There are many wrong hands, cloning and AI can become quite dangerous.. my opinion folks... Carole
Yeah, we're heading into uncharted waters pretty quickly. There's already been plenty of bad actors on the voice cloning front -
That’s Not Your Scared Kid on the Phone. It’s a Scammer Using Voice Cloning
Chatbots and Voice-Cloning Fuel Rise in AI-Powered Scams
Silent danger: How voice cloning AI is robbing people of both money and privacy
And then there is the issue of consent, as well as if a given voice should pass into the public domain upon a person's death, or if the decedent's relatives should inherit that voice, treating it as intellectual property, falling under
personality rights/name/image/likeness/ -- but with this being vocal likeness, not the usual visual likeness.
It sounds like
California does afford some degree of protection upon someone's death, which is not surprising, given Cali's historical role in entertainment and IP protection.
Interesting thought: a human can mimic someone's voice,
like Will Sasso does here with his Jesse Ventura imitation, and I'm not sure that has ever been considered actionable. (If it is actionable, then I would think any person could sue anyone who does a vocal impression/imitation, so Jesse Ventura could sue Will Sasso, and comedic impressionsists would be outta luck.)
So should there be a difference in IP protection when it comes to an AI clone and a traditional vocal impression?
Shifting to the visual, in this thread, and all over the internet, really, you can find a whole host of nonconsensual replications and reproductions (shoops) of people's images.
Anyway, I look forward to the continued developments, both in public opinion and law
PS: check out this live, real-time voice changer using Joe Biden -