Marques Brownlee, who is better known as MKBHD, has called out business card company Dot for being “scummy” and using an AI version of his voice in a product advertisement without his permission.
“It’s happening,” he wrote in a post on X. “There are real companies who will just use an AI-created rip of my voice to promote their stuff. And there’s really no repercussions for it other than being known as this scummy shady company that is willing to stoop that low to sell some product.”
(Brownlee and Dot did not respond to Passionfruit’s request for comment via email by publication time.)
In response, other creators have come to Brownlee’s defense, calling for better platform protections against AI impersonation.
Is there any legal recourse for AI impersonation?
But perhaps it’s not all over for the YouTuber. In a post on X, lawyer Rob Freund told Brownlee that he might be able to have “recourse” for this issue based on something called the “right of publicity.”
This, he explained, is because a precedent was set in a lawsuit between Bette Midler and Ford. This lawsuit concerned a voice actor imitating Midler’s voice, and the case was ultimately ruled in Midler’s favor. It ruled that when “a voice is a sufficient amount of a celebrity’s identity, the right of publicity protects it.”
A lawsuit between Tom Waits and Frito Lay also came to a similar conclusion. So, according to Freund, it’s feasible that this same precedent could apply to Brownlee.
