Google added audio overviews in the second half of 2024, allowing NotebookLM users to create short podcast episodes from pages of notes and documents of any type. AI-generated podcasts usually have a male and a female co-host. Green is now claiming that the male co-host was apparently coached on her hard work hours, which are now allegedly copied, and he is suing the company for failing to get her permission or pay her any compensation.
The complaint, filed in a state trial court in Santa Clara County, California, claims, “Without his consent, Google tried to replicate Mr. Green’s distinctive voice – a voice that has been revered in decorated radio and public commentaries for decades – by creating synthetic audio products that mimic his delivery, cadence and personality.”
Green was co-host of NPR’s award-winning Morning Edition podcast for nearly a decade, and now he hosts KCRW’s Left, Right & Center podcast.
After the release of the AI podcasting feature in 2024, the Internet praised how podcasters seemed more human than expected. At the time, Forbes called the feature “weirdly human”, while WIRED said that the virtual podcasters’ cadences and vocal performances, and the use of filler words or quirky phrases, made the product “stand out”.
Google has called NotebookLM one of the company’s “breakout AI breakthroughs”. The lawsuit claims the company “misused the career, identity, and livelihood of a beloved public radio and podcast host as raw material for a tech company’s profits without any compensation.”
Green was first alerted to the similarity by colleagues, and then consulted an AI forensics firm to confirm his suspicions. According to the lawsuit, the tests indicated 53–60% confidence that the voice was Green’s, with any confidence score above 50% considered “relatively high”. According to the lawsuit, the CEO of the unnamed forensics company ultimately concluded that it was his “confident opinion that the Google Podcasts model was trained on David Greene’s voice”.
“These allegations are baseless,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda told Gizmodo. “The voice of the male voice in the audio overview of NotebookLM is based on a paid professional actor employed by Google.”
The use of intellectual and artistic property in AI has been a major issue, leading to several high-profile lawsuits against AI industry giants like OpenAI and Google. Models require lots of data for training, but with limited regulatory guardrails when it comes to proper authorization and compensation for those who have done the hard work to create the content it trains on.
When it comes to imitating likenesses, such as in voice or video production, individuals also have the uncanny experience of relinquishing all autonomy over their voice or image, as users can make the model do and say whatever they want. In a high-profile fallout in 2024, Scarlett Johansson complained about OpenAI after the company allegedly used or copied her voice to power the ChatGPIT voice, even as the actress (who voiced the AI companion in the 2013 film “Her”) had declined the company’s requests for her participation.
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