Skyrim VAs are speaking out about the spread of pornographic AI mods.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe voices can be copyrighted. After all, if a human can replicate someone else’s voice, they get booked as professional impersonators rather than sued into oblivion.
The difference here is that the voice replication happens though AI now. Would we see the same outrage if the voices in these mods were just people that sounded like the original voice actors?
Copyright law needs to be fortified or a lot of voice actors are about to get screwed over big time. AI voice replication by modders is only the beginning, once big companies find the output acceptable these people may very well lose their jobs.
The legal grounds are that the AI is trained using voice lines that can indeed be copyrighted material. Not the voice itself, but the delivered lines.
The problem with that approach is that the resulting AI doesn’t contain any identifiable “copies” of the material that was used to train it. No copying, no copyright. The AI model is not a legally recognizable derivative work.
If the future output of the model that happens to sound very similar to the original voice actor counts as a copyright violation, then human sound-alikes and impersonators would also be in violation and things become a huge mess.
The problem with that approach is that the resulting AI doesn’t contain any identifiable “copies” of the material that was used to train it. No copying, no copyright. The AI model is not a legally recognizable derivative work.
That’s a HUGE assumption you’ve made, and certainly not something that has been tested in court, let alone found to be true.
In the context of existing legal precedent, there’s an argument to be made that the resulting model is itself a derivative work of the copyright-protected works, even if it does not literally contain an identifiable copy, as it is a derivative of the work in the common meaning of the term.
If the future output of the model that happens to sound very similar to the original voice actor counts as a copyright violation, then human sound-alikes and impersonators would also be in violation and things become a huge mess.
A key distinction here is that a human brain is not a work, and in that sense, a human brain learning things is not a derivative work.
I’m finally reading a comment from someone who actually knows how machine learning works. Too many people craft their argument before learning about the technology. Well, they think reading a few blog articles counts as research maybe.
That’s a decent theoretical legal basis, but the voice lines are property of the game company rather than the voice actors.
If this interpretation of copyright law on AI models will be the outcome of the two (three?) big AI lawsuits related to stable diffusion, most AI companies will be completely fucked. Everything from Stable Diffusion to ChatGPT 4 will instantly be in trouble.
Making derivatives of existing game assets is a core part of modding. I don’t see how this is any different from splicing existing voice lines to make them say whatever you want them to say.
Maybe it’s morally wrong to use the work of voice actors for NSFW purposes without their consent, but I’m not sure if it’s illegal from a copyright standpoint.
I think this could technically fall under name, image, likeness rights. Your voice could count as likeness and can’t be used without your concent. I know the big movie studios need to get permission from the family to do their creepy dead actor cameos like Disney did with Peter Cushing. I think this would be the same.
