In an article published on January 11, 2023, in TechNewsWorld and NewsDeal, Washington, D.C., Principal and patent prosecutor Michael L. Teich discusses the legal issues surrounding new AI technology announced this week by Microsoft, which simulates voices. What effects will this new technology have on AI laws? Teich explains “unfortunately, there may not be current, sufficient legal tools in place to directly tackle such issues, and instead, a hodgepodge of laws that cover how the technology is abused may be used to curtail such abuse.”

He goes on to explain how certain abuses could raise legal issues in the fields of fraud, defamation or election misinformation laws. “For example,” he continued, “voice cloning may result in a deepfake of a real person’s voice that may be used to trick a listener to succumb to a scam or may even be used to mimic the voice of an electoral candidate. While such abuses would likely raise legal issues in the fields of fraud, defamation or election misinformation laws, there is a lack of specific AI laws that would tackle the use of the technology itself.”

Teich also highlights potential challenges based on how the voice sample is obtained, noting, “further, depending on how the initial voice sample was obtained, there may be implications under the federal Wiretap Act and state wiretap laws if the voice sample was obtained over, for example, a telephone line.”

“Lastly,” Teich noted, “in limited circumstances, there may be First Amendment concerns if such voice cloning was to be used by a governmental actor to silence, delegitimize or dilute legitimate voices from exercising their free speech rights.”

For the full article, you may click here.

The article was also featured on Impact Lab and can be read here.

Also, this article was featured on NewsDeal and can be found here.

 

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