7 ms·

How is the song a violation of copyright? Someone's vocal characteristics are not meaningfully creative; it's the intellectual content of a work and specific i

How is the song a violation of copyright? Someone's vocal characteristics are not meaningfully creative; it's the intellectual content of a work and specific instance of a performance of an artist's skill in singing or writing or drawing or fabricating that content, that makes the result copyrightable. Therefore, it seems like it's a stretch to think voice-mimicking AI works might be copyrightable by the mimicked artists. You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. Some people can do some voices quite well. AI can just do it better, faster. I hope the courts put a swift end to this, but maybe they'll try to uphold the status quo—entertainment megacorps get what they want—and only reverse course after a few years when it becomes clear that everyone's mimicking everyone else's voices and pictures for fun and profit and any attempt to maintain copyright or any other IP protection on such mimicry is absurd.

prepend 3y ago
I think that it’s knee jerk for now but the mistake is that there was confusion and promotion that Drake and Weeknd provided vocals. But I expect we’ll see some new law, or lots of “Drake-style vocals” in song labels. Cover bands exist and can even sing new songs while sounding like the original. So Journey hiring someone who sounds exactly like Steve Perry seems perfectly legal. So Journal training an AI on Steve Perry and having a robot sing exactly like him seems find as long as there’s no presentation as if it is Steve Perry singing or endorsing or using his celebrity likeness.
- lancesells 3y ago
  I think there's a very big difference here in that you're equating a person singing like Steve Perry (one in millions) and a machine singing like Steve Perry (electricity required). These are very different things.
  - hgsgm 3y ago
    The law has not caught up yet. There will be a reckoning, and it will be decided by wealthy lobbyists.
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    Why so?
    - Riverheart 3y ago
      Because of the scale on which AI voices can be abused, the infeasibility of taking all violations of publicity rights to court, and, personal opinion, cheapens the human experience of music by creating eternal singers and encourages removing real singers from the process of music?
      - 1attice 3y ago
        I agree with everything you said. But this is 2023. The laws, when not actively hostile to human wellbeing, are at the very least unconcerned with it. 'The cheapening human experience' is not a court case. I wish to high heaven and the three hells that it was, but it isn't. So: what do we do now?
        Riverheart 3y ago
        Well another way to look at it is human society and its laws should tend to the needs of its citizens and the job loss implications of this and other AI tech should concern the state which likely doesn’t want a bunch of idle people dependent on the their coin purse. Some protection of human workers seems warranted. I don’t think think copyright or public rights even need to come into play. Arbitrary or not, this technology serves companies more so than workers. It’s not clear the benefits outweigh the cost to society. The cool factor is not a compelling enough argument to allow it unrestricted. Everyone needs work, that’s a basic fact of life. We should be mindful knowing one day we will be targets of replacement. As consumers, we should avoid supporting, where possible, commercial uses of AI voices and as citizens, support new laws that curtail their commercial use. Not sure what else can be done as people will use this stuff commercially if able and people will consume it because it exists. It would be nice if people who lost their voice could get it back. Although he would be less iconic, speech synthesis like this could have given Stephen Hawking his voice back. That harms no one so I can see exceptions for such cases.
      - 3y ago
winternett 3y ago
> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. You can sue someone for Financial/ID theft and impersonation though. Many shady artists were (and still are) using celebrity names in their track titles to get attention for their music releases prior to this. The problem is services like Spotify and YouTube (content search) primarily working based on keywords, and also in those same types of music services only being geared towards major industry artists rather than giving everyone an even playing field to have their music heard... It encourages scam and spam environments, as well as impersonation by artists accounts for the tiny profit they pay. By posting music with the "emulated" voice in it (which is actually tiny samples of the artist's actual voice), the Ai tools allow and encourage people to create songs and title them as if they were made by the actual artist. In the emulator, they list the authentic artist's name as an option, which technically highlights that they are complicit in facilitating production of music that impersonates the named artist. Imagine if you're an emerging artist and beginning to gain traction in your career, then all of a sudden, because of an Ai web site, hundreds of people start flooding streaming services with low quality, parody, and even good music using your name, while also collecting royalties off of it... That can ruin a musician's brand and cause damage to the artist's reputation that they can't recover from. There are legal protections against that, even without copyrights, but it can often involve a lengthy court battle. I'm a musician myself, I am not a lawyer, I do my best to stay out of court. It's better for everyone if everyone simply puts out their own original music, or properly credited samples and/or remixes with artist consent and permission.
