I suspect there's some plausible deniability built-in that might allow for such matters to be legal.
For example, lots of people sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. So if you trained a model with tall, deep-voiced Austrian man, you could probably get something that people will immediately associate with Arnold without actually being his voice, or someone emulating him. Because much of what Americans associate with his voice is really a regional accent which is relatively uncommon in the US.
There may be a little bit more difficulty getting away with with someone like Gilbert Gottfried, whose voice is much more unique. But I do think you could get away with creating a voice that people think sounds just like him, but doesn't hold up in a side-by-side comparison.
What I think will happen is celebrities like Morgan Freeman will use their voice to train models like this, then gift these to their estates for use in the future.
> So if you trained a model with tall, deep-voiced Austrian man, you could probably get something that people will immediately associate with Arnold without actually being his voice, or someone emulating him. //
I think "passing off", an unregistered element of trademark laws, may be pertinent here. If the public think that there's an association and you're knowingly trading on that, even if the public are wrong, then you can be 'passing off' your output as someone else's goods/services/[vocal renditions].
It's likely you'd have to be very careful about use of copyright material for training the voice (eg extracting metrics that describe the voice). Fair Use might apply in USA though (even commercially).
For example, lots of people sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. So if you trained a model with tall, deep-voiced Austrian man, you could probably get something that people will immediately associate with Arnold without actually being his voice, or someone emulating him. Because much of what Americans associate with his voice is really a regional accent which is relatively uncommon in the US.
There may be a little bit more difficulty getting away with with someone like Gilbert Gottfried, whose voice is much more unique. But I do think you could get away with creating a voice that people think sounds just like him, but doesn't hold up in a side-by-side comparison.
What I think will happen is celebrities like Morgan Freeman will use their voice to train models like this, then gift these to their estates for use in the future.