Copyright protects a thing you fixed — not a style, and not a voice. Plus the data you can’t take back once a model has swallowed it.
August 2026 · Case 5 of 6
As you read — hold this question
If a machine copies your voice — the very thing that makes you you — which law protects it, when copyright doesn’t?
0
zero copyright protection exists for a voice. When a fake Drake track went viral, the label couldn’t pull it over the voices — they had to reach for a tiny producer’s tag buried in the song.
Copyright protects a thing you fixed — a recording, a page, a picture. It does not protect a style, and it does not protect a voice. That is a gap the machines have already found.
The gap
The examinable core
What copyright doesn’t cover
In 2023 an anonymous track, Heart on my Sleeve, appeared with the AI-made voices of Drake and The Weeknd singing words they never sang. When the label had it pulled down, they couldn’t do it over the voices — you cannot copyright a voice — so they reached for a tiny sample of a producer’s tag buried in the track.
The next year an AI assistant launched sounding uncannily like Scarlett Johansson. She couldn’t sue over a copied voice either. In Australia the main handle is a much older idea — misleading the public into thinking she’d endorsed it (passing off / the ACL), not copyright.
Carry this
Copyright protects fixed works, not a style or a voice. When AI clones a voice, the remedy is a workaround — passing off, misleading conduct, a stray sample — because the voice itself belongs to no one.
The data you can’t take back
The rest of the story
Machine unlearning is unsolved
It isn’t only artists’ work being swept up — it’s yours. Europe gives every person a right to be forgotten (GDPR Article 17). But a trained model isn’t a filing cabinet; your data is dissolved across billions of numbers. Teaching a model to forget one person is a problem nobody has solved — you’d almost have to rebuild it from scratch. And Australia doesn’t even grant that right yet; here it’s only a proposal.
Two guardrails to hold exactly
(1) The ScarJo/Sky matter is about likeness, not copyright — she never sued or won on copyright. (2) Australia has no right to be forgotten yet; the EU does. Getting these wrong is the fastest way to lose marks on this module.
Quick recall — without looking back
Test yourself on this case
Question 1 of 3
Why couldn’t the label remove the fake-Drake track over the voices?
Because you cannot copyright a voice. Copyright protects fixed works, not a style or voice — so they had to rely on a tiny producer’s tag / sample buried in the track.
Question 2 of 3
In Australia, what’s the main handle when an AI clones someone’s voice?
Not copyright — an older idea: misleading the public / passing off (that they endorsed it), under the ACL. The Scarlett Johansson / Sky matter is about likeness, not copyright.
Question 3 of 3
Why is the ‘right to be forgotten’ so hard for AI, and does Australia have it?
A trained model isn’t a filing cabinet — your data is dissolved across billions of parameters, so machine unlearning is essentially unsolved. Europe grants the right (GDPR Art 17); Australia does not yet — it’s only proposed.