- soulofmischief 3y ago
  This wasn't illegal already if you were a good impersonator provided you're not making money from someone's image and likeness. There's no difference here. I'm not saying there won't be lawsuits but they'll be in bad faith.
  - winternett 3y ago
    The condition that absolves impersonators from responsibility is that they must clearly present that they are impersonators.. That doesn't quite apply here, as the tracks were posted to streaming services as if they were published by the actual artists. If the fake/imitation song makers are required to label their releases as parody or impersonation, then they'll get no streams, as most of the bootleg streams they got were due to putting out a mimicked (pseudo-authentic) release as if it was done by the actual artist. Reputational harm is also a serious case that can also be filed... With an artist as popular as Drake (for example) that can lead to a financially devastating judgement.
35208654 3y ago
> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. Some people can do some voices quite well. Oh you most certainly can. In fact, you can sue someone for sounding too much like himself. Just ask John Fogerty.
- nostrademons 3y ago
  You can sue anyone for anything, you just can't necessarily win. The court found in favor of Fogerty.
  - 35208654 3y ago
    Absolutely right. The fact that it even got a full trial shows there are legal questions here.
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      But as far as that specific trial - not anymore. Fogerty vs. Fantasy becomes case law, and so any future cases with substantively similar facts are going to be ruled the same way. That's how the law works.
sprkwd 3y ago
> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. Tom Waits might disagree: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/singer-tom-waits-sues-voice-theft-ad-opel-cars/471684 https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/singer-tom-waits-sues...
ajb 3y ago
"Someone's vocal characteristics are not meaningfully creative" This is absolutely not true. You might think when you hear someone singing that it's just their natural voice, but in fact they have trained their voice over years or decades to produce that particular sound. The human vocal system is extremely more flexible than people think. Most people produce a particular sound out of pure habit and imagine that they can't produce any other. The most identifiable singers have invented a new sound (and then immediately get a bunch of copycats who don't do it as well)
- musicale 3y ago
  > The most identifiable singers have invented a new sound (and then immediately get a bunch of copycats who don't do it as well) The Weeknd does a pretty credible Michael Jackson-style vocal, and has noted that Jackson's Off the Wall was the album that inspired him to start singing. Bruno Mars is famous for doing impressions of other singers as well as songs in various musical styles. (He even had a singalong (sting-along?) with the actual Sting at the 2013 Grammy awards.)
RyanShook 3y ago
The core issue is the content these models get trained on. If you train your model on copyrighted work are you guilty of copyright infringement when the output is used commercially? We are going to see a lot of these cases over the next few years.
- alecfreudenberg 3y ago
  does Bill Hader spending countless hours watching celebrity scenes to work on his impressions count as training on copyrighted material
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    No, because you can’t point to the bits where the information is stored.
    - prepend 3y ago
      Certainly you can. You can audit Bill Header’s streaming history to see exactly what he watched and when. But I think that’s immaterial as I think the answer is that it doesn’t matter if you train on copyrighted work. Or maybe better that you don’t need a special license. If I steal books and train on them, then I think that’s copyright infringement not because of the training but because I made an infringing copy. However, if I have a license already to read those books (ie, I bought a copy at a book store) then it’s not infringement to train an AI, or loan it to a million people or whatever I like with it as I bought a copy.
      - Riverheart 3y ago
        “loan it to a million people” Yes but you’re not allowed to copy and distribute so you’re never going to actually do that. Also you’ll pass away with the knowledge you gained unlike the AI you’re training it on which will contain remnants of the work in all copies of itself, however abstracted away you consider it.
bjt2n3904 3y ago
> How is the song a violation of copyright? Few people are arguing this is an issue of copyright infringement. It's a very weak argument. > You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough This isn't "mimicking". You can sue someone for impersonating you, especially if money is involved.
- WakoMan12 3y ago
  [dead]
bdowling 3y ago
