Leading performers have launched a parliamentary petition calling for voices to be protected under UK copyright law in response to increasingly sophisticated AI technology.
The potential benefits of such technology were demonstrated only last week, as disability rights campaigner Baroness Campbell of Surbiton became the first person to use an AI-generated voice in Parliament. However, legislators across the world are also beginning to appreciate some of the challenges the technology poses, particularly when voices are replicated without consent or compensation.
We have already discussed here, for example, calls from music artists urging Parliament to introduce laws similar to those passed in Tennessee (the aptly named The Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act) which prohibit the unauthorised use of artificial intelligence to replicate an individual’s voice.
Elsewhere, Denmark has recently introduced a law to prohibit the sharing of realistic AI-generated deepfakes of people’s faces and voice without consent, while a Tokyo court has ruled in favour of a prominent voice actor, holding that the unauthorised use of his voice infringed his publicity rights.
In the absence of equivalent statutory protections in the UK, the petition calls on the Government to:
- Introduce a statutory right for every person to legally own their own voice as their personal intellectual property.
- Place the legal burden of proving consent for the use of a voice on any platform on the AI developer, not the individual.
- Make the right enforceable in UK courts against any platform serving UK users, regardless of where the platform is based.
In its major consultation on copyright law and AI (discussed here) the Government acknowledged calls from some in the creative industries for the introduction of personality rights in the UK, but made no firm commitment either way on the subject. However, a consultation on the law relating to digital replicas is expected shortly.
To read the petition, click here.