Voice Control: Nancy Sinatra, Bette Midler and Rick Astley VS. Soundalikes-Where Copyright Meets Right of Publicity

Emerging artificial intelligence technology now allows human voices to be mimicked with incredible accuracy in addition to more traditional means of using soundalikes. Where voices of famous people are copied without their consent, the right of publicity under state law is set on a collision course with federal copyright law and in some cases, the First Amendment as well. Veteran intellectual property lawyer Peter Afrasiabi traces the origins of the right of publicity and explains how this right applies when recordings of mimicked human voices are used for commercial exploitation.