A Chinese voice actor, Shen Anyu, has had his voice widely cloned by AI—so much that platforms now flag his genuine recordings as synthetic—leading to lost work, income and a years-long struggle to document copies and pursue legal remedies. Other performers in China’s short-video, audiobook and ultrashort-drama industries report similar AI voice-cloning abuses and few effective protections from platforms or law.
Tetraethyl lead (TEL) was adopted as an anti-knock additive in gasoline in the 1920s despite being a known poison; industrial and patent interests favored TEL over safer alternatives like ethanol, leading to widespread lead pollution and long-term public-health harms that only began to be addressed decades later. The article traces the early knowledge of TEL’s toxicity, industry and regulatory decisions, and the lasting effects on children and environments.