The ChatGPT case aside, what are the copyright laws on impersonating the voice of an actor portraying a particular film character? If someone imitates the voice of Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow, or Andy Serkis playing Gollum, but makes no reference to the character apart from the voice performance, does that infringe on the copyright to the character?
There are no applicable laws that I know about, and as a voice actor I am similarly concerned. There is a lot of focus on this in the industry atm, but we all know how glacially slow government moves. SAG-AFTRA and NAVA have this as a focus currently, and I’m watching with interest.
Apparently the answer is no. There is even someone making a KITT app using a LLM, but using an AI voice based on a voice imitator as they didn’t got the rights from William Daniels and that’s legal.
The ChatGPT case aside, what are the copyright laws on impersonating the voice of an actor portraying a particular film character? If someone imitates the voice of Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow, or Andy Serkis playing Gollum, but makes no reference to the character apart from the voice performance, does that infringe on the copyright to the character?
There are no applicable laws that I know about, and as a voice actor I am similarly concerned. There is a lot of focus on this in the industry atm, but we all know how glacially slow government moves. SAG-AFTRA and NAVA have this as a focus currently, and I’m watching with interest.
Apparently the answer is no. There is even someone making a KITT app using a LLM, but using an AI voice based on a voice imitator as they didn’t got the rights from William Daniels and that’s legal.
Let’s just make the worse possible and then wait to see what happens. Only way to wake up from the AI nightmare. If we survive long enough.
IANAL but probably not