\n\tAnd now, on an unremarkable autumnal evening in Buckinghamshire, Wynne was convinced that Vaughan had returned to her in a Royal Mail Christmas ad on ITV. It was not a welcome apparition. Instead of fond memories of her father, Wynne was filled with dread. She thought it was unlikely Vaughan had ever worked for Royal Mail. He certainly hadn\u2019t provided a voiceover from the afterlife. Wynne feared that Vaughan\u2019s voice was somehow recreated without permission. \u201cBloody bollocks,\u201d she told her husband. \u201cSomebody\u2019s done something.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
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\t\t\t\t\tA still from Royal Mail\u2019s Christmas ad<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Royal Mail\u2019s 2025 festive campaign (scroll to the end of this story to hear the audio) celebrated how Christmas cards can bring loved ones together. The ads tell mini-stories of people posting heartfelt messages and end with the same slogan, spoken by a mellifluous male narrator: \u201cRoyal Mail, it\u2019s so much more than just a card.\u201d The campaign celebrates tangible human interaction, but in doing so, misled its audience.<\/p>\n
\n\tResponding to questions from Deadline, Royal Mail, Britain\u2019s 500-year-old postal service, admitted that it used artificial intelligence to deliver its festive message to the nation. Instead of paying an actor or voiceover artist to deliver the ad\u2019s slogan, Royal Mail commissioned the ad\u2019s producers to cut the human from the loop. A Royal Mail spokesperson said this is \u201cincreasingly common,\u201d but not so common that the company was prepared to be transparent about its editorial choice at the time the ad aired. We only know about the use of AI because Wynne just so happened to recognize what she thought was her father\u2019s voice. But was it Paul Vaughan?<\/p>\n
\n\tThe \u201cso much more than just a card\u201d campaign was overseen by an ad agency called Darwin & the Machines. The agency worked with independent producer Untold Studios to film the human stories at the heart of the campaign, using real actors in the UK. Darwin & the Machines subcontracted the voiceover to a company called Fameplay, an AI specialist based in Czechia. Fameplay is backed by Czech Media Invest, which is chaired by Daniel K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd, whose EP Group also happens to own the Royal Mail.<\/p>\n
\n\tA UK source who worked on the advert told Deadline that Fameplay\u2019s Juraj Felix, a close associate of K\u0159et\u00ednsk\u00fd, was present during filming and was evangelical about using AI. \u201cHe was obsessed with AI voiceover,\u201d the source said. \u201cThe production team told him that it was not a great idea to use AI in connection with such a venerable British brand, but they saw a business opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRoyal Mail was aware of the plan, but a spokesperson insisted that the voiceover was \u201cnot designed to replicate any specific individual.\u201d But what if the Christmas card campaign unintentionally replicated a specific individual? Vaughan\u2019s voice was warm, authoritative, and unmistakably English. \u201cWhen God speaks, he uses Paul Vaughan\u2019s voice,\u201d observed a Daily Telegraph obituary. His broadcasting, advertising, and audiobook work means there is a wealth of professional material in the public domain featuring his words. In short, Vaughan is exactly the kind of voice that is ripe for training an AI model.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\t\tElevenLabs Summit in London in 2026<\/p>\n
\n\tDeadline asked Fameplay a series of questions about how it generated the Royal Mail voice, and the company insisted no reference to Vaughan was used in its generative prompts. We can reveal that Fameplay licensed its AI technology from ElevenLabs, the $22 billion AI audio giant that counts Matthew McConaughey among its investors and has a partnership with Michael Caine<\/a>. Deadline posed similar questions to ElevenLabs, but the company would only confirm that the Royal Mail narration was not a direct voice clone of Vaughan. Asked whether its AI model might have been trained on material voiced by Vaughan, meaning that generic prompts could generate something that sounded like him, ElevenLabs declined to comment.<\/p>\n \n\tRoyal Mail told Deadline that the advert\u2019s producers \u201ccarried out checks and advised that these did not identify any resemblance concerns.\u201d The trouble is that Wynne did identify resemblance concerns. As Vaughan\u2019s daughter put it, there is an \u201cinflection in his voice that no one else has.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWynne\u2019s instinctive response is supported by academic study. Dr Nadine Lavan, a voice psychology expert at Queen Mary University of London, said her research shows that family members are very good at recognizing the voice of a loved one. \u201cWith Wynne recognizing the voice from the advert as being Paul, we can conclude the voice is very similar,\u201d Lavan said.<\/p>\n \n\tAudio analysis supports this conclusion. Vincent Hughes, a professor of forensic speech science at the University of York, said there was \u201cconsiderable phonetic similarity\u201d between the voice in the Royal Mail ads and that of Vaughan. His analysis was limited by the brevity of the Royal Mail audio, but it was enough for him to conclude that there was material overlap in \u201csegmental patterns,\u201d meaning the pronunciation of consonants and vowels, and \u201coverall voice quality,\u201d sometimes referred to as the \u201ctimbre\u201d of a person\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n \n\tDeadline also compared the Royal Mail ad with other Vaughan audio using three different open-source AI analysis tools. All three said there were enough similarities to conclude that there was a good chance the AI-generated voice was the \u201csame speaker\u201d as Vaughan.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s outrageous,\u201d said Wynne. \u201cHe could have died two weeks ago, for all they knew. He could have been in the care home for the past 10 years, slowly losing his capacity for speech, and then all of a sudden, he\u2019s on the bloody telly. They have not bothered to do their background searches to figure out who this voice is.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWynne added that Vaughan would have hated the idea of AI taking away work from voiceover artists. \u201cPay the money and get somebody in to do the job,\u201d she argued. Wynne has not received an apology from the Royal Mail after complaining. The company told Deadline: \u201cWe understand the concerns raised and have taken them seriously.\u201d ElevenLabs has added Vaughan to its No Go Voices, meaning his voice cannot be directly cloned on its platform in the future.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tPaul Vaughan<\/p>\n<\/p>\n