In a motion to dismiss Monday, Lovo Inc. said the proposed class action from Paul Lehrman and Linnea Sage misses the mark in several respects, calling their complaint "a tale filled with pathos and the woes of artificial intelligence" without stating an actionable claim.
Lehrman and Sage, who are married and members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, allege that they were tricked into providing voice samples by anonymous people who they now believe were representing Lovo. The actors say they were told their recordings were for research and would not be made publicly available. The complaint says Lehrman was paid $1,200 and Sage $400.
Lovo claimed the suit falls short. "There is no allegation that these recordings were made publicly available; there is no allegation that the recordings were not used for research. Rather, at a later point in time, plaintiffs each allege that they heard recordings with voices that sounded to them like their voices saying things different than those stated in the recordings made and uploaded to Fiverr," Lovo said, referring to the name of the website where the actors uploaded their recordings.
Fiverr International Ltd. is not a party to the lawsuit.
"There is no allegation that the actual recordings previously uploaded to Fiverr appeared on the Lovo website or in any advertisement," Lovo said. "Thus, the conclusory allegation that somewhere on the Lovo website Lovo represented that it had agreements with actors providing permission is not plausibly alleged as actually false."
The actors say Sage fonud in June 2023 that Lovo had been using and editing her voice in its promotional materials for years, including in an investor presentation shared on YouTube. The suit says Lehrman learned in April 2022 that a YouTube channel that was promoting videos about Russian military equipment used his computer-generated voice.
The following year, Lehrman said he heard his voice used on an episode of the podcast "Deadline Strike Talk," which "ironically ... was about the dangers of AI technologies," the complaint says. The actors say Lovo is still using their voices, including to promote its voice generator "Genny."
Counsel for the actors, Steve Cohen of Pollock Cohen LLP, said in a statement that Lovo is wrong on the law and ignoring facts.
"Lovo's motion to dismiss reminds me of an old-college-try spaghetti recipe: put everything into a pot and then throw it against the wall, hoping that something will stick," Cohen said. "They ignore the facts and are wrong on the law, and we look forward to putting both before Judge [J. Paul] Oetken."
The suit claims violations of New York's Civil Rights Law and Deceptive Practices Act, false advertising, unfair competition and false affiliation in violation of the Lanham Act, unjust enrichment and fraud, among other things.
Lovo claimed that the state claims are time-barred, and that the Lanham Act claims fail because "there is no trademark for these voices or voices generally" and that "there is no claim for endorsement by a voice that is fictitious."
The unjust enrichment claim is preempted by the New York Civil Rights Law and duplicative of other claims, Lovo argued. The fraud claim "is nothing more than a dressed-up claim for breach of contract," which would also fail because it lacks specificity, according to Lovo.
Lovo said "Genny" was trained using thousands of voices.
"Thus, the voices that Genny creates are 'AI-generated' and not recordings of anything previously said by anyone," Lovo said. The actors may believe that they're hearing their voices, but Lovo argued that's not the case.
"[Sage] also does not claim that Lovo used an actual recording of her voice for Genny or the investor presentation," Lovo said. "Instead, what she is calling her voice is an AI generated synthetic voice that she believes sounds like her voice."
Lehrman and Sage are represented by Steve Cohen and Anna Menkova of Pollock Cohen LLP.
Lovo is represented by Michael S. Lazaroff, David E. Case and William W. Bergesch of Rimon PC.
The case is Paul Lehrman et al. v. Lovo Inc., case number 1:24-cv-03770, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
--Additional reporting by Lauren Berg. Editing by Michael Watanabe.
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