They stole my voice with AI

Capitalism: steal first, apologize with no real repurcussions later

Sadly, it was Grace Hopper who said "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (9 December 1906 – 1 January 1992) was a U.S. Naval officer, and an early computer programmer. She was the developer of the first compiler for a computer programming language; at the end of her service she was the oldest serving officer in the United States Navy.

That brings me to the most important piece of advice that I can give to all of you: if you've got a good idea, and it's a contribution, I want you to go ahead and DO IT. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.

The future: Hardware, Software, and People in Carver, 1983
- Except she probably wasn't referring to identity theft; just how to handle dumb shits in management.

Oh so I guess piracy is fine if it’s citizens getting robbed huh? Funny how that works.

I think you misspelled capitalism.
Sony will pirate from anyone who isn't Sony. Same with Time-Warner. Same with Columbia. Same with every studio, every label, every publishing house.

Absolutely no-one in the industry takes piracy seriously until it's their own stuff being pirated by someone else.

Moreover, they all are used to Hollywood accounting, in which lawyers try to justify not paying someone for work whenever they can.

Hollywood. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany.
- A fantastic example is the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony.
  
  It samples a few seconds of a Rolling Stones song. For this, the former Stones manager Allen Klein sues them. The Verve gives up all royalties for the whole song. So the Stones are getting that money, right? No, Klein had the ownership of the piece in question go to himself.
  
  Klein dies in 2009, and the rights to everything finally revert to the Stones in 2019. They think the whole sampling thing with the Verve is stupid, and relinquish the song's rights back to them.
  
  For about 20 years, it was not only morally OK to pirate that song, but morally obligatory. The execs of the industry don't give a shit about the artists.

We are going to need much stronger image rights for individuals in the AI age.

There’s no way to stop the technology itself (although current development may plateau at some point), so there must be strong legal restrictions on abusing it.

Yeah, the genie is out of the bottle on this one. I can do voice cloning with consumer hardware and available models. That can't be undone, but good legal protections would be nice.

That said, the Johanson case is a bad example because it really didn't sound much like her at all. It was a chipper yound white lady sound, but to my ear sounded nothing like Johanson. It did sound kinda like a character she voiced, but I would not gave confused the two. They cloned the voice of someone they paid to give a similar inflection as the voice from Her. That's far removed from cloning Johanson herself. It is closer to people making music "in the style of".
Do you want the rich to be richer? Because that's how you make the rich richer. People like Scarlett Johanson will be able to license their likeness for millions or billions. Of course, we would have the same rights; the same rights to own a mansion and a yacht. Feeling lucky?

That's the kind of capitalism that Marx rages against: Laws that let people demand money without contributing labor.
- There's no future where this affects me in the slightest. Okay, so jeff Goldblum can get a few more shekels for renting his voice. This doesn't affect me: that's his JOB, whether they stole his likeness and paid him, paid him and cloned his voice, or paid him to do the speaking. It's the same thing, imho.
  
  Talk to me when people who don't have their voice recorded get an unfair leg-up for selling it. I'll be okay with it then, too, but let me know.
- You do realize that the vast majority of voice actors are not famous right? These are people working in a highly competitive labor market that has one of the few influential unions in the US outside of trades. Most of these AI companies aren't going after Johansson and the like if they have to pay instead of steal. They're going for those who are less established and trying to get a break, making them easier to exploit.

Legal plagiarism machine

Ok this is seems like a problem of trademark not copyright, or impersonation and fraud by pretending to be him. It's about his name, not really about his voice. His voice is also pretty generic EDIT: it's only in this specific market segment that it's problematic.

Not sure if the video said it was from him or not. It's been taken down, so I can't check, but I don't think it ever made that claim. Someone just noticed it sounded the same as Jeff.

It's copyright because they had to have fed the model with voice data from Jeff's videos.
- Well in this case they used his likeness and brand to appear more legitimate and make money. So I'd argue this is trademark (even if not registered) so a legitimate complaint.
  
  I don't believe in "copyright" for a voice. See for example impersonators. But in this case it's a deliberate deception which is pretty simple.
  
  I don't believe in intellectual property at all and think it is a form of theft, to deprive others from common knowledge or information just to seek rent. In case of patents I equate it even to aiding in genocide, since most advances in more energy efficiency use are patented and exploited for profit and slowing down adaptation. Without exhaustive attempts to try other systems to pay creators, copyright law is a moral abomination. That is a philosophical or ethical argument, not a legal one.

I cannot wait until all actors and writers get replaced so every thing is just bland cookie cutting trite that is mid tier at best. Producers will make do much money and audience won't have a choice but to watch it

So much money

audience won't have a choice but to watch it

This is only true if humans stop making art. Maybe Hollywood dies at the hands of AI, but independent media will always exist & consumers will always have a choice.
- But what about live performers? Why would someone go to see a local band when they can see a hologram of the 'beetles' for much cheaper?

Sorry but you can't own a voice. You can sue if it is implied that a voice is you, but you can't own the voice. If you could, you'd run into all kinds of problems. Imagine getting sued because your natural voice sounds too much like someone with more money and lawyers than you. Of if you happened to look like a celebrity/politician.

"You can't own your own voice"

Talking out of your dystopian ass, aren't you?
- Ok, so how would that work? What does happen if you happen to sound like someone else? Who gets the rights to that voice?
My voice developed through a combination of my body structure, my upbringing, speech therapy and a lot of training to do VO work. I absolutely own it. I have worked very hard on it.

I own my voice the same way I own my legs.
- I'm sorry but that isn't true. A voice is a natural trait. There are other people with similar or identical voices out there.
  
  Let's just say you can "own" a voice. In that world, what happens when two people naturally sound similar? Who gets the rights?
Sure, but you can use someone's likeness to fraudulently tie them to some product you're pushing. The burden here is if the average person familiar with the voice would mistake it for support, and if the creator likely intended for that to happen, and I think that standard has been met here given the response by the CEO and the allegations by Jeff Geerling's audience.

If you just happen to look or sound like a celebrity/politician, that's a different story because fraud requires intent. Now, if you used your likeness to imply support by that celebrity/politician for some cause or product, and you don't disclose that you're not them, then we're back in fraud territory.

In this case, there seems to be clear evidence that there was intent to mislead viewers to improve views. That's fraud.
- Yes, that was the distinction I was trying to make. These cases are fact dependent. I'm willing to admit that in this specific case there might have been both the intent to imply endorsement by a specific person and that practical result.
  
  But as you can see in the other comments where I'm getting reamed, owning a voice outright is a pretty popular (if currently legally dubious/impossible) concept.

The voice isn’t his to own in the first place. “They” have a right to use it as much as he does.

Huh?
- Your voice is not unique. Therefore not "yours"
The voice isn’t his to own in the first place. “They” have a right to use it as much as he does.

No, it's fraud. The CEO of the other company admitted that they consider this to be infringement, and it was done to make the video more popular, which to me means the staff did it so people would assume Jeff Geerling supported the video (and there's evidence that viewers did initially make that assumption).

So it seems clear to me that Jeff Geerling, Jeff's viewers, and the CEO of the company producing the videos with the voice imitation consider it to be infringement, and I believe it amounts to fraud.
How dem boots taste?

They stole it? Did they send a robot to surgically remove his vocal cords?

No, instead they raped his rights with some ToS..

They stole my voice with AI | Jeff Geerling