If you head over to TikTok and try the text-to-speech feature now, you will notice the difference. TikTok now has a new female voice after it was sued by an actor who claimed that her voice was being used without her permission.
Originally in late 2020, TikTok offered the text-to-speech feature that allows users to convert on-screen captions to automated speech. As of now, it is not clear if the new voice is available to all TikTok users but it now appears to North American users.
Users began to report the difference starting from Monday, as they question the reason for the change.
Earlier this month, Beverly Standing, a professional voice actor sued ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company as she claimed that her voice was used as the text-to-speech feature in the app, without her permission. The lawsuit claims that she was hired by an ‘Institute of Acoustics’ to ‘perform voice work purportedly for Chinese translations,’ saying that the Institute is a company based in Scotland. It also claims that ‘upon information and belief, a company from China contracted with the Institute of Acoustics,’ and states that TikTok used Standing’s work without her permission.
The voice actor said that she recognized her voice from the text-to-speech function after her family and friends begin to tell her as they could identify the tonality and pitch of her voice. She said that the audio recorded would only be used for translation purposes and being a text-to-speech voice was not in the job agreement.
She also said that she was concerned about her future jobs and clients, afraid that she may not be hired because her voice was already used in Tik Tok.
“The whole point of me going this public… it’s not about the money overall,” said Standing. “By going public I’m hoping I’m sharing with the end-users, the clients, the people that are doing the other end of it, realizing that this is my livelihood, and I’m behind this mic every single day working, training, teaching. You can’t just take it.”
Sources: Insider