- Scotland’s rail service has replaced the human train announcement voice with an AI one on some routes
- The voice technology is powered by Swedish company ReadSpeaker
- A voice actor claims the company is using her voice without permission, but ReadSpeaker says it has “comprehensively addressed” these complaints
If you live in Scotland, or have ever visited our beautiful country and travelled on a train, you’ll have probably heard the homely lilt of the female voice announcing station stops and other information.
However, train company Scotrail has now replaced the iconic voice with AI, sparking uproar among commuters – and claims from a voice actor that Scotrail has stolen her voice.
The new AI announcer is called Iona, and the robotic voice has replaced the human one that the majority of Scots have grown up with. Iona is currently rolling out on routes across Scotland, but so far has been met with hostility.
HATE the new ScotRail AI announcer voice. It sounds like a Scottish version of HAL from Space Odyssey!May 17, 2025
The AI voices uses text-to-speech technology that allows train conductors to input announcements that are then spoken across the public address system by Iona.
That’s my voice!
Following the initial backlash against the AI voice rollout, Scotrail responded on X, saying, “Give it time and it may grow on you.“
One person the voice isn’t growing on is voice actor Gayanne Potter, who’s accused the Scottish Government-owned train company of stealing her voice. Potter is a voice actor who did some work for the Swedish company ReadSpeaker in 2021.
ReadSpeaker is the company behind Iona, and at the time, Ms Potter was told her voice work would only be used for accessibility and e-learning software.
After a friend sent her a link to ReadSpeaker’s website, Potter recognized the voice, noticing similarities between her own tone and that of Iona, a persona that Scotrail is marketing as a red-haired Scottish woman, with an image that’s also – of course – AI-generated.
Ms Potter told the BBC, “It is my voice – I’m absolutely certain it’s my voice.” Potter has been in a dispute with ReadSpeaker over the use her voice for two years.
In response to the complaints, ReadSpeaker told the BBC, “ReadSpeaker is aware of Ms Potter’s concerns, and has comprehensively addressed these with Ms Potter’s legal representative several times in the past.”
In the BBC report you can listen to a comparison between Ms Potter and Iona. There’s no denying the voices are very similar, although the real issue here is the protection of workers in the creative industry, and awareness of how they sign over their rights when producing work.
Potter said, “It’s hard enough for people in the creative industry to sustain careers, but to be competing with a robotic version of yourself just adds insult to injury.”
This is just the latest controversy in the debate over who owns what in the rapidly evolving world of AI. Potter says she didn’t know at the time that her voice would be used to train a robotic one heard across Scotland. Now, she can’t escape her ‘own’ AI voice.
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john-anthony.disotto@futurenet.com (John-Anthony Disotto)
