Familiar Voice Sparks Legal Showdown Between NPR Host And Google

NPR host and veteran podcaster David Greene has sued tech giant Google after he thought an AI voice in one of the company’s tools mimicked him nearly perfectly.

Greene’s lawsuit is one of the first in what is expected to quickly become a quagmire of legal actions and court rulings over the use of artificial intelligence and the extent of protections around copyright and ownership.

The host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” said he came across the AI tool, which involves two AI voices of a man and woman talking with each other, after a former coworker sent it to him. The coworker had wanted to know if Greene had given Google authorization to use his likeness because of the similarity. After the coworker’s note, Greene was bombarded with similar messages from friends and family asking him if he lent his likeness to Google for use in its AI tool.

“I was, like, completely freaked out,” Greene told The Washington Post, which first reported on the lawsuit. “It’s this eerie moment where you feel like you’re listening to yourself.”

Google told the Post that Greene’s likeness was not used for the tool, called NotebookLM.

“These allegations are baseless,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said. “The sound of the male voice in NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews is based on a paid professional actor Google hired.”

Guessing whom the NotebookLM voices most resemble has become somewhat of a niche parlor game online, with some people claiming that it most sounds like Greene. Others have suggested other names, such as former tech podcaster Leo Laporte. Others have suggested that the AI model most closely resembles the “Armchair Expert” podcast co-hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman.

Some AI court cases have the potential for massive payouts. One of the most significant cases in law around AI was settled last year in Bartz v. Anthropic. Anthropic, an AI company, trained its model on thousands of illegally downloaded books pirated online. The company faced a class-action lawsuit from the creators of those works and, in August, agreed to pay out the largest copyright settlement ever: $1.5 billion.

After the Anthropic settlement, other court cases followed suit. Some resulted in partnerships such as in the case of Universal Music Group (UMG) and the AI music platform Udio. In a settlement that ended a series of copyright disputes, UMG and Udio announced an agreement to collaborate “on an innovative, new commercial music creation, consumption and streaming experience.”