# Talk:Voiceverse NFT plagiarism scandal

This review is transcluded from Talk:Voiceverse NFT plagiarism scandal/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Nominator: GregariousMadness (talk · contribs) 16:14, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
Reviewer: Chipmunkdavis (talk · contribs) 04:52, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

I'll take a look through this. As an initial comment, I am doubtful that the Voice Verse logo meets NFCC criteria. I am more convinced by the Chubbiverse promotional video rationale. The lead seems to cover all the body sections in some way or another. There are a couple of instances of repeated citations but addressing that is not vital. Generally the article looks well cited, although I will take a closer look due to the BLP nature. One source is generally unreliable, but it is being used to the view of that publication itself. A few sources with marginal reliability will have to be checked as I go through. Article is new and has been undergoing rapid editing, but I am assuming it was nominated because the current state was seen as stable. CMD (talk) 04:52, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for reviewing! Indeed, the current state of the article is stable. I'll be here ready to edit and clarify; please ask me any questions at any time! Which sources specifically are you concerned about as being generally unreliable/marginally reliable? –GM 05:06, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
Not my personal assessment, but per WP:NPPSG Tech Times is unreliable, while per WP:VG/S The Mary Sue and TheGamer are marginally reliable. As I noted this doesn't mean they can't be used at all, just that extra due diligence is needed. CMD (talk) 07:18, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
Oh, I see. I believe the WP:VG/RS judgment of The Mary Sue is outdated because WP:THEMARYSUE (last updated in 2022) puts it at generally reliable. Same for Tech Times; WP:VG/RS#General_computing/technology puts it as a reliable source for general computing/technology. For TheGamer, WP:VG/RS says News posts and original content after August 2020 are considered generally reliable., and the articles are news posts written in 2022. –GM 15:22, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis: Yep, it turns out that the WP:VG/RS table just hadn't been updated. The Mary Sue had last been discussed on WP:VG over a decade ago. I've gone ahead and added the two missing WP:RSN and moved it up from "situational" to "reliable". –GM 15:36, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
"Voiceverse is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency startup founded in 2021 by the Bored Ape Yacht Club that marketed itself as offering proprietary AI voice cloning technology in the form of NFTs" not sure all of this is in the attached source, particularly the date and the proprietary claim (however, other uses of that source fully check out, Peters 2022 also checks out).
Y Done, removed extraneous unsupported statements and used another source to support the sentence as well –GM 02:49, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
Both sources in the 15ai section check out, although they are not specifically about the article topic. This is fine, but I mostly mention to note that it is impressive that the other background subsections are developed using sources about the topic.
Y Sadly, the sources that discuss the article topic and mention 15.ai don't fully explain the background behind 15.ai, so I figured it would be easiest if I used an unrelated source to discuss this. As much as I would have loved to keep the sources contained, statements like the name "15.ai" references the creator's statement that a voice can be convincingly cloned with just 15 seconds of audio, as opposed to the tens of hours of data previously required. aren't able to be supported in its entirety using just the sources talking about the incident. –GM 02:40, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
Bankhurst 2022 verifies the date of the STALKER controversy through an embedded Youtube video, could use something which has it directly but this is a minor point.
Y Done, added December 16 date –GM 02:16, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
For the first paragraph of Partnership announcement and backlash, I'd lean away from quoting directly from the tweet if the secondary source being used hasn't pulled out that quote as a point of specific commentary. One source does include "You can hate. Or you can create.", but "What'll it be?" isn't there (and does not greatly add to the prior sentence).
Y Done, removed "What'll it be?" –GM 02:16, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
"proprietary" comes up again here, without being in the sources. It seems a very specific word which might have legal meanings, is it adding something addition to "their" though?
Y Done, removed all instances of "proprietary" –GM 02:34, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
For the final paragraph of Partnership announcement and backlash, the quotes could also be trimmed back to those the secondary sources have commented on.
Y Done, trimmed and paraphrased quotes from that paragraph. –GM 03:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
The LOVO, Inc. wikilink is a circular redirect back to this page, and links to a section that does not seem to mention LOVO, Inc. I would suggest removing it.
Y Done, removed wikilink –GM 02:16, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
The placement of "The following month, 15 commented on the Voiceverse venture shortly after the announcement, stating that it "sounds like a scam"." is a bit misleading, as 15 made that statement after discovering the plagiarism, not as an independent incident.
Y Actually, 15 did make the statement before the post announcing the plagiarism, on January 14, 2022, 11:17 a.m. EST The "sounds like a scam" post was made two hours before the accusation, so I think how it is currently isn't misleading. –GM 02:16, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
The use of two tweets which are simply code blocks as sources probably means that sentence is not due for inclusion here, although I note some of the secondary sources do mention Twilight Sparkle. The third tweet is probably also undue.
