Stephen Fry, 66, rushed to hospital after suffering major fall on stage
Stephen Fry has been taken to hospital after falling during an on-stage appearance at a festival.
The 66-year-old comedian, actor and broadcaster had been speaking at the CogX Festival at the O2 in London last week when he took a tumble while coming off the stage. The British icon had finished up his speech and was exiting the stage when he fell from the edge of the floor - falling six feet.
Reports have stated that Stephen suffered injuries to his rib and leg and had to leave the venue in a wheelchair following his horror fall. He has reportedly been taken to hospital to be treated for his injuries - the extent of and seriousness of which have not yet been made public.
An audience member has spoken to the MailOnline after witnessing the incident - which took place at an AI conference that cost £495 for a ticket to attend. The source told the outlet: "It looked like it was too dark and there didn't look like there was a handrail. He fell two metres to the floor. He looked to have been hurt as he had to leave in a wheelchair."
Stephen explained that his voice work from the Harry Potter book series had been used by AI to make it appear he had made an audio documentary that he never said (Pottermore Publishing)Stephen was a top billed speaker at the London based event - which itself was billed as "The festival of inspiration, impact and transformational change." Among topics being discussed was the impact that AI might have on the world of cinema.
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The festival website warned: "We're at a turning point where Generative AI's limitless potential meets cinema. As we navigate this era of rapid innovation, the balance between progress and ethics becomes critical. Join us for enlightening dialogues and live demonstrations, and help shape a transformative, ethically-balanced future for the moving image."
Stephen took to the stage last Thursday and it is not clear if he has recovered from his injuries - or if he has been discharged from hospital. However, during his speech last week, he issued a stark warning about the dangers of AI to his profession - explaining that the voice work he provided as the narrator of the audio novels of the Harry Potter book series was stolen and used to create other spoken word that he had no involvment in.
Fortune reports that Stephen played an AI system mimicking his voice to narrate a historical documentary. He then revealed to the O2 audience: “I said not one word of that—it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me. They used my reading of the seven volumes of the Harry Potter books, and from that dataset an AI of my voice was created, and it made that new narration.”
He continued: “What you heard was not the result of a mashup. This is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence. It could therefore have me read anything from a call to storm Parliament to hard porn, all without my knowledge and without my permission.
"And this, what you just heard, was done without my knowledge. So I heard about this, I sent it to my agents on both sides of the Atlantic, and they went ballistic—they had no idea such a thing was possible.” He went on to explain his fear that "full deepfake videos" of actors performing in roles they did not film could soon be created in a similar way.
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