In that case though (and the Bette Milder precedent), the sound-a-like was used with a song that the artist was associated with, which implied that it was the actual artist, or at least deliberately invoked their likeness in mind of the viewer.

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.

Difficult to find a Morgan Freeman sound-a-like if they're not marketing themselves as a Morgan Freeman sound-a-like. And if they are (and obtaining more customers as a result), it's easier to pay Morgan Freeman royalties than come up with persuasive arguments that selling 'voiceovers that sound like Morgan Freeman' isn't profiting from deliberately invoking his likeness...

> Difficult to find a Morgan Freeman sound-a-like if they're not marketing themselves as a Morgan Freeman sound-a-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.

So then in court the google for Morgan Freeman and the comment you sound like Morgan Freeman come out and then you owe Morgan Freeman $$$$$$$$$ because he had to go to court over it.

Think if I wanted to earn a living as a voiceover artist who happened to sound like a very famous actor I'd rather advertise my USP and pay royalties on the much higher earnings than only pick up business from companies that make hiring decisions based on random chance or YouTube comments ...

What if my voice sounded like Tom Waits or Morgan Freeman and I did commercials? It doesn't and I don't I'm just curious how this makes sense. Is it just if the voice is advertised to sound like him?

Yes you would owe them money. This why I'm against artists trying to chokehold the AI.

I don't think with the current copyright system you would owe another artist money when recording a commercial just because your voice happens to sound like theirs. But with AI perhaps it's "fair" (given the assumption that there's any fairness to copyright in the first place) to expect a creator to provide some kind of compensation to the source material that their AI was trained on.

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.

What would happen if a voic was trained on Morgan Freeman, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, George Clooney and tuned to not sound like any one individual but have the characteristics we find appealing. Could that be used for its own copyright claim?

I believe the answer is almost certainly yes under current law.

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.

Do you just believe this or was this tested in court yet? I haven't been following the various lawsuits on this issue closely but I had thought that, so far, they were leaning towards fair use.

I believe it, and I don’t think it’s been significantly tested.

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.

Picasso is widely quoted as having said that “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” https://lifehacker.com/an-artist-explains-what-great-artists...

There is a significant difference between "stealing" artistic ideas, and impersonating individual humans.

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.

Well Picasso wasn’t much of a legislator, and I don’t think his point was that all artistic theft is justifiable to begin with.

> I don't think with the current copyright system you would owe another artist money when recording a commercial just because your voice happens to sound like theirs

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.

I guess you wouls have the chance to argue about it in court, if someone came after you.

> The agency came back to Frito-Lay with a parody song inspired by Tom Wait’s ‘Step Right Up’, featuring the same Carni hollerings as the Small Change track

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

Sounds like a similar situation to someone named Mike Rowe starting a software company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_v._MikeRoweSoft

Sounding like someone isn't just having the same timbre of voice, it's cadence, accent, diction (both definitions). I'm skeptical how much two unrelated people could just happen to sound alike, especially if one of them is famous for their voice. Compare Larry David's natural speaking voice to how he speaks when impersonating Bernie Sanders. Those are two men from the same time and place and background, and there's still quite a gulf.

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

What happens if the sound alike is given away for free and there is no profit or even revenue component?

Huh, Salma Hayek was right

If your voice is the twin of a celebrity's, but you don't benefit from the likeness (for example, not being paid for voice acting where your identities could be confused), you'd probably have a strong defense if the celebrity tries to extort royalties from you.

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.

> 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.

Why would Weird Al try to pass off his albums as being from the guy who stole his songs?

Weird Al's latest movie is a mess, but so surreal I keep remembering it months after watching it. It as if the UHF movie carved a niche in my brain for his weird movies.