Illinois Media Professionals File Lawsuit Against Tech Giants...

A coalition of journalists, podcasters, and voice actors in Illinois has filed lawsuits against several prominent technology firms, accusing them of unauthorized use of voice data to enhance artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

The legal actions claim that these companies have infringed upon the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by collecting and utilizing voice recordings without obtaining proper consent.

BIPA, established in 2008, safeguards residents of Illinois against the unconsented storage of their biometric data.

This protection extends to various forms of biological identification, including retina or iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, facial geometry, and other similar data.

The lawsuits identifies 10 companies as allegedly using voices without consent including:

Amazon
Adobe
Google and its parent company Alphabet
Apple
Microsoft
Samsung
Meta
ElevenLabs
NVIDIA.

Seven journalists, podcasters and voice actors are named in the lawsuits. Collectively, they’ve earned multiple Emmy Awards, Peabody Awards, Pulitzer Prizes and Edward R. Murrow Awards.

The plaintiffs include longtime Chicago broadcasters Carol Marin (Chicago Tonight) and Phil Rogers (NBC Chicago) along with:

Robin Amer – USA Today The City Podcast
Lindsay Dorcus – Children’s book voice actress
Yohance Lacour – You Didn’t See Nothin Podcast
Victoria Nassif – Apple Books voice actress
Alison Flowers – Somebody Podcast

Attorney Ross Kimbarovsky, who’s representing the media professionals, said this case is about standing up to conglomerates who try to take advantage of citizens.

“And if trillion and multimillion dollar companies can take the most personal thing you have without asking, then consent doesn’t mean anything,” Kimbarovsky said.

The plaintiffs are seeking financial compensation, but have also come with a list of demands to prevent the issue from happening again.

They’re asking for the court to force the companies to immediately stop collecting unconsented voice data, disclose where the voice training data came from and destroy any material that has allegedly been created using those recordings.

Kimbarovsky said these inclusions are important because they represent a part of an individual that cannot be replaced.

“Unlike a credit card, which you can cancel if you lose it, if somebody steals it, you can get a new one,” Kimarovsky said. “You cannot get a new voice.”

Leaders from the American Civil Liberties Union (Illinois) also voiced their displeasure at the potential of tech giants using voices without permission.

Public Policy Director for the Illinois ACLU, Ed Yohnka, said safeguarding biometric information is crucial because there’s no way to reverse the harm.

“The thing about biometric information is, it’s permanent,” Yohnka said. “You only get one face print, one iris scan and one fingerprint. There isn’t a way to protect you once it’s released.”

BIPA allows financial penalties against companies found to have violated the law. Under the act, companies can face fines of $1,000 for each negligent violation and $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation.

The lawsuits come as concerns grow nationwide over the possibility of AI systems being trained from the creative work of others without obtaining consent.

Similar litigation involving AI training data and biometric privacy have also been filed in New York and California within the past two years.

None of the companies named in the lawsuits responded to requests for comment from WCIA by the time of publication.

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Illinois Media Professionals File Lawsuit Against Tech Giants for Unauthorized Use of Voices in AI Training

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