? So, the reason I used the primary sources for that was because while some secondary sources mention Rainbow Dash (i.e. the Eurogamer and NME sources), none of them seem to mention Twilight Sparkle. What do you think? In my opinion, it would be strange and incomplete to only mention Rainbow Dash when both characters were used in the plagiarism. –GM 03:59, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
I've restructured the sentences to explicitly separate the primary and secondary sources. Please let me know how this is! –GM 04:43, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
Y As for the third tweet, there is a secondary source that discusses this, but it's a Metro source, and per WP:METRO it is generally unreliable. However, this specific Metro article has been used in both the AIID and the AIAAIC, so per WP:USEBYOTHERS I feel like this is an acceptable use case for a WP:GUNREL source. Still, I had wanted to avoid the headache behind that during the GA review, so I opted to use the primary source instead for this. Do you think it would be okay to use the Metro source to replace the third tweet as a source? –GM 02:23, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
On second thought, I just realized that the AIID has the entire Metro article transcluded in their database! So we can just invoke the AIID reference instead of directly using Metro to circumvent any WP:GUNREL issues — that works out perfectly! –GM 03:55, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
Some of the text is a little wp:proseline and is quite close to the source. For example, "Voiceverse initially responded to the accusations by boasting sarcastically, but later deleted that response" reflects one of the source sentences, and could be much shorter. A second example is "the interaction went viral and the response amassed hundreds of thousands of retweets and likes on Twitter in support of the developer."
Y Done, rephrased and made shorter –GM 02:30, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
"Voiceverse subsequently deleted the incriminating tweet, but Twitter users had saved and reshared the video to preserve evidence of the plagiarism." is a bit of an extrapolation from the sources.
Y Done, removed to preserve evidence of the plagiarism. –GM 02:16, 12 October 2025 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis: I believe I've addressed all of the above concerns, except for the tweets one (regarding Rainbow Dash/Twilight Sparkle) that I've put a ? next to. What do you think about the comments I made for that? Thank you again for the review! –GM 03:04, 12 October 2025 (UTC)

I'll get back to the above in a bit, I didn't have time to get past Reactions. As a general note, if there are no secondary sources covering information, the information is likely undue for inclusion. That applies to twitter, youtube, and quoting specific news sources verbatim sourced to those news pieces themselves. CMD (talk) 07:51, 13 October 2025 (UTC)
The structure of the first paragraph of reactions makes WP:TSI difficult to check for. Are these all sources that have used "stolen", or are they ones that used "taken", "plagiarized", or used content "without permission" or "without giving proper credit"? Perhaps divide into "stolen" and "plagiarized", "taken" is a bit vague, and meanwhile "without permission" and "without giving proper credit" seem like pretty bland factual statements covered elsewhere that don't need this sort of focus. The quotes following seem a bit egregious, especially as they are sourced to themselves, what are they intended to convey to the reader? The same applies to the paragraph on non-English language outlets, it seems these could be greatly simplified into noting their agreements.
Y I've greatly trimmed the two paragraphs and combined them into one. As for the WP:TSI concerns, I've added specific quotes in the footnotes with bolded text to point out exactly what excerpt is being used to support which claim. –GM 21:26, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
"universally negative" is not appropriate in wikivoice, being quite an unprovable superlative. The discussion of specific concerns following however is a decent structure, it is clearer what the reader is intended to learn. However, the general criticism of NFTs as a whole could be trimmed, as should the part sourced to youtube. Overall, this section should be greatly condensed, focusing on the substance of the reactions rather than those behind them.
Y being quite an unprovable superlative while true, both Eurogamer sources that are two weeks apart from each other ([1] [2]) explicitly do write universally negative response. My thought process behind this sentence was that I had originally planned to phrase it as According to Eurogamer, reactions to Baker's initial partnership announcement were universally negative., but after inspecting the other sources, enough WP:VG/RS's seemed to be in agreement, so I boldly wrote it in Wikivoice and included a footnote that included sources that were attributed the statement. Personally, I don't really see an issue with writing it in Wikivoice in this case, but for now I'm happy to revert it back to the version with in-text attribution. –GM 21:34, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
Y I've also greatly trimmed this section as well by removing unnecessary sentences. –GM 21:58, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
I can't see "mutual agreement" in the sources, although I see "mutually decided". However, there is not much point including this in the article standalone, it is used by the source as noting uncertainty between the two accounts.
