I don't see why using AI would get around Midler vs. Ford. If anything, there is even less of an argument to be made in your defense when you use AI to replicate a voice, instead of using another voice actor to replicate the voice.
The case is only applicable to states under the aegis of the 9th circuit. A number of other states have a patchwork of legislation and rulings related to the issue of so-called personality rights. How and if such a notion should be acknowledged and delineated is quite a ways away from universal recognition and agreement among the states.
The court explicitly limited their decision to the voices of professional singers in that case:
> ...these observations hold true of singing, especially singing by a singer of renown. The singer manifests herself in the song. To impersonate her voice is to pirate her identity...
> We need not and do not go so far as to hold that every imitation of a voice to advertise merchandise is actionable. We hold only that when a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated in order to sell a product, the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs...
Doesn't this have an obvious edge case for every singer from now on though? If your voice is cloned before you become a singer of renown you have no protection.
Which is precisely why film producers are trying to get the power to do this to their actors.
They aren't going to use AI to have Tom Cruise in their film. He won't sign these rights away.
But they sure as hell want to have the next Tom Cruise sign those rights away as a condition for being hired to be Random Bystander #4 in a straight-to-streaming C-film.
Then, once he becomes successful and famous, they won't have to pay him a cent to keep using him, forever.
I can't wait for the future where even more of the wealth people who do work generate will be siphoned off to the owners.
