of plagiarism and theft.
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Background
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Troy Baker is a prominent voice actor in the video game industry best known for his performances as Joel Miller in The Last of Us franchise.[1][2] Baker has been described as "ubiquitous" by Polygon,[3] "one of the most high-profile and prolific voice actors in video games" by Eurogamer,[4] and "arguably the most famous voice actor in the gaming industry" by GameGuru.[5] His other prominent roles include voicing Agent John "Jonesy" Jones in Fortnite, Booker DeWitt in BioShock Infinite, and both Batman and Joker in multiple Batman video games.[3][4] As of October 2025[update], Baker holds the record for the most acting nominations at the BAFTA Games Awards, with five between 2013 and 2021.[6]
Voiceverse is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency startup founded in 2021 by the Bored Ape Yacht Club that marketed itself as offering proprietary AI voice cloning technology in the form of NFTs.[7] Prior to the announcement of their partnership with Baker, Voiceverse had partnered with LOVO, Inc., an AI voice platform that, according to LOVO, could generate human-like voices.[3] Voiceverse stated that any user who purchases a voice NFT would have unlimited and perpetual access to the underlying voice model,[1][3] which could be used to create content such as audiobooks, YouTube videos, podcasts, e-learning materials, in-game voice chat, and Zoom calls.[4] Voiceverse promised that buyers would "OWN [sic] all of the IP" of content they created using these voices.[3] Voiceverse's roadmap included plans to release 8,888 initial voice NFTs, a feature to add emotions to existing voices, and the ability for users to mint their own voices as NFTs.[1] Prior to Baker's partnership, Voiceverse had also partnered with voice actors Charlet Chung, who voices D.Va in Overwatch, and Andy Milonakis of The Andy Milonakis Show.[3]
15.ai is a free web application launched in 2020 that uses artificial intelligence to generate text-to-speech voices of fictional characters from popular media.[8] Created by a pseudonymous artificial intelligence researcher known as 15, who began developing the technology as a freshman during their undergraduate research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was an early example of an application of generative artificial intelligence during the initial stages of the AI boom. The platform showed that deep neural networks could generate emotionally expressive speech with only 15 seconds of speech; the name "15.ai" references the creator's statement that a voice can be convincingly cloned with just 15 seconds of audio, as opposed to the tens of hours of data previously required. 15.ai became an Internet phenomenon in early 2021 when content utilizing it went viral on social media and quickly gained widespread use among various Internet fandoms. 15 has emphasized that it remain free and non-commercial; it only requires users to give proper credit when using the service for content creation.[9]
By early 2022, NFTs had become highly controversial within the gaming industry.[7] Critics raised concerns about their environmental impact due to the significant energy consumption of blockchain technology.[7] In addition, the prevalence of scams, fraud, and potential money laundering associated with NFT sales, as well as fears that NFTs were a new form of predatory monetization following the increasing frequency of loot boxes, caused vocal pushback from the gaming community.[7] Several major gaming companies had begun exploring NFT integration into their products, though fan backlash had already forced some projects to be cancelled.[10] In December 2021, the developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl announced that they would be including NFTs in the game, but cancelled within an hour of the announcement due to immediate universal backlash.[10][2] Simultaneously, the rise of AI voice technology raised concerns among voice actors about potential job displacement and the devaluation of their work amidst the voice acting industry's ongoing struggles for better compensation and working conditions.[7][11][3]
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Partnership announcement and backlash
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| Troy Baker (@TroyBakerVA) tweeted: |
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I'm partnering with @VoiceverseNFT to explore ways where together we might bring new tools to new creators to make new things, and allow everyone a chance to own & invest in the IP's they create. We all have a story to tell. You can hate. Or you can create. What'll it be?
