Two voice actors, Paul Skey Lehrman and Linnea Sage, have filed a proposed federal class action lawsuit against the AI company Lovo for allegedly violating trademark laws to train their AI. Lehrman and Sage were hired by Lovo in 2019 and 2020 to provide voice clips for internal research, with written assurances that the clips would not be used externally.
Despite these assurances, Lovo allegedly cloned Lehrman and Sage’s voices, breaching their contracts. Lovo promotes an “AI voice cloning tool” that allows users to create custom voice clones from audio samples, yet experts note the absence of federal laws regulating the use of AI for voice mimicry.
“My voice is out there saying things that I’ve never said in places that I haven’t agreed to be a part of,” Lehrman said. “We are now in a science fiction come true.”
The misuse of AI in voice cloning was a significant issue in the SAG-AFTRA strike last year, leading to a new contract that requires producers to obtain consent from actors for using digital replicas of their voices, and to compensate them for such use.
