This article was co-written by Fernando Da Cruz Vasconcellos and Rebecca Newman.

The new era of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), Machine Learning (“ML”) and their rapidly growing ubiquitous use throughout our society offer unprecedented new possibilities. However, this new era also poses a new challenge for artists in managing and protecting their copyrights, including rights over their voice, image, brand, and music rights, etc.

In a recent development according to NPR, the actress Scarlett Johansson has taken legal action over the new ChatGPT voice named “Sky”, which had a first live demonstration by OpenAI last week. Many listeners thought the ChatGPT voice was very similar to Scarlett Johansson’s voice, during her role in the 2013 sci-fi movie “Her” in particular. In the film, Scarlett voices a new operating system, and an artificially intelligent virtual assistant, which has striking parallels with the current situation involving ChatGPT. OpenAI has now suspended its new ChatGPT voice “Sky”.

Artists need to be able to properly protect and manage their image and personality rights. This includes understanding which rights exist in which countries and then tracking their underlying value and being proactive in restricting the ability of third parties to use those rights as expressed in copyright protected works. In particular, artists should have appropriate control over use of creative works featuring their image, voice and personality to prevent them being used to train third party AI models which will profit from their likeness. Having a comprehensive understanding of the legal position will allow artists and their teams to control the monetisation of their likeness, create valuable commercial opportunities, make the right decisions for licensing, pursue legal action when appropriate and protect the exclusivity of any registered IP rights.

At Stobbs, we can advise you as to the strength and enforceability of your personal brand and how to take control of your most valuable assets. Talk to Rebecca about how to proactively manage your copyright and other IP rights in a digital (AI) era.

At Valuation Consulting (a Stobbs Strategic Partner), intangible asset valuations, including personal brand valuations are based on International Valuation Standards and on a combination of well-accepted, tried and tested methods using the following evidence-based approaches.

Talk to Fernando (fernando.vasconcellos@valuationconsulting.com) about valuing your intangible assets, portfolio of investments, business, and shares (for reporting, commercial, tax and internal management purposes), as well as about valuing growth shares and share options (for tax and management incentive schemes) in the exciting new era of AI.