January 14, 2022, 1:02 a.m.[11]
On January 14, 2022, 1:02 a.m. EST, Baker announced on Twitter that he was partnering with Voiceverse "to explore ways where together we might bring new tools to new creators to make new things, and allow everyone a chance to own & invest in the IP's they create." The announcement concluded with the statement "You can hate. Or you can create. What'll it be?"[1][3][11] Baker's specific role with Voiceverse remained unclear at the time of the announcement.[3]
Along with Baker's announcement, Voiceverse promoted their supposed voice AI technology on Twitter by posting an animated video that featured a cat character created by NFT firm Chubbiverse.[12][13] The video concluded with text that read "The Voice Powered By Voiceverse"; Voiceverse stated on Twitter that the voice in the animation had been generated using their proprietary AI voice synthesis technology and presented the video as a technology demonstration of their voice NFT capabilities.[12][13]
The announcement provoked immediate and widespread backlash from the gaming community.[3] Baker's tweet received thousands of replies and quote retweets (the vast majority of which were negative),[3] far more than the number of likes;[10] Michael McWhertor of Polygon described it as a "textbook example of being ratioed on Twitter."[3] McWhertor further commented that reactions had been "seemingly intensified" by the final part of his announcement.[3] Critics raised multiple concerns about Baker's partnership with Voiceverse, including the potential environmental impact of NFT sales due to blockchain energy consumption,[3] fears that AI-driven voice technology would automate and eliminate the need for actual human voice actors and jeopardize voice acting jobs,[11][7] warnings that the technology could devalue voice actors' work and undercut prospective actors,[7] and concerns about scams and art theft associated with NFTs.[10]
Later that day, Baker responded to the backlash by apologizing for his choice of words.[10] He stated that he "always want[s] to be a part of the conversation, even if sometimes that finds me in the midst of a loud one" and that he appreciated people "sharing your thoughts and giving me a lot to think about."[10] Baker acknowledged that the "hate/create part might have been a bit antagonistic" and called it a "bad attempt to bring levity".[10] Despite the apology, Baker and his fellow voice actors did not distance themselves from Voiceverse at this point.[3] At the same time, Voiceverse attempted to address the criticisms; in response to environmental concerns, they wrote: "We are working hard to move our Voice NFTs to a much more environmentally friendly [manner] in the future".[3] In response to concerns about the impact to the voice acting industry, they stated that "Voice NFTs provide royalties to the original voice actor who was involved in building the NFT, [...] If the value of the Voice NFT rises, the voice actor also benefits from the increased value. We are always keeping the human in the loop."[3]
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Plagiarism revelation
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{
"character": "Twilight Sparkle",
"text": "Hi Frens! We giggle in the Chubbiverse, we eat jpegs and fast foods, then we vomit memes and fart rainbows.",
"ip": [REDACTED],
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T02:20:01.651Z"
}
{
"character": "Rainbow Dash",
"text": "Hi Frens! i got an alpha drop for you?!? I am made with love and my voice is ai! Yeah for real lets build the chubbiverse - reply below and comment alpha.",
"ip": [REDACTED],
"timestamp": "2022-01-04T08:16:16.664Z"
}
An excerpt of the log files that were posted by 15 showing that Voiceverse had used 15.ai to generate voices of Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, with text matching those spoken in the Chubbiverse promotional video
On December 13, 2021, amidst the increasingly negative reactions toward NFTs among the general public, the creator of 15.ai (known pseudonymously as 15) announced that they had "no interest in incorporating NFTs into any aspect of [their] work."[13][14][15] The following month, 15 commented on the Voiceverse venture shortly after the announcement, stating that it "sounds like a scam".[16]
On January 14, 2022, 1:20 p.m. EST (12 hours after Baker's initial announcement) 15 accused Voiceverse of "actively attempting to appropriate [15.ai's] work for [Voiceverse's] own benefit."[12][13][14] 15 provided evidence through a screenshot of the server log files that showed that the voices Voiceverse was claiming credit for had actually been generated by 15.ai.[12][13] The log files, which showed the details of the server request–responses exactly matching up with those present in Voiceverse's video, proved that Voiceverse had used 15.ai to create the voice samples that they were marketing as their own proprietary technology.[12][13] According to the logs, the Chubbiverse promotion video featured distorted voices of Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash (generated on January 4, 2022) from the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.[tweet 1][tweet 2]
| Voiceverse (@VoiceverseNFT) tweeted: |
Hey @fifteenai we are extremely sorry about this. The voice was indeed taken from your platform, which our marketing team used without giving proper credit. Chubbiverse team has no knowledge of this. We will make sure this never happens again.
