Theresa House Unpacks Voice Actors’ AI Suit in Bloomberg Law
Intellectual Property partner Theresa House was quoted in the Bloomberg Law article, “Voice Actors’ AI Suit Confronts Federal Publicity-Rights Gap,” which discusses the recent lawsuit between two voice actors and AI-driven text-to-speech generator Lovo Inc. The actors accused the company of breaching New York’s right of publicity law and federal statutes, such as the Lanham Act for trademark infringement, when it used an AI voiceover generator to replicate their voices without their consent.
Lovo claimed that a voice is not protectable under trademark law and that the state statute covers only actors’ “actual voices,” not a “clone.” “Their argument—that indicates that the statute is not meant to be broadly read—is a pretty good argument,” House told Bloomberg Law.
House remarked that the rise of AI has broadened the ongoing debate over how to encourage creativity without limiting creative freedom, “creating a constituency who is interested in changing the law.”
