A woman who believes her voice has been used to create ScotRail's new AI-generated announcement system is calling for it to be removed from trains.
ScotRail recently introduced a synthetic Scottish voice to make onboard announcements in place of pre-recorded human announcers.
Voiceover artist Gayanne Potter said the artificial announcer – which is marketed as an imaginary character called Iona – was trained by Swedish technology firm ReadSpeaker using her voice.
ReadSpeaker told BBC Scotland News it had already addressed Ms Potter's concerns "several times".
ScotRail said it had no plans to remove "Iona" and the dispute was between the company and the voiceover artist.
Ms Potter said she did some work for ReadSpeaker in 2021 which she was told would be used for accessibility and e-learning software.
But two years later, when the job was largely forgotten, a friend sent her a link to ReadSpeaker's website.
Ms Potter opened the page to find Iona – a text-to-speech programme marketed as a red haired woman standing in a Scottish glen.
"It is my voice – I'm absolutely certain it's my voice,” she said.
"I was horrified – the quality of it was dreadful."
Last week Ms Potter discovered the voice was being introduced across ScotRail after reading a BBC Scotland online story.
It told how some passengers had expressed unhappiness with the new artificial announcer.
One passenger said: "It was weird. I could tell it was AI because it sounded so robotic."
Ms Potter, who said she had been in dispute with ReadSpeaker for two years, revealed that after reading the online story she burst into tears.