Voiceverse initially responded to the accusations by boasting sarcastically, but later deleted that response.[14][12] At 2:09 p.m. EST the same day, 49 minutes after the plagiarism accusation, Voiceverse wrote in an apology to 15: "We are extremely sorry about this. The voice was indeed taken from your platform, which our marketing team used without giving proper credit. Chubbiverse team has no knowledge of this. We will make sure this never happens again."[12][13][14] In their Discord server, Voiceverse further stated that their marketing team had been in such a rush to create a partnership technology demo that they resorted to using 15.ai without waiting for their own voice technology to be ready.[17]
In response, at 3:34 p.m. EST, 15 tweeted "Go fuck yourself";[12][18][19] the interaction went viral and the response amassed hundreds of thousands of retweets and likes on Twitter in support of the developer.[20] In a subsequent statement, the creator expressed being "extremely depressed" by the incident and wrote: "Not only because my work was stolen and used for profit, but also because of this scandal, the entire field of vocal synthesis is now being misrepresented by charlatans who are only in it for the money."[21] Voiceverse subsequently deleted the incriminating tweet, but Twitter users had saved and reshared the video to preserve evidence of the plagiarism.[13][18]
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Reactions
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News media
Throughout their coverage of the scandal, both English and non-English news publications universally characterized this incident as Voiceverse having "stolen" from 15.ai. Briana Lawrence of The Mary Sue wrote that "[15's] pinned tweet explicitly states that they have no interest in NFTs, so the theft in this case is a double dose of 'the audacity.'"[15] Ruby Innes of Kotaku Australia called the theft "a case of absolute and unadulterated degenerate behaviour."[13] Tom Phillips of Eurogamer headlined that "[Voiceverse] admit[ted to] using voice lines taken from [15.ai] without permission",[12] while Demo Williams of NME headlined that "Voiceverse NFT admit[ted] to taking voice lines from [15.ai]."[18] David Carcasole of PlayStation Universe reported that "[Voiceverse] ha[d] been caught stealing work" and that they had "admitted the voice lines were taken from [15.ai] and apologized for doing so without giving proper credit".[22] Brandon Toh of Geek Culture reported that "Voiceverse has admitted that they stole voice lines without proper credit and permission" and remarked that this "seems to run counter to their purported support for content creators as a whole."[23] Magnus Groth-Anderson of Gamereactor reported that the situation had "gotten a lot worse because Voiceverse has now admitted that they have stolen, and sold, AI-based voice acting as NFTs".[19] Jordan Parker of The Journal reported that Voiceverse "admitted to selling voice content stolen from [15.ai.]"[24] Joseph Henry of Tech Times headlined that Voiceverse had stolen voice lines from 15.ai and wrote that Voiceverse admitted to failing to give due credit.[25] Steve Wright of Stevivor described 15.ai as being "wronged by Voiceverse" after they "us[ed 15.ai's] content without permission".[14] Edie W-K of Checkpoint Gaming described the incident as Voiceverse having "used the work of [15.ai] without their permission."[16]
Phil Kuchkanov of GameGuru headlined the Internet's overwhelmingly negative reaction to Voiceverse's plagiarism ("'Troy Baker's NFT is stealing other people's work.' The Internet is destroying the famous voice actor") and reported that "the platform [Troy Baker] collaborates with is stealing other people's work".[5] Boris Piletsky of iXBT Games headlined that Voiceverse was "caught stealing" on the same day as Baker's announcement.[26] Lina Skorich of StopGame also reported that Voiceverse was "caught stealing": "the audio had been taken from another platform without permission".[27] Both Helder Archer of OtakuPT and Lauda Ifram of Gamebrott also headlined that Voiceverse had been "caught stealing". Archer wrote that "it was discovered that [Voiceverse] was stealing voices from [15.ai] for promotion"; Ifram wrote that Voiceverse "was caught stealing AI voice assets from [15.ai] without permission" and that their actions must be condemned.[28][29] Russian gaming websites DTF and Shazoo both reported that Voiceverse had been accused of theft on the same day of the announcement and that Voiceverse later confessed to the theft; Shazoo commented that "this raises questions about the company's overall priorities."[30][17] Ramón Baylos of Sport.es reported that Voiceverse took advantage of 15.ai's gratis nature and commercialized a sample "without the permission of its author."[31] Jonny Myrén of FZ headlined that Voiceverse "took audio from [15.ai]" and "admitted that they took the voice without attributing it to the creator".[32] Víctor Rosas of LevelUp reported that even though 15.ai had emphasized the importance of proper credit and nonprofitability of its technology, Voiceverse had used 15.ai to generate audio and had intentionally edited it to "pass it off as their own".[33] Muropaketti summarized the incident as Voiceverse being "exposed" and that they had "sold voice acting without permission".[34] Utku Aktaş of Mobidictum headlined that Voiceverse "admitted using voice lines from [15.ai] without permission".[35]