It might not violate copyright, but it may violate a "right of publicity" for imitating the voice of someone else. See e.g., Midler v. Ford Motor Co., 849 F.2d 460 (9th Cir. 1988), in which Bette Midler sued Ford Motor Company for commercials in which Ford used a sound-alike singer to copy Midler's voice.
- harshreality 3y ago
  If that's what they're going for, it might have helped if they'd consulted more competent lawyers and issued a more accurate statement, rather than saying that the AI song represents "a violation of copyright law" (image-quoted in the article). Taking a brief look at that case, the way AI is being used is distinguished from that case in an important respect. Hedwig, a backup singer for Midler, mimicked a specific song that Midler had made, after Ford couldn't get Midler to perform it for their ad. It seems reasonable that doing that, for profit and for broadcast, would violate Midler's right of publicity, and maybe even the performance copyright on the existing song.
  - bdowling 3y ago
    I wouldn’t say that training on copyrighted material definitely isn’t copyright infringement, because training may require making a copy into memory for the training algorithm. That may be enough. In Midler v. Ford, Ford had a license from the publisher to use the song, so Midler’s case was based on the publicity right, if I recall correctly. Also, the publicity right can’t be implicated just by copying a style or genre. It has to be imitating the person without permission.
toddmorey 3y ago
Ok maybe it’s not a violation of copyright by current standards, but should laws be reconsidered? What if I use AI to make and sell web dev educational content using the voice & likeness of Evan You, for example? Where are the lines? Isn’t this in some way bootleg merchandise? As identity becomes radically easier to duplicate, should laws adapt? While impressive & novel, I think AI mimicry is its least useful (and likely most dangerous) feature.
- astrange 3y ago
  That's not a copyright issue, but it may be a publicity rights issue.
- MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  That’s more like a trademark issue. If you call it taylor swift when it isn’t taylor swift then that’s fraud. If it sounds like taylor swift but you don’t brand it as taylor swift then it’s not really anything.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Sure, but those laws were written before it was possible to make audio that sounds exactly like someone else. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they get rewritten.
    - grogers 3y ago
      There is centuries of human artists copying each other's painting styles and explicitly copying individual pieces of art. Voice doesn't seem any different, this should be fairly well settled law. Of course it could be explicitly changed but it doesn't seem that likely to me.
- m463 3y ago
  There's always the precedent that AI generated work is cannot be copyrighted.
userbinator 3y ago
Parody is also explicitly allowed as fair use, and mimicking is very much part of that.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  That's a specific use. Not all mimicking is parody.
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
"You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice." Absolutely not true. It's called "appropriation of likeness." If the representation is reasonably likely to be confused with or linked to the famous person, that person can sue. One case I found funny was that of a porta-potty company called Here's Johnny. Johnny Carson successful sued them: https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-carson-v-here-s-johnny-portable-toilets-inc https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-c...
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  So what about all these Beatles tribute bands man ...
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    They pay royalties.
- harshreality 3y ago
  That's for [commercial] use of a specific slogan related to his name. Even without using a name, mimicking short phrases like, "Let's get ready to rumble!" or Bruce Buffer's "It's Time!" can run into intellectual property problems. But those are specific, highly-recognizable catch phrases, not similar to the issue with this AI-generated song. Someone else in this thread tried to provide a case on point, but it doesn't seem to be, either. Has anyone been successfully sued for mimicking someone else's voice and singing an original song? Has anyone been successfully sued for mimicking someone else's appearance, and parading around and taking advantage of that likeness, without falsely claiming (in seriousness) to be the mimicked person (which might be fraud or something)?
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    Yes, which is why I added “linked to.” If there’s any commercial purpose to the imitation, the imitated person stands a chance to successfully sue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
barrysteve 3y ago
You can sue someone for using their likeness without permission. I'm not legally qualified to speak on the topic. Conceptually someone's unequivocal identifier is part of their likeness. Maybe Drake's vocal cords and characteristics unequivocally and measurably differ from everyone else's. I wouldn't want to live some where my face, name, image and (maybe?) my trained voice can be ripped off 24/7 by a typist with AI generative tools, even if the result was economic benefit to me. If I can use Tom Hanks' voice for the cost of a ChatGPT prompt, in my next powerpoint presentation about the dangers of AI... why wouldn't I?

