ABC News clones senator's voice with permission; deepfakes lack legal safeguards
ABC News Verify cloned Australian senator Jacqui Lambie's voice using an AI platform for journalism purposes with her permission, demonstrating how cheaply and easily voice cloning can be done. The article discusses how such deepfakes and voice clones pose threats to democracy and individual identity, and how current Australian copyright law inadequately protects against unauthorised digital cloning without explicit permission.
What happened
ABC News Verify spent approximately A$100 to clone federal senator Jacqui Lambie's voice using an easily accessible online voice cloning platform, with her permission. The clone required only 90 seconds of original voice recording to produce a synthetic replica that several people did not initially recognize as fake.
Reported impact
The incident demonstrates how voice cloning technology has become cheap and easy to use, posing a serious threat to the functioning of democracy, especially around elections, and to personal identity. Unauthorised deepfakes and voice cloning can easily be used to generate misinformation and be extremely damaging to individuals, as illustrated by a 2020 political deepfake video featuring Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk that received around 1 million views on social media.
Index analysis
Current Australian copyright law is inadequate to protect people whose image or voice is digitally cloned without permission. Copyright cannot protect a person's voice or speech as such—only tangible expressions like recordings. Even if the source material is copied, the person whose likeness is cloned often does not own it and therefore cannot sue for infringement.
Governance controls
In Australia, defamation, privacy, image-based abuse laws, passing off and consumer protection laws might be applicable to deepfake video or audio situations. Complaints can also be lodged with the eSafety Commissioner. Establishing 'personality rights' has been proposed as a potential legal mechanism to better protect individuals against unauthorised digital cloning of their image or voice.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.