A multi-billion voice AI industry is being built on the voiceprints of real people without their consent, complaints say.
CHICAGO — All six of the biggest tech companies—Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and NVIDIA—have developed AI voice software, and incorporated voice interaction into their user experiences at nearly every level, from text-to-speech programs, to auto-dubbers, to the interactive AI assistants that power billions of cellphones and millions of homes.
This week, class-action lawsuits were filed against all six of these companies, and three others in the AI voice field including ElevenLabs, Adobe, and Samsung. The plaintiffs in the lawsuits—who include nationally recognized broadcast journalists, podcasters, audio storytellers, voice actors, and other artists—seek damages and restitution for what they allege are widespread violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
“What we are seeing is an illegal and unethical exploitation of talent on a massive scale, and one of the largest violations of biometric privacy ever committed,” says attorney Ross Kimbarovsky of the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy.
With the passage of BIPA in 2008, Illinois became the first state to pass a law to protect the privacy of individuals’ biometric data in an ever-changing technology landscape. Though a few other states have since followed suit, BIPA remains the strongest and most comprehensive law regulating the collection, retention, and use of unique biometric identifiers such as fingerprints, voiceprints, retina scans, or facial geometry.
“The legislators who wrote and passed BIPA had the foresight to realize that biometric privacy was going to be a major civil rights issue in the 21st century,” explains Kimbarovsky. “Social security numbers can be changed, passwords can be reset, and credit cards can be cancelled, but once your biometric data is compromised there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Like other biometric identifiers BIPA protects, voiceprints are as unique as fingerprints. And BIPA’s requirements are clear: before a company can collect a voiceprint, it must inform the subject in writing, disclose the purpose and duration of the collection, and obtain a written release.
According to the complaints, the companies sued have built a multi-billion dollar commercial AI industry on the voices of real people, including the plaintiffs, harvested from the internet and other sources. They captured those voiceprints, stored them, and fed them into their training pipelines without ever obtaining written consent, providing notice, or publishing a retention policy, and they’ve profited from the biometrics themselves, in clear violation of BIPA.
The plaintiffs in these suits are journalists, podcasters, audio storytellers, voiceover artists, and voice actors, all Illinois residents: Carol Marin (CBS News, 60 Minutes, Chicago Tonight); Phil Rogers (NBC Chicago, WBBM); Robin Amer (formerly of The Washington Post, USA Today‘s The City podcast, and others); Lindsay Dorcus (narrator for over 200 audiobooks for Penguin Random House, Hachette, Disney, and other publishers); Yohance Lacour (the You Didn’t See Nothin’ podcast); Victoria Nassif (Chicago PD, audiobooks for Penguin, Hachette, Audible, Apple Books, and others); and (on all complaints except those against Amazon and Apple) Alison Flowers (Invisible Institute, the Somebody podcast). Between them, they have multiple Emmy and Peabody awards, several Pulitzer Prizes, several Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University awards, an Edward R. Murrow award, a James Beard award, a SOVAS award, and many, many other honors.
They are all nationally recognized and respected professionals who make their livings from their voices. They have filed these lawsuits, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, to stop their voices being used illegally, without their consent and without compensation, to train technology that will compete with them—or even attempt to replace them—in the marketplace.
The defendants include Adobe, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, ElevenLabs, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Samsung.
As the complaints point out, these companies know exactly what they are doing and why it is wrong. Facebook/Meta, for example, reached a $650 million settlement in a 2021 BIPA claim over the collection and storage of biometric information. Google has been the defendant in more biometric litigation than nearly any other company in the United States. It has settled several multi-million claims over its illegal collection and use of voice and face data, including—just this November—a $1.375 billion settlement with the State of Texas to resolve claims arising from its unlawful collection of voiceprint and facial geometry through Google Photos and Google Assistant.
Furthermore, the companies have demonstrated awareness of their legal obligations in other situations—such as Google requiring written consent for people to upload their own voices to its “Custom Voice” product—while still continuing the larger problem of collecting millions of voiceprints without consent through other channels.
“These companies know the law, know their liability, and know exactly how to build consent systems that comply with BIPA,” says Kimbarovsky. “They’ve built a billion-dollar industry on stolen voices because they thought no one would make them pay for it.”
In addition to Mr. Kimbarovsky, the plaintiffs are represented by Jon Loevy, Michael Kanovitz, Matthew Topic, and Aaron Tucek of Loevy + Loevy.
###
Click here to read the complaints in the cases against Amazon, Adobe, Alphabet/Google, Apple, ElevenLabs, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Samsung.