https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/when-tom-waits-sued-doritos/

I'm skeptical that using a narrator that happened to sound like David Attenborough or Morgan Freeman would be enough by itself to qualify for right of publicity unless it included obvious references to prior work, catch phases, or the like.

How about this scenario: they publish a youtube video, then someone says in the comments: hey you sound just like morgan freeman, then the company looking for the voice performance googles for morgan freeman, finds the comment and contacts them.

Case in point, this bot was clearly trained on David Attenborough samples, perhaps it can't be used commercially without purchasing some rights to the man's likeness.

Whenever the topic of copying material for model training purposes arises on hn, however, a number of folks seem convinced such use falls under the rubric of “transformative” and will be considered fair use.

It’s hard to see how mixing (copying!) a bunch of books into a computer algorithm to produce (commercially!) content that might itself easily be incorporated into a book in the same market could possibly be fair use.

How folks can think it's reasonable to impersonate Morgan Freeman and use his voice to sell, for example, crypto crap. It's gross and should absolutely be illegal.

No, its a right of publicity/right of personality issue, not a copyright issue. While that's not a federal law issue in the US, its an issue in some US jurisdictions, and its a national law issue in a number of non-US jurisdictions.

The mistake is thinking “would not owe money under the current copyright regime” means “would not owe money”: there are more laws in the world than just copyright law.

If you did straight-up parodies of their songs, yes.

Now perhaps you could just happen to sound like a famous actor who isn't well known for their voice, like John krasinski or something, who does voice over ads but isn't super distinct. That would probably be fine but you're still going to have to slog through the world of voice talent auditions

The rest is shades of grey. For example, if you're an incredible voice imitator and plan to do shows, negotiations would be wise. Even Weird Al asked for permission when he didn't had to, legally speaking.

But Weird Al does parodies, which is fair use. He's not trying to pass off an album as being a genuine Michael Jackson album or something.

What if a company chooses you as a voice artist largely on the basis that you sound like Morgan Freeman?

So there'd be no legal way to produce or share the model generating such a voice or its output.

Honestly, it's offensive that they can "own" a general appearance. But their lawyers manage to enforce it.

But on the other hand, does "store brand lucky charms" have to pay a kick back to General Mills?