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Aftermath
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On January 15, the day after the plagiarism revelation, Baker appeared on episode 90 of the Play, Watch, Listen podcast, which he co-hosted with Alanah Pearce, Mike Bithell, and Austin Wintory. In the episode, "Talking to Troy Baker About His NFT Tweet," Baker stated that his primary motivation for the partnership was to help independent creators access resources they otherwise could not afford. He said: "while I understood that an NFT was a component to this, that's not what I got involved with." Baker said he envisioned a scenario where "if some independent game maker wants to have me in their game and they can't afford me and they can do that now, great." Responding to concerns that the technology could put voice actors out of work, Baker said: "if the only reason why I don't do something to help somebody out is because it may hurt me, that's a fucked up reason to not do the right thing." He acknowledged that his announcement had been "just a fucking bad look" and apologized again; he also said that he had told Voiceverse he did not know what would happen with the partnership moving forward.[10]
On January 31, over two weeks after his initial announcement, Baker posted on Twitter that he would no longer partner with Voiceverse and thanked fans for their "feedback and patience".[10][2][3][36] He reiterated his apology from earlier in the month: "Intentions aside, I've heard you and apologize for accusing anyone of 'hating' just by simply disagreeing with me."[10][2][3][36] Voiceverse stated that the decision was reached as a "mutual agreement" between the two parties.[2][36] In its statement, Voiceverse said it would "double-down our resources and efforts to execute on our roadmap, further our vision as the voice of Web3.0, and strengthen our community as well as the broader NFT ecosystem."[10]
On September 25, 2024, a class action lawsuit was filed against LOVO, Inc., the parent company of Voiceverse, alleging that LOVO had stolen the voices and identities of voice actors "to create millions of voice-over productions without permission or proper compensation." Court documents cited the company's prior plagiarism of 15.ai as part of the case.[37]
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Legacy
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The incident was documented by various organizations indexing ethics violations in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. The AI Incident Database (AIID), started by the nonprofit coalition Partnership on AI, described the incident as one that harmed 15.ai and its users.[38] The AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Incidents and Controversies (AIAAIC) repository[a] wrote that the incident exposed the dangers of opaque NFT ventures and the monetization of AI-generated content, and furthermore contributed to 15.ai's hiatus in late 2022.[40] Both the AIID and the AIAAIC[b] classified the incident as theft.[40][38] The AIID indexed the incident as #277 in its database: "Voices Created Using Publicly Available App Stolen and Resold as NFT without Attribution";[38] the AIAAIC initially indexed it as "Voiceverse NFT voice theft" in their dataset.[40] Later, the AIAAIC formally classified the incident as a case of plagiarism and indexed it as "Voiceverse NFT caught plagiarising voice lines from AI service 15.ai".[40] The MIT AI Risk Repository, launched by MIT researchers at FutureTech,[42] catalogued the incident as an example of "economic and cultural devaluation of human effort" under the domain of socioeconomic and environmental risk of AI.[43][38] In a retrospective of the incident in her Web3 Is Going Just Great website, writer and crypto skeptic Molly White wrote that "things were further soured when it was revealed that Voiceverse had stolen work without crediting it from [...] 15.ai." White categorized the incident as theft, a "bad idea", and "shady business".[44]
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Notes
References
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