Imagine That IP Law Blog

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly advancing its presence in the arts, creating what many consider a "Napster moment" for the entertainment industry. For the past few years, the vocal likenesses of public figures and artists have been used to generate highly realistic synthetic audio. This technological shift places immense power in the hands of everyday users, challenging our traditional understanding of originality and raising a pressing question for artists and citizens alike: Can AI legally copy my voice?

While the technology exists to replicate your voice with startling accuracy, the legality of doing so without your permission is a highly contested gray area.

The Rise of AI Cover Music and Voice Clones
Today, AI models require increasingly little input to generate realistic audio. State-of-the-art tools can synthesize a highly accurate voice clone from just a short sample of audio. Because of this accessibility, there has been a growing occurrence of AI-generated music made in the style of well-known artists available across streaming platforms and YouTube.

A few high-profile incidents have recently thrust this issue into the global spotlight:

• The Fake Drake & The Weeknd Track: In the spring of 2023, an anonymous creator released an AI-generated song called "Heart on My Sleeve," which flawlessly mimicked the voices of Drake and The Weeknd. The song went viral before Universal Music Group issued aggressive takedown notices, citing copyright violations and the unauthorized use of the artists' likenesses (The Verge, 2023).
• Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI: In May 2024, actress Scarlett Johansson threatened legal action against OpenAI after the company released a voice assistant that sounded eerily identical to her, especially concerning given she had previously declined their request to license her voice (TIME, 2024).
• Generative AI Lawsuits: We are also seeing class action copyright infringement lawsuits filed against platforms like Suno AI, a popular AI music generator, alleging that the models were trained on copyrighted music without authorization or compensation.
• Murphy Campbell: In early 2026,  Murphy Campell (a singer/songwriter from North Carolina) was subject to a copyright takedown request based on AI fakes of her music. It is surmised that someone had scraped her performances on YouTube, run them through AI voice cloning, and uploaded synthetic covers under her name to Spotify (The Verge, 2026). Campbell eventually managed to get most of the fakes removed.

The Legal Framework
For the world we currently live in, AI sits in a legal gray area in the United States. The last major revision of U.S. copyright law was the Copyright Act of 1976, long before anyone could fathom publicly available AI capable of writing music and mimicking human voices. Currently, there is no single federal law uniformly banning the unauthorized creation of AI voice clones. Instead, attorneys are applying existing frameworks to these new paradigms, such as outlined below:

Right of Publicity: People do not have an absolute right to prevent all impersonations of themselves. Parody and impersonation have long been protected mediums in comedy and commentary, so long as they fall within the parameters of fair use. However, under some state right of publicity laws, using someone's vocal persona is generally actionable if done to commit fraud or achieve commercial gain, and is done without permission from the owner of the "voice." For example, Tennessee recently enacted the ELVIS Act, which explicitly expands its right of publicity to protect individuals from the unauthorized AI simulation of their voices.

Copyright Law: Existing federal copyright law protects sound recordings set in a tangible medium, but it does not protect the underlying "voice pattern" itself or a general right against imitation. “My  Body, My Voice: Defining Vocal Identity Rights To Combat Ai-Generated Deception" (29 Marq. Intell. Prop. L. Rev. 349).

AI Authorship: Can you own an AI-generated song? In the prominent case Thaler v. Perlmutter, 130 F.4th 1039 (D.C. Cir. 2025), the court affirmed that works generated entirely by AI cannot be copyrighted. While users may generate and post AI music, claiming it as their exclusive intellectual property remains legally fraught.

A Rapidly Evolving Landscape
Because technology is developing faster than the law, how AI-generated content will be prevented or protected by intellectual property is currently in a state of flux. Instead of Congress enacting sweeping laws and regulations, we are seeing rapidly evolving, makeshift efforts to respond to the challenges of artificial intelligence.

State legislatures are beginning to act, as mentioned above. At the federal level, bipartisan proposals like the NO FAKES Act aim to establish a uniform standard for digital replicas, though it remains to be seen how these proposals will balance individual rights against First Amendment protections for creators.

Conclusion
Because of the nuances in the law, it is impossible to take a hard, universal position on whether a specific instance of voice cloning is illegal without all of the underlying facts. The viability of a claim depends heavily on state laws, the nature of the audio used, the commercial intent of the user, and the evolving doctrine of fair use.

Whether you are a recording artist concerned about unauthorized AI covers, a podcaster discovering your voice on a text-to-speech app, or a business professional looking to legally license synthetic voices, navigating this landscape requires highly specific legal guidance. You should consult a qualified intellectual property attorney to evaluate your unique situation, ensure your safety, and protect your digital identity in the age of AI.