David Greene, the longtime host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” is suing Google, claiming the male podcast voice in the company’s NotebookLM tool is based on Greene, The Washington Post reports.
Greene said that after friends, family members and co-workers started emailing him about the resemblance, he became convinced that the voice replicated his cadence, intonation and used filler words like “uh”.
“My voice is like the most important part of who I am,” said Greene, who currently hosts KCRW’s “Left, Right, & Center.”
Among other things, Google’s NotebookLM allows users to create podcasts with AI hosts. A company spokesperson told the Post that the voice used in the product is not related to Greene’s voice: “The sound of the male voice in Audio Overviews NotebookLM is based on a paid professional actor hired by Google.”
This isn’t the first argument about AI voices resembling real people. In one notable example, OpenAI removed ChatGPT’s voice after actress Scarlett Johansson complained that it was an imitation of herself.