Standing took a job in 2018 for a client on behalf of the Chinese Institute of Acoustics and recorded her voice for a translation app. She read in the monotone style emblematic of TikTok’s narration feature, but she said there weren’t any provisions in the contract allowing them to sell her voice to other companies.
While the software that cloned Standing’s voice is likely less sophisticated than current technology, Standing says she does not appreciate having her voice copied without her permission.Despite Revoicer.com pledging to take down “Olivia’s” voice, Michelle Clarke says her livelihood is still at risk. Other third-party sites could be reselling her voice. Her friends have passed along Instagram ads that she appears to be narrating, even if she hasn’t heard of the company.
Little recourse is available to voice actors. Until recently, artificial intelligence didn’t pose much of a threat to their professions, and many said they didn’t parse through contracts in detail, searching for provisions allowing a company to use their audio beyond an individual job. Daniel J. Gervais, an intellectual property expert and professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, said U.S. law doesn’t offer much refuge for people who’ve had their voices taken.Federal copyright law does not protect a person’s voice, and local laws vary by state, he said. Even in California, which because of its prominence in the entertainment industry has some of the stronger voice protections, it’s difficult to assert who’s covered.