Tech Firm Steals Couple's Voices, Then Clones and Sells Them

The concern that artificial intelligence (AI) might replace jobs is widespread. For Paul Skye Lehrman, this concern became chillingly personal when he heard his own voice discussing the topic. This is prepared by SSP.

In June 2023, Paul and his partner Linnea Sage were driving near their New York City home. They were listening to a podcast about Hollywood strikes and AI's potential effect on the industry. As voice-over performers, they feared that human-like voice generators could soon eclipse their work.

The podcast featured a unique twist. They interviewed an AI-powered chatbot using text-to-speech software to provide insights into AI's effect on employment in entertainment. When the chatbot spoke, it eerily resembled Mr. Lehrman's voice.

"We needed to pull the car over," he recalled. "Hearing my voice discuss the industry's possible destruction was shocking. The irony didn’t escape us."

Afterward, the couple scoured the internet, ultimately discovering the text-to-speech platform Lovo. Ms. Sage was stunned to find a clone of her own voice as well. "I couldn't believe it. A tech company stole our voices, cloned them, and sold them possibly hundreds of thousands of times."

They have since filed a lawsuit against Lovo, which has yet to respond to the allegations.

How did Lovo replicate their voices? The couple claims it occurred under false pretenses. In previous remarks, Lovo co-founder Tom Lee stated that its voice-cloning technology requires just about 50 sentences from a user to create an accurate clone.

"We can capture the tone and style, even accents," he mentioned in a podcast interview in 2021. In their lawsuit, the couple claims that an employee of Lovo contacted them to provide audio through Fiverr, a freelance services platform.

Initially, in 2019, Ms. Sage received a request to record multiple generic radio scripts. Since these test recordings often serve internal production needs, they typically cost much less. After completing the project, she received a payment of $400 (£303).

Months later, Mr. Lehrman was approached for a similar task involving radio ads. Messaged correspondence stated that the recordings were intended for "academic research purposes only." After ensuring confidentiality regarding the project, Mr. Lehrman agreed, believing the recordings were for specific research.

He delivered the final files and earned $1,200 in return. Both voiced concerns about future use and were assured their recordings would remain exclusively for research.

The link to Lovo, as they assert, comes from evidence they found. They alerted Lovo about their cloned voices, prompting the company to argue that they had acted legally by referring to the conversations with their anonymous user.

In total, Mr. Lehrman stated that they have delivered over 100,000 audio assets. "They gave us this needle in a haystack," he noted, referring to their discovery.

For the couple, this unsettling future is now a current reality. "This whole experience feels surreal," Linnea remarked. "When we thought of AI, we imagined it folding our laundry, not intruding into creative processes."