Reporters Sue Nvidia, Google, Microsoft Over AI Voice Models (1)

Nvidia Corp., Google LLC, and Microsoft Corp. were sued by award-winning journalists and podcasters accusing the trillion-dollar tech giants of using their voices without permission to train its AI products.

The companies violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting the creators’ unique voiceprints from publicly available recordings, exploiting them to create voice AI products, and commercially distributing the models, according to three complaints filed Monday and Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

The proposed class actions joins a trio of similar lawsuits filed by independent musicians against Google and AI music generators Suno Inc. and Uncharted Labs Inc. that lean on Illinois’ unique biometric-privacy law, which prohibits the collection of peoples’ biometric identifiers without their written permission. Lawyers have said the novel approach prevents AI companies from using the fair use defense, which has been their go-to argument since the wave of copyright lawsuits against the industry that began in 2023.

The plaintiffs are Pulitzer Prize-winners Yohance Lacour and Alison Flowers, Chicago broadcaster Philip Rogers, two other journalists, and two narrators.

Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The complaints claim the big tech companies “ingested hundreds of thousands of hours of human speech” and made “deliberate” institutional decisions to violate BIPA to avoid the burden of compliance to develop their voice AI tools faster.

The creators say their voiceprints are like fingerprints, and cannot be recovered once they have been stolen like credit cards can.

The companies AI voice models now compete with the creators “where they earn their living,” the creators said, pointing to a Nvidia tool marketed for “studio dubbing and podcast narration,” and a Google application licensed to publishers as an alternative to human narration.

The lawsuits also bring claims under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, the Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and common law.

Loevy & Loevy represents the plaintiffs and the proposed class in all three suits.

The cases are Rogers v. Nvidia Corp., N.D. Ill., No. 1:26-cv-05478, complaint filed 5/12/26; Marin v. Alphabet Inc., N.D. Ill., No. 1:26-cv-05436, complaint filed 5/11/26; and Flowers v. Microsoft Corp., N.D. Ill., No. 26-cv-05491, complaint filed 5/12/26.