Late narrator Paul Vaughan's daughter says Royal Mail AI Christmas ad voice sounds like him

Mixed · 2Lucy Wynne, daughter of the late broadcaster Paul Vaughan, has accused Royal Mail of using an AI replica of her father's voice in its Christmas 2025 advert. 1 2 Mixed · 2Vaughan died in 2014 aged 89. He was known for narrating the BBC's Horizon and Radio 4's Kaleidoscope, and for the Paddington audiobooks. 1 2 Mixed · 2Wynne says she heard the advert on ITV in November 2025, 11 years after her father's death, and was certain the voice was his. Her husband, Darren, also thought it sounded like Vaughan. Wynne knew Vaughan had never worked for Royal Mail and suspected the voice had been recreated without permission. 2 1

Mixed · 2Royal Mail confirmed to Deadline and The Independent that the voiceover was AI-generated. A spokesperson said this is "increasingly common", that the voice was created using prompts and was "not designed to replicate any specific individual", and that the production partners' checks "did not identify any resemblance concerns". 1 2 Mixed · 2According to Deadline, the campaign was overseen by the agency Darwin & the Machines, which worked with Untold Studios on filming with real actors. The voiceover was subcontracted to Fameplay, a Czech AI company backed by Czech Media Invest, which is chaired by Daniel Křetínský, whose EP Group owns Royal Mail. 2 1 Centre · 1An unnamed source who worked on the advert told Deadline that Fameplay's Juraj Felix, present during filming, was "obsessed with AI voiceover" and that the production team had warned against using AI with "such a venerable British brand". 2

Mixed · 2Fameplay told Deadline that no reference to Vaughan was used in its generative prompts. Fameplay licensed its technology from ElevenLabs, which confirmed only that the narration was not a direct voice clone of Vaughan and declined to comment on whether its model might have been trained on his recordings. 2 1 Centre · 1Deadline reports that experts support the resemblance. Dr Nadine Lavan of Queen Mary University of London said relatives are very good at recognising a loved one's voice. Prof Vincent Hughes of the University of York found "considerable phonetic similarity", though the short audio limited his analysis. Deadline's own comparison with three open-source tools found a good chance of a "same speaker" match. 2 Centre · 1Wynne called the situation "outrageous" and said the company had not done proper background searches. She said Vaughan would have hated AI taking work from voiceover artists, and that she has received no apology. Royal Mail said it understood the concerns and had taken them seriously. 2

Left · 1ElevenLabs has reportedly added Vaughan to its "No Go Voices", so his voice cannot be directly cloned on its platform in future. The row follows the launch of the Save Our Voices Now campaign, backed by Nicola Coughlan, Luke Evans and Hugh Bonneville, which seeks stronger UK legal protection for performers against generative AI. The Independent said it had contacted Fameplay, ElevenLabs and the BBC for comment. 1