The Right Of Publicity In The AI Age

Their defense was essentially that this is not big deal. Instead of being a fly on their forehead, it is now a bee in their ear. I feel like maybe we've made the path easier for others to follow. Now I have a fence around my larynxization.1

I. Overview

In April 2023, social media platforms were abuzz about a new song that had been anonymously posted to Tik Tok.² "Heart on My Sleeve," which apparently reflected a collaboration between Drake and The Weeknd (two of music's biggest stars), soon became one of the most streamed singles in the country, garnering tens of millions of plays. All the details seemed right—the vocal timbre and inflection, the delivery, the production. But, as the poster disclosed, neither artist had anything to do with the track, which was an original composition and sound recording that used copycat vocals generated by artificial intelligence ("AI"). Like Tom Waits, who once sued to defend his unique "larynxization" from a sound-alike,