AI Firm Seeks to End Actors’ Voiceover Generator Class Action

A text-to-speech voiceover service sought to dismiss a class action from voice actors, arguing their complaint accusing it of training its AI model on recordings of their voices didn’t actually allege any wrongdoing or misstatements by the company.

Lovo Inc. said the accusations brought against it are “threadbare conclusory recitations of the elements of the claims and clearly insufficient,” according to a motion to dismiss filed Monday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The actors brought eight causes of action, including violating New York right of publicity protections and flouting the Lanham Act, and Lovo’s motion sought to dismiss all eight.

Plaintiffs Paul Lehrman and Linnea Sage filed the lawsuit in May after they said they recognized their voices saying things they had never recorded in a YouTube video in 2022, a podcast episode in 2023, and Lovo’s demo slide decks from 2020, the complaint said. The actors connected the company to user accounts on Fiverr.com, a freelance work platform, that paid for their voice recordings in 2020 for a speech synthesis project for “academic and research purposes only,” according to the complaint.

Lovo argued claims brought under sections 50 and 51 of New York Civil Rights Law—which bars misappropriating an actor’s voice—should be dismissed because they cross the one-year statute of limitations. The statute also doesn’t prohibit the digital replication of voices for living people, and other claims, including those brought under the Lanham Act, should be dismissed because there is “no trademark for these voices or voices generally,” Lovo argued.

“Lovo’s motion to dismiss reminds me of an old-college-try spaghetti recipe: put everything into a pot and then throw it against the wall, hoping that something will stick,” Steve Cohen, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said in an emailed statement.

Lehrman and Sage are represented by Pollock Cohen LLP. Lovo is represented by Rimon PC.

The case is: Lehrman et al v. Lovo, Inc., S.D.N.Y., 1:24-cv-03770, motion filed 7/29/24.