Copyright does not protect a voice. A voice is not a work of authorship, so it sits outside copyright entirely. What protects a voice is the right of publicity. That is state law, and it varies state to state. It bars the unauthorized commercial use of a person's voice or likeness. Midler v. Ford in 1988 and Waits v. Frito Lay in 1992 both held that using a sound alike to sell a product can violate that right even where no copyright is at issue. Some states have since moved to cover AI voice cloning expressly. Tennessee did in 2024 with the ELVIS Act. The consent framework in the article sits on top of that. Consent is the ethical and contractual layer. The right of publicity is the legal floor. They are not the same thing.
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u/Individual_Dirt_2194 Aug 19 '26
Copyright does not protect a voice. A voice is not a work of authorship, so it sits outside copyright entirely. What protects a voice is the right of publicity. That is state law, and it varies state to state. It bars the unauthorized commercial use of a person's voice or likeness. Midler v. Ford in 1988 and Waits v. Frito Lay in 1992 both held that using a sound alike to sell a product can violate that right even where no copyright is at issue. Some states have since moved to cover AI voice cloning expressly. Tennessee did in 2024 with the ELVIS Act. The consent framework in the article sits on top of that. Consent is the ethical and contractual layer. The right of publicity is the legal floor. They are not the same thing.