prepend 3y ago

I think that it’s knee jerk for now but the mistake is that there was confusion and promotion that Drake and Weeknd provided vocals. But I expect we’ll see some new law, or lots of “Drake-style vocals” in song labels. Cover bands exist and can even sing new songs while sounding like the original. So Journey hiring someone who sounds exactly like Steve Perry seems perfectly legal. So Journal training an AI on Steve Perry and having a robot sing exactly like him seems find as long as there’s no presentation as if it is Steve Perry singing or endorsing or using his celebrity likeness.

lancesells 3y ago
I think there's a very big difference here in that you're equating a person singing like Steve Perry (one in millions) and a machine singing like Steve Perry (electricity required). These are very different things.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  The law has not caught up yet. There will be a reckoning, and it will be decided by wealthy lobbyists.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Why so?
  - Riverheart 3y ago
    Because of the scale on which AI voices can be abused, the infeasibility of taking all violations of publicity rights to court, and, personal opinion, cheapens the human experience of music by creating eternal singers and encourages removing real singers from the process of music?
    - 1attice 3y ago
      I agree with everything you said. But this is 2023. The laws, when not actively hostile to human wellbeing, are at the very least unconcerned with it. 'The cheapening human experience' is not a court case. I wish to high heaven and the three hells that it was, but it isn't. So: what do we do now?
      - Riverheart 3y ago
        Well another way to look at it is human society and its laws should tend to the needs of its citizens and the job loss implications of this and other AI tech should concern the state which likely doesn’t want a bunch of idle people dependent on the their coin purse. Some protection of human workers seems warranted. I don’t think think copyright or public rights even need to come into play. Arbitrary or not, this technology serves companies more so than workers. It’s not clear the benefits outweigh the cost to society. The cool factor is not a compelling enough argument to allow it unrestricted. Everyone needs work, that’s a basic fact of life. We should be mindful knowing one day we will be targets of replacement. As consumers, we should avoid supporting, where possible, commercial uses of AI voices and as citizens, support new laws that curtail their commercial use. Not sure what else can be done as people will use this stuff commercially if able and people will consume it because it exists. It would be nice if people who lost their voice could get it back. Although he would be less iconic, speech synthesis like this could have given Stephen Hawking his voice back. That harms no one so I can see exceptions for such cases.
    - 3y ago

winternett 3y ago

> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. You can sue someone for Financial/ID theft and impersonation though. Many shady artists were (and still are) using celebrity names in their track titles to get attention for their music releases prior to this. The problem is services like Spotify and YouTube (content search) primarily working based on keywords, and also in those same types of music services only being geared towards major industry artists rather than giving everyone an even playing field to have their music heard... It encourages scam and spam environments, as well as impersonation by artists accounts for the tiny profit they pay. By posting music with the "emulated" voice in it (which is actually tiny samples of the artist's actual voice), the Ai tools allow and encourage people to create songs and title them as if they were made by the actual artist. In the emulator, they list the authentic artist's name as an option, which technically highlights that they are complicit in facilitating production of music that impersonates the named artist. Imagine if you're an emerging artist and beginning to gain traction in your career, then all of a sudden, because of an Ai web site, hundreds of people start flooding streaming services with low quality, parody, and even good music using your name, while also collecting royalties off of it... That can ruin a musician's brand and cause damage to the artist's reputation that they can't recover from. There are legal protections against that, even without copyrights, but it can often involve a lengthy court battle. I'm a musician myself, I am not a lawyer, I do my best to stay out of court. It's better for everyone if everyone simply puts out their own original music, or properly credited samples and/or remixes with artist consent and permission.

