Beyond Name, Image, Likeness: Voice Protection
By Jack Sherwood
Artificial Intelligence has been used in the music industry for decades. As early as 2004, AI audio modulation was introduced by Yamaha to synthesize melodic vocals.[1] Even in the 2010s, AI was used to enhance the audio of voice actors who no longer had the same vocal delivery, such as the likes of James Earl Jones.[2] 20 years later, AI has evolved from simply integrating and enhancing vocal audio to composing and producing an entire Drake song from a 250-word instruction text, one that Drake himself never touched.[3] While Drake’s label, UMG, immediately issued a copyright takedown of the AI track “Heart on My Sleeve”, the damage had already been done, with streams exceeding 7 million on Twitter alone. [4] In a world where an artist can be entirely mimicked by AI in a matter of minutes, how do we provide protection?
