AI voice cloning outpaces UK law, experts warn
TL;DR:
- Realistic AI copies of a person’s voice or face can now be made from short clips, and lawyers warn UK law is “unfit for purpose” because it predates the technology.
- A Bristol voice-over artist found her cloned voice downloaded more than 900 times on a US AI platform without her consent.
- The government says it will consult on how to address the harms while “protecting legitimate innovation”.
People in the UK can have their voice or likeness cloned by AI without their knowledge, and the existing legal toolkit may not be strong enough to stop it. Media lawyer Dr Mathilde Pavis told the BBC that UK legislation comes “close” to protecting a person’s voice, face and identity but does not fully cover them, because it was written before synthetic-media tools existed.
A patchwork that doesn’t quite fit
Britain leans on a mix of copyright, data protection and trademark law to guard someone’s likeness. Those rules protect recordings, films and personal data in specific contexts, Pavis said, but were never designed for AI cloning, leaving gaps. GDPR is the instrument lawyers are “desperately” deploying against deepfakes — it bites because cloning someone means processing their personal data — yet it was not built for the purpose.
The human cost is already visible. Bristol voice-over artist Faye Dicker described her “disbelief” at discovering her voice had been cloned and sold online; the platform, US-based Fish Audio, said it takes protecting recognisable voices seriously and removed the content. The performers’ union Equity says it has filed claims for more than 20 members whose voices were allegedly used without permission, calling it one of the main issues it now handles.
A UK-shaped gap
The concern dovetails with survey evidence that young Scots already treat AI deepfakes as part of daily life, underlining how mainstream the tooling has become. Campaigners note that France, Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark have long recognised “personality rights” — French law has protected image rights since 1858 — while Britain has not given likeness the same standing as other intellectual property. Crossbench peer Baroness Beeban Kidron called the government’s inaction on copyright and likeness “a disaster”.
Looking forward
The government acknowledges that digital replicas can be “a powerful tool” but harmful when made without consent, and has promised a consultation. For UK creators and businesses, the open question is whether that produces a dedicated likeness right — as some European neighbours have — or merely another layer on an already strained patchwork.