Tech giants sued over ‘stealing’ voices of well-known journalists, voice actors to train AI -…
Tech giants are facing lawsuits in Illinois for allegedly using the voices of journalists and voice actors without consent to train AI models, violating biometric privacy laws.
- Incident date
- May 2026
- Target
- Carol Marin, Phil Rogers, Robin Amer, Lindsay Dorcus, Victoria Nassif, Yohance Lacour, Alison Flowers
Several tech companies face lawsuits for allegedly using voices to train AI. Nine class action lawsuits were filed in Chicago, alleging violations of Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The plaintiffs include well-known Chicago-based journalists, podcasters, and voice actors.
What happened
The lawsuits allege that companies ingested recordings of the plaintiffs' voices to train AI "foundational voice models." The companies named in the lawsuits include Amazon, Adobe, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Meta, ElevenLabs, and NVIDIA. The plaintiffs claim their voiceprints were taken without consent. The suits characterize a voiceprint as a "digital fingerprint" that cannot be altered and is a unique identifier. The lawsuits suggest the companies knowingly disregarded BIPA, despite understanding consent systems.