soulofmischief 3y ago
This wasn't illegal already if you were a good impersonator provided you're not making money from someone's image and likeness. There's no difference here. I'm not saying there won't be lawsuits but they'll be in bad faith.
- winternett 3y ago
  The condition that absolves impersonators from responsibility is that they must clearly present that they are impersonators.. That doesn't quite apply here, as the tracks were posted to streaming services as if they were published by the actual artists. If the fake/imitation song makers are required to label their releases as parody or impersonation, then they'll get no streams, as most of the bootleg streams they got were due to putting out a mimicked (pseudo-authentic) release as if it was done by the actual artist. Reputational harm is also a serious case that can also be filed... With an artist as popular as Drake (for example) that can lead to a financially devastating judgement.

35208654 3y ago

> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. Some people can do some voices quite well. Oh you most certainly can. In fact, you can sue someone for sounding too much like himself. Just ask John Fogerty.

nostrademons 3y ago
You can sue anyone for anything, you just can't necessarily win. The court found in favor of Fogerty.
- 35208654 3y ago
  Absolutely right. The fact that it even got a full trial shows there are legal questions here.
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    But as far as that specific trial - not anymore. Fogerty vs. Fantasy becomes case law, and so any future cases with substantively similar facts are going to be ruled the same way. That's how the law works.

sprkwd 3y ago

> You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice. Tom Waits might disagree: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/singer-tom-waits-sues-voice-theft-ad-opel-cars/471684 https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/singer-tom-waits-sues...

ajb 3y ago

"Someone's vocal characteristics are not meaningfully creative" This is absolutely not true. You might think when you hear someone singing that it's just their natural voice, but in fact they have trained their voice over years or decades to produce that particular sound. The human vocal system is extremely more flexible than people think. Most people produce a particular sound out of pure habit and imagine that they can't produce any other. The most identifiable singers have invented a new sound (and then immediately get a bunch of copycats who don't do it as well)

musicale 3y ago
> The most identifiable singers have invented a new sound (and then immediately get a bunch of copycats who don't do it as well) The Weeknd does a pretty credible Michael Jackson-style vocal, and has noted that Jackson's Off the Wall was the album that inspired him to start singing. Bruno Mars is famous for doing impressions of other singers as well as songs in various musical styles. (He even had a singalong (sting-along?) with the actual Sting at the 2013 Grammy awards.)

RyanShook 3y ago

The core issue is the content these models get trained on. If you train your model on copyrighted work are you guilty of copyright infringement when the output is used commercially? We are going to see a lot of these cases over the next few years.

alecfreudenberg 3y ago
does Bill Hader spending countless hours watching celebrity scenes to work on his impressions count as training on copyrighted material
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  No, because you can’t point to the bits where the information is stored.
  - prepend 3y ago
    Certainly you can. You can audit Bill Header’s streaming history to see exactly what he watched and when. But I think that’s immaterial as I think the answer is that it doesn’t matter if you train on copyrighted work. Or maybe better that you don’t need a special license. If I steal books and train on them, then I think that’s copyright infringement not because of the training but because I made an infringing copy. However, if I have a license already to read those books (ie, I bought a copy at a book store) then it’s not infringement to train an AI, or loan it to a million people or whatever I like with it as I bought a copy.
    - Riverheart 3y ago
      “loan it to a million people” Yes but you’re not allowed to copy and distribute so you’re never going to actually do that. Also you’ll pass away with the knowledge you gained unlike the AI you’re training it on which will contain remnants of the work in all copies of itself, however abstracted away you consider it.

bjt2n3904 3y ago

> How is the song a violation of copyright? Few people are arguing this is an issue of copyright infringement. It's a very weak argument. > You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough This isn't "mimicking". You can sue someone for impersonating you, especially if money is involved.

