South African accents wanted — but who would risk it?

Meta wants to record our flat vowels. Look at what we have to consent to

Have you always thought your South African accent might be interesting to foreigners, quirky perhaps, even charming but never worth anything in rands and cents?

You’d be wrong. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg needs that accent, and he will pay for it.

I discovered this through Upwork, a freelance gig platform. There it was, one morning an invitation: “We are seeking native English speakers from South Africa for a Voice Acting project. The objective is to collect natural and spontaneous audio recordings in various emotions and styles.”

The job poster Atril Solutions, in France said 53 “short recordings” were needed of me sounding happy, sad, angry, anxious and whatnot. The total recording time was about 40 minutes, and Atril would pay $45. Less the Upwork commission, I would be $40.50 richer. That’s like R750, depending on where the rand is that day on its rollercoaster.

I realised it must be some kind of AI training project

Atril specialises in language translation software.

That evoked a twinge of conscience did I want to aid and abet this tech revolution? The Center for AI Safety NGO said in May 2023: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Ag, man, I thought in my valuable accent, my tiny contribution is not going to spark the apocalypse. And didn’ tI happily use AI every day, from enhancing the photos on my phone to searching with Google?

Atril sent me a raft of documents about what was required. Quite a lot, it turns out. I had thought I would earn my $40.50 in about an hour; but it seemed like I’d have to dedicate an entire afternoon to the project. The final hurdle was to sign the consent form. Just a quick formality, I thought.

Turns out the consent document was a 30-page PDF in about 8-point type. And it started: “This Research Participation and Data Collection Agreement is between you and Meta Platforms, Inc.”

That was the deal breaker, right there. Zuckerberg. Cambridge Analytica. No thank you, not even for 750 “ront”. It seems Meta had contracted Atril to gather examples of English in various non-American accents to further its dodgy AI projects. Why “dodgy”? Because I said so. Anything Zuckerberg is involved in is, by definition, dodgy.

Proof of this was in the consent PDF. It was 30 pages because it covered a lot more than just selling to Meta all imaginable rights to your own voice for the rest of eternity; it also covered people who betatest Meta products at home before they are launched.

A random sentence reads: “You hereby grant Meta Platforms, Inc a perpetual, worldwide, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free right and license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify or otherwise create and use derivative works from, disclose, and publicly perform/display such items, irrevocably and in all formats and media existing now or in the future ... You further waive any right to enjoin or otherwise impair Meta’s use of the Research Data or Feedback.”

I’ve no idea what all that means, but it sounds beyond dodgy; more like the deal Faustus made with the devil.

It gets worse: “You understand that there may be known and unknown risks involved with your participation in the Research, and those risks could include property damage, personal injury, illness, sickness, or death.”

I was curious about what Meta products might kill the people testing them. Could one of them be Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses? The Meta website says about them: “[They] feature improved audio and cameras. You can now livestream from the glasses to Facebook or Instagram, and use ‘Hey Meta’ to engage with Meta AI, our advanced conversational assistant, just by using your voice.”

A review of the device — basically sunglasses with a built-in video camera — on the Wired website gives a hint of why using them might lead to personal injury or death. “Everyone I showed the glasses to had the same reaction: an immediate, almost visceral discomfort,” the Wired tester writes. “They instinctively disliked the potential of surveillance.” In other words, they wanted to swing a baseball bat at the smart glasses and the smart arse wearing them.

According to the same review, the “Hey Meta” feature is so far available only in the US, and even there it’s still in beta testing. Sorry, Zuck, if you ever want to roll it out in South Africa, it will have to be without the help of my weird Joburg vowels.