This is about your voice: your singing and speaking voice, not your writing voice. AI can steal either, or both.
As a writer, you may not have thought very much about your speaking voice, but if you are published, you have probably taken part in a vlog, or podcast, or been interviewed, or posted a recording of yourself reading a teaser scene, or a chapter of your book (aloud, obviously).
You probably have not copyrighted your voice. Voices cannot necessarily be copyrighted. Yet, banks and brokerage houses try to bully you into allowing your voice to be used as verification of your identity.
My advice is, never agree to it. Moreover --and I have said this before--never participate in any telephone call on a recorded line, unless you initiated the call and know with whom you are speaking. Don't answer polls on the telephone, especially if the self-described pollster wants you to answer "Yes" or "No" (and only those precise words will suffice).
They may tell you that the call is being recorded "for quality assurance", or "for your protection", or "for your convenience", don't speak up. Hang up. "Quality assurance" is to make you think twice about swearing, it's to protect the caller. "Your protection" is "their" protection at the very best, and could be the opposite.
Convenience is a Trojan Horse.
Beware of geeks bearing gifts. Or Greeks (a jingoist might say).
Just to weave a little -- "weave" being a newly-envisioned synonym for an extended rhetorical digression which always returns to the original thought -- there are several stories in Greek mythology about toxically masculine men hiding inside a benign-seeming hollow statue in order to enter a fortress and wreak havok, and about one particular queen who was cursed by the gods with a specific taste for a love of animals and who is alleged to have hidden inside a hollow model of a cow in order to seduce a straight white bull.
Their interest was piqued, as they recount, when a client of theirs came to them with suspicions that this client's famously recognizeable voice had been snagged from other contexts, manipulated and published in a voiceover that gave viewers the impression that the client endorsed a cryptocurrency.
The article explains existing Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) "right of publicity" laws, which are state laws, not federal. Their article is worth reading for that alone.
However, one's voice is not one's name or one's likeness. Enter E.L.V.I.S. in Tennessee.
"Tennessee’s Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security (ELVIS) Act of March 21, 2024, explicitly treats an individual’s voice as protected property in any medium. “Voice,” according to the act, means “sound in a medium that is readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual, regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice.” The ELVIS Act guarantees post-mortem protection for 10 years if a voice is commercially exploited by the state; otherwise, protection terminates two years after death. The ELVIS Act provides for civil liability and equitable relief but makes exemptions for “fair use” — the right to use a copyrighted work under certain conditions without permission of the copyright owner — and for fleeting or incidental use."
Luke de Leon and Anthony Mendoza go on to examine other celebrities and public figures who live in other states, whose voices have been ripped off with impunity (my words). Or not!
With regard to anyone's voice, and the ability of AI technology to snag, misappropriate and manipulate it to mislead the many and profit the few, the lawyers conclude:
"From this experience, it is clear that the legal frameworks protecting an individual’s name, image, likeness and voice are inconsistent from state to state, and the advent of AI technology and its proliferation across the internet is going to test the effectiveness of those laws. We anticipate that there will be more legislation — and calls for legislation — in this evolving area. In the meantime, however, an individual should look to the right of publicity (if recognized in their state) and federal copyright law to protect their voice from being misappropriated in the age of AI."
Rowena Cherry
Posts
