Judge Rules in Favor of Proceeding with Legal Action Against Voiceover Artists’ AI System

A lawsuit brought by two voice-over artists, Paul Skye Lehrman and Linnea Sage, claiming that their voices were stolen by an AI voice startup has been allowed to proceed by a federal judge in New York. The judge dismissed claims of federal copyright infringement, but the allegations of breach of contract, deceptive business practices, and improper use of their voices as training data for the AI are set to move forward. The couple, who were initially hired for voice-over work by Lovo Inc. through the freelance platform Fiverr, later discovered that their voices had been cloned and were available for sale on Lovo’s text-to-speech platform Genny. They were paid $1200 and $800 respectively for their work, under the assurance that their voices would only be used for internal and academic purposes. The judge’s decision comes at a time when there is a significant increase in lawsuits against AI companies by artists over the misuse of their work to train AI models. Lovo Inc., based in California, had requested the entire case to be dismissed. The case is set to be heard in the US District Court in Manhattan.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cedgzj8z1wjo