All true: after the case of Taylor Swift, a concrete move has arrived in Italy too to combat musical deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence. It was accomplished by Giusy Ferreri, who decided to register her vocal timbre as a sound trademark with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, effectively becoming the first European artist to choose this path to defend herself from digital cloning of the voice.
The singer's lawyer revealed this to Repubblica. «In the era of artificial intelligence, voice recognition takes on a central role also with respect to unauthorized uses, imitations and synthetic reproductions».
A decision that comes at a time when artificial intelligence software is increasingly capable of replicating famous voices with just a few audio samples, generating realistic content that is often indistinguishable from the originals, with all the questions that these practices bring with them, especially when it comes to copyright and consent in use.
Registering the voice, filing it as a trademark, therefore means transforming it into a legally protected asset, making it easier to take legal action against any imitations or unauthorized uses produced through AI.
In recent years Taylor Swift has become one of the symbols of the battle against the improper use of artificial intelligence in the music industry, between fake viral songs and artificially generated content that exploited her image without authorization.
Giusy Ferreri's move could now open an important precedent, and it is therefore likely that other artists will soon follow the same path.
