"A Tech Firm Stole Our Voices, Cloned Them, and Sold Them"

The idea that artificial intelligence might eventually take over our jobs is something we've all heard about in recent years. But for Paul Skye Lehrman, that threat became personal, chilling, and all too real when he heard his own voice delivering the message.

In June 2023, Paul and his partner, Linnea Sage, were driving near their home in New York City, listening to a podcast discussing the ongoing Hollywood strikes and the potential impact of AI on the industry. This topic was particularly relevant to them, as both are voice-over artists who, like many other creatives, worry that AI-generated human-like voices could replace their work.

The podcast had a unique twist—it featured an interview with an AI-powered chatbot equipped with text-to-speech software, asking it how AI might affect jobs in Hollywood. But when the bot spoke, it sounded exactly like Mr. Lehrman.

"We had to pull the car over," he recalled. "The irony of AI potentially destroying the entertainment industry, and then hearing my voice talking about that very threat, was shocking."

That night, the couple spent hours online, searching for answers. Eventually, they stumbled upon the website of Lovo, a text-to-speech platform. To their horror, Ms. Sage discovered that her voice had been cloned as well.

"I was stunned," she said. "I couldn't believe it. A tech company had stolen our voices, made AI clones of them, and potentially sold them hundreds of thousands of times."

The couple has since filed a lawsuit against Lovo, but the company has yet to respond to their allegations or the BBC’s requests for comment.

How Were Their Voices Cloned? So how did Lovo manage to recreate their voices? The couple alleges that it was done under false pretenses.

Lovo’s co-founder, Tom Lee, has previously stated that their voice-cloning software requires only about 50 sentences to create a faithful clone. "We can capture the tone, the character, the style, the phonemes, and even if you have an accent, we can capture that as well," he explained on the Future Visionaries podcast in 2021.

In their lawsuit, Paul and Linnea detail how they believe Lovo obtained such recordings. They allege that anonymous Lovo employees contacted them via Fiverr, a popular freelance talent platform where the couple offers their services to create audio for TV, radio, video games, and other media.

In 2019, Ms. Sage was approached by a user on Fiverr who requested that she record several generic-sounding test radio scripts. Such "test" recordings are often used in film and TV for focus groups, internal meetings, or as placeholders for works in progress, and because they’re not meant for broad distribution, they typically cost less than recordings intended for broadcast. Ms. Sage completed the job, delivered the files, and was paid $400.

About six months later, Mr. Lehrman received a similar request to record a series of generic-sounding radio ads. In messages shared with the BBC, the anonymous Fiverr user claimed the recordings would be used for "speech synthesis" research. Mr. Lehrman asked the user to confirm that the scripts would not be used outside of this specific project, to which the user responded, "The scripts will not be used for anything else, and I can’t yet tell you the goal, as it’s a confidential work in progress, sorry haha." After further assurances that the files would only be used for research, Mr. Lehrman delivered the files and was paid $1,200.

The couple says they connected this anonymous user to Lovo through the company itself. They shared evidence of their cloned voices with Lovo, but the firm responded by insisting they had done nothing wrong, citing their communications with the anonymous user as proof that they had legally obtained the recordings.

"In our careers, we've delivered over 100,000 audio assets," said Mr. Lehrman, reflecting on their extensive experience on Fiverr. "We were able to find this needle in a haystack—they gave us this needle in a haystack."

In both cases, neither Mr. Lehrman nor Ms. Sage had a formal contract—just these conversations. The BBC has not been able to verify the entirety of their claims, and some of the messages exchanged between the couple and the Fiverr user appear to have been deleted.

The BBC contacted Lovo multiple times for an interview with Mr. Lee and to seek a response to the couple's claims, but the company did not reply.

What Does the Law Say? The lawsuit filed by Paul and Linnea in May alleges that Lovo used their voice recordings to create illegal copies that now compete with their real voices—without their permission or proper compensation. The case is a class action, meaning they hope others with similar claims will join, although no additional plaintiffs have come forward yet.

Professor Kristelia Garcia, an intellectual property law expert at Georgetown University, says the case will likely hinge on the concept of "rights of publicity." This legal area, sometimes called "personality rights," often deals with the unauthorized use or misrepresentation of someone’s image or voice.

Additionally, there may be a breach of contract concerning the licenses that Ms. Sage and Mr. Lehrman granted to the Fiverr user who commissioned the recordings. "Licenses are permission for a very specific and narrow use," Professor Garcia explained. "I might give you a license to use my swimming pool one afternoon,

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