Actors Hit AI Startup With Class Action Lawsuit Over Voice Theft

[highplainsdem]

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Voiceover actor Paul Skye Lehrman was at his friend’s house in 2022 when a YouTube video was pulled up from a channel called Military News about Russia’s advance into Ukraine. He immediately recognized the voice as his own, though he never contracted with the channel operator for use of his likeness.

“It was my voice dictating the conflict and talking about weapons,” Lehrman says. “These are words I never said.”

A year later, he was on his way to a doctor’s appointment when he says he again stumbled upon his voice in a podcast about Hollywood’s dual strikes in which a generative artificial intelligence text-to-speech tool was used to answers questions about the dangers of the technology. That’s when he and his wife Linnea Sage, also a voiceover actor who suspects her voice was stolen in a similar manner, reached out to an attorney.

On Thursday, they sued Berkeley-based AI startup LOVO in a proposed class action filed in New York federal court accusing the company of misappropriating their voices, as well as those of A-list talent such as Scarlett Johansson, Ariana Grande and Conan O’Brien. It’s believed to the first lawsuit against an AI firm over the use of likenesses to train an AI system and marks a growing rift between creators and companies alleged to indiscriminately hoover troves of data to power their technology.

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Read more: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/actors-hit-ai-startup-with-class-action-lawsuit-over-voice-theft-1235900689/

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Much more at the link, including that actors union SAG-AFTRA is advocating for a federal right of publicity law to protect everyone's voice and likeness from being exploited this way.

[Think. Again.]

1. An actors voice is a valuable asset...

...even if you don't realize the famous actor who owns it.

You might notice from time to time that an advertisment with a voice-over sounds familiar to you although no actor is mentioned as endorsing the product.

An actor with a strong following will contract vocalizations without a credit, at a higher rate, because the unrecognized familarity of the voice alone will incur a positive response from the advertiser's audience without distracting from the product. Any good vibes a viewer might get as a fan of the actor cleanly attaches to the product.

[FakeNoose]

2. People have been doing impressions of famous people for ... well, at least 100 years

Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, there are dozens of actors who have been "ripped off" by comedians and entertainers who made jokes while imitating their voices. It's going to be a difficult case to win, in my humble opinion.

Where actors DO have a beef is the movie industry using a facial depiction of an actor, either in CGI video or in cartoon style, AND the same actor's voice speaking via AI, without an agreement by that actor. That seems like it should be a definite theft of services.

[eggplant]

5. Imitation in that context is fair use.

They aren't in any way claiming to be said person.

Training AI on someone's voice is clearly theft.

[AnrothElf]

3. Wow, the "AI" bros are fast man. Almost as fast as bots. Gotta defend (checks notes) the chatbot!!

It's another scam, like crypto. Don't believe the bros. Ignore them or ridicule them if you got the chops, but don't believe a word they fucking say.

They're trying to sell you something.

Don't buy it.

It's not inevitable. The tech itself is fundamentally and irreparably flawed. It can't do arithmetic, unless it can find it on Stack Overflow. It can't do math.

Our robot overlords can't even fight us in the street. And when they try? It'll be pathetic. Barely newsworthy.

AI is wayyyyyyyyy out there man. That's sci-fi shit, still. AI doesn't exist, in any form, anywhere on this planet.

[Alice Kramden]

4. This is insidious

And it's the reason why the GOP congress critters want the recording of Biden’s interview with Tur - to manipulate with AI