Maddalena Castellani has posted How Much Is My Voice Worth to an Algorithm? Synthetic Voices, Embodied Agents, and the Right to Freedom from Vocal Identity Confusion on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Contemporary voice-cloning systems learn the perceptual structure of a voice and generate novel utterances indistinguishable from the original speaker. When embedded in embodied agents — social robots, conversational avatars, autonomous systems — a synthetic voice constitutes a perceived social presence capable of generating trust and inducing identity confusion. This paper argues that the resulting harm — vocal identity confusion — is structurally distinct from any harm currently recognized by law. A comparative analysis of five frameworks across EU and US law (GDPR, personality rights, copyright, AI Act, Tennessee ELVIS Act/NO FAKES Act) demonstrates that each regulates the voice as an object rather than as an attributed experience taking shape in the listener’s perception. The paper introduces the Vocal Presence Doctrine, reconceiving the voice as the perceptual constitution of identity in interactive contexts; the Right to Freedom from Vocal Identity Confusion, a new subjective right triggered when a synthetic voice is perceived as that of a real person; and the Reasonable Listener Standard, an objective test modeled on the reasonable person standard and functionally analogous to the average consumer test in EU trademark law. The analysis identifies a tripartite harm: to the identity holder (appropriation without consent), to listeners in non-embodied contexts (distorted cognitive attribution), and to listeners in embodied contexts (trust structured through an appropriated identity on an affective level disclosure cannot reach). Four scenarios — from the Biden robocall to a widow interacting with a robot speaking in her deceased husband’s voice — test the framework. For the deceased, consent cannot be delegated to heirs and requires advance vocal directives. Following Warren and Brandeis (1890), the paper proposes a right that logically precedes existing frameworks, intercepting harm at the moment of perception.
Recommended.
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