They appeared like mushrooms after a rain. No announcement of their coming. No explanation. Like Stanley Kubrick’s monolith in the desert. No warning that they would promise to give us the world so they could take our jobs — our soul. Data centers — the home of artificial intelligence.

I’m a television journalist, a narrator. That means I transform the written word into audio that matches the visuals. After a 60-year career I can count almost 1,000 such narrations across the broadcasting spectrum with emphasis on news, true crime programs, nature and special events.

On Oct. 1 of this year, I received an email from a friendly viewer inquiring about a show on cable that she heard, writing, “the voiceover, I believe (is) AI, and it sounds, I mean, I don’t know if Bill Kurtis said that, great it’s awesome, I love him. And yet, I don’t know that that’s true, so I thought it was AI and I would inform him, because I don’t think that’s okay, replicate someone’s voice without their permission.”

In a single sentence she captured a crisis in the news and entertainment industry that threatens our very existence. I put my reporting to work and found more than 200 voice-over examples using my voice replicated by AI. I was not aware of their existence, was not asked or contacted, hence I gave no consent to those people and companies using my voice or voiceprint. Some of the offenders appeared to be located out of the country.

A Chicago-based attorney, Ross Kimbarovsky of Loevy & Loevy, has filed 13 proposed class actions against such companies as Google Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, ElevenLabs and others. “What we are seeing is an illegal and unethical exploitation of talent on a massive scale, and one of the largest violations of biometric privacy ever committed. They’ve built a billion-dollar industry on stolen voices because they thought no one would make them pay for it,” Kimbarovsky said.

The use of AI is starting to rise out of its silence as data centers strategically attempt to become operational before the public learns the full reach of the center’s noise pollution, excessive water consumption and power demands.

Like a giant vacuum cleaner, they’ve been collecting information, better known as knowledge, from libraries, books, television, universities and sources in most cases without compensation to be sold back to subscribers for a fee. They argue it is “fair use” and requires no compensation.

The ingredient to be found both in my voice piracies and the accumulation of “bulk” is their attitude, that they have found an abundant, no-cost source to fuel their second industrial revolution.

And they don’t even have to tell anyone how they do it.

Once again our judicial system will have to sort things out. There are many proposed class-action lawsuits based on two Illinois laws that prohibit using AI to create and distribute “digital replicas” of an individual’s voice, image or likeness. And one that prohibits using audio without notice and permission to train an AI voice model to generate synthetic voices.

Similar federal legislation supported by the entertainment union SAG/AFTRA, entitled No Fakes Act, was approved by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and now awaits a vote by the full Senate.

We are in a time when AI can replicate one’s talent and use it without permission. If many can get my voice for free, it soon will have no value for compensation. That can kill a career. In my case, it’s a 60-year career that’s been carefully crafted with integrity and ethical standards. They are stealing not only my voice but also my journalistic reputation. I’m not going to give it away.

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Bill Kurtis is a television producer and host and a former CBS network and WBBM-Ch. 2 news anchor.

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