Y Apologies, "mutual agreement" was in the IGN source, not the ones that had been inlined. I've corrected the source and trimmed the two so that they have been combined into a single sentence. –GM 18:47, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
The last paragraph of Aftermath is based on two primary sources, these should be replaced or removed.
Y I've found a Reuters article that directly includes the court documents in it. As for the second primary source, I reworded it to give a direct quotation to avoid WP:OR and WP:SYNTH problems; here, since we're directly quoting, WP:PRIMARYNOTBAD should apply as long as only one sentence is spent discussing it to avoid any WP:UNDUE issues. –GM 18:59, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
Much of the first paragraph of Legacy sourced to primary sources should similarly be trimmed.
Y Done, significantly trimmed first paragraph and combined it with the second. –GM 18:43, 14 October 2025 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis: I've addressed all of your points above—could you please take a look? –GM 21:58, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: Sorry to poke you again, but do you have any comments with the changes I've made? I saw that you were active elsewhere and wasn't sure if you hadn't gotten pinged above. Thank you! –GM 03:27, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
Apologies, just had minutes at times over the past few days, I need a sustained block of time to think about GANs. Given how many points were addressed above, will collect short responses here:
"Done, added December 16 date" Which source has this?
Y Sorry about that, I thought one of the articles had the date embedded in the original tweet, but I had been looking at a different article. I've added it now. –GM 18:34, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
"15 did make the statement before the post announcing the plagiarism". The current statement places it in a separate paragraph from the plagiarism findings. The source places them together. Two hours difference does not make the statements distinct.
Y Done, merged that sentence into the 2nd paragraph detailing the accusation. –GM 19:35, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
"I've restructured the sentences", this is a bit clearer, although there is still a bit of primary sources. If you feel it is important, how about converting it into an attributed note? Eg. While source X mentions Rainbow Dash, logs posted by 15 state Twilight Sparkle was also copied. (As for tweet 3, will go by your argument to use Metro instead, especially as it is sourcing a quote from a subject rather than analysis.)
Y Done, converted the parenthetical into a footnote instead. –GM 18:34, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
The "Reactions" section could still be trimmed. For example, "News publications universally characterized the incident as Voiceverse having "stolen" from 15.ai" could be removed as redundant, start off with "English-language news websites reported that the AI voice was "stolen"—including..., others stated it was "plagiarized"—including...". Similarly, "Several outlets highlighted specific aggravating factors" is meta-analysis that a reader can pick up by the succeeding examples. "International coverage mirrored these characterizations." can also be removed, go straight to the languages, but perhaps remove the quote marks as it is a translation (or if you want, add a note with the specific non-English words?).
? I'm a bit confused about this, because some of the things you pointed out were no longer there at the time of the comment. I had already previously removed Several outlets highlighted specific aggravating factors. In addition, I had rephrased the first sentence to be News publications universally characterized the incident as theft. to avoid the redundancy, and I had already removed the quote marks as well (in favor of using footnotes to organize). I'll go ahead and try to edit it, but I think you were looking at an outdated version of the article when writing this comment? –GM 19:44, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
Aside from that, I still don't feel the File:Voiceverse logo.jpg WP:FUR passes muster here, the article would convey the same information without it.
Y Done, removed the Voiceverse logo. –GM 19:20, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
Lastly, having gone through the article again, the first sentence of the lead should be trimmed per MOS:BOLDAVOID to avoid "plagiarism scandal was when X was plagiarized", "scandal was a controversy", etc.
Y Done, rephrased the first sentence per MOS:BOLDAVOID. –GM 18:54, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for all the improvements. CMD (talk) 08:21, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: Of course! I've addressed the comments above as well, could you take another look? Thank you! –GM 19:53, 17 October 2025 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis: Poking again just in case (apologies) –GM 03:45, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
Apologies if I was looking at the wrong version, more evidence I do need to make sure I am not looking at this in a rushed period. Let's hope I'm looking at the correct version now. If so, perhaps remove the subheaders with in Reaction, "News media" is covered by "News publications" at the start of the paragraph, and the second paragraph has a few different views rather than just an amorphous public. The voiceverse image should also be removed from the tweet, although if you want the style I suggest just uploading an svg of the letters in allcaps in the same positions, at that size there will be little difference to the reader. Aside from that it looks alright, I really like the first paragraph of the lead now. CMD (talk) 15:07, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis: Y Done! Sorry for the pings, I wasn't sure if you were really getting notified because that sometimes happens to me on Wikipedia. Thank you for the thorough review! –GM 19:11, 19 October 2025 (UTC)
No problem. And we have new wikilinks, always very nice. Happy to pass on the GACR now. CMD (talk) 08:45, 20 October 2025 (UTC)