WakoMan12 3y ago
[dead]

bdowling 3y ago

It might not violate copyright, but it may violate a "right of publicity" for imitating the voice of someone else. See e.g., Midler v. Ford Motor Co., 849 F.2d 460 (9th Cir. 1988), in which Bette Midler sued Ford Motor Company for commercials in which Ford used a sound-alike singer to copy Midler's voice.

harshreality 3y ago
If that's what they're going for, it might have helped if they'd consulted more competent lawyers and issued a more accurate statement, rather than saying that the AI song represents "a violation of copyright law" (image-quoted in the article). Taking a brief look at that case, the way AI is being used is distinguished from that case in an important respect. Hedwig, a backup singer for Midler, mimicked a specific song that Midler had made, after Ford couldn't get Midler to perform it for their ad. It seems reasonable that doing that, for profit and for broadcast, would violate Midler's right of publicity, and maybe even the performance copyright on the existing song.
- bdowling 3y ago
  I wouldn’t say that training on copyrighted material definitely isn’t copyright infringement, because training may require making a copy into memory for the training algorithm. That may be enough. In Midler v. Ford, Ford had a license from the publisher to use the song, so Midler’s case was based on the publicity right, if I recall correctly. Also, the publicity right can’t be implicated just by copying a style or genre. It has to be imitating the person without permission.

toddmorey 3y ago

Ok maybe it’s not a violation of copyright by current standards, but should laws be reconsidered? What if I use AI to make and sell web dev educational content using the voice & likeness of Evan You, for example? Where are the lines? Isn’t this in some way bootleg merchandise? As identity becomes radically easier to duplicate, should laws adapt? While impressive & novel, I think AI mimicry is its least useful (and likely most dangerous) feature.

astrange 3y ago
That's not a copyright issue, but it may be a publicity rights issue.
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
That’s more like a trademark issue. If you call it taylor swift when it isn’t taylor swift then that’s fraud. If it sounds like taylor swift but you don’t brand it as taylor swift then it’s not really anything.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Sure, but those laws were written before it was possible to make audio that sounds exactly like someone else. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they get rewritten.
  - grogers 3y ago
    There is centuries of human artists copying each other's painting styles and explicitly copying individual pieces of art. Voice doesn't seem any different, this should be fairly well settled law. Of course it could be explicitly changed but it doesn't seem that likely to me.
m463 3y ago
There's always the precedent that AI generated work is cannot be copyrighted.

userbinator 3y ago

Parody is also explicitly allowed as fair use, and mimicking is very much part of that.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
That's a specific use. Not all mimicking is parody.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

"You can't sue someone for mimicking someone else's voice well enough to be confused for the mimicked creator's voice." Absolutely not true. It's called "appropriation of likeness." If the representation is reasonably likely to be confused with or linked to the famous person, that person can sue. One case I found funny was that of a porta-potty company called Here's Johnny. Johnny Carson successful sued them: https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-carson-v-here-s-johnny-portable-toilets-inc https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-c...

theGnuMe 3y ago
So what about all these Beatles tribute bands man ...
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  They pay royalties.
harshreality 3y ago
That's for [commercial] use of a specific slogan related to his name. Even without using a name, mimicking short phrases like, "Let's get ready to rumble!" or Bruce Buffer's "It's Time!" can run into intellectual property problems. But those are specific, highly-recognizable catch phrases, not similar to the issue with this AI-generated song. Someone else in this thread tried to provide a case on point, but it doesn't seem to be, either. Has anyone been successfully sued for mimicking someone else's voice and singing an original song? Has anyone been successfully sued for mimicking someone else's appearance, and parading around and taking advantage of that likeness, without falsely claiming (in seriousness) to be the mimicked person (which might be fraud or something)?
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Yes, which is why I added “linked to.” If there’s any commercial purpose to the imitation, the imitated person stands a chance to successfully sue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

barrysteve 3y ago

You can sue someone for using their likeness without permission. I'm not legally qualified to speak on the topic. Conceptually someone's unequivocal identifier is part of their likeness. Maybe Drake's vocal cords and characteristics unequivocally and measurably differ from everyone else's. I wouldn't want to live some where my face, name, image and (maybe?) my trained voice can be ripped off 24/7 by a typist with AI generative tools, even if the result was economic benefit to me. If I can use Tom Hanks' voice for the cost of a ChatGPT prompt, in my next powerpoint presentation about the dangers of AI... why wouldn't I?