A longtime NPR radio host is suing Google for allegedly stealing his voice for the male podcaster voice in its AI podcast tool, according to a suit filed in Santa Clara County, Calif.
David Greene – the former host of “Morning Edition” and “Up First,” and current voice of KCRW’s “Left, Right & Center” – said he first heard of NotebookLM, Google’s AI tool that churns out automated podcasts on demand, when a former colleague emailed him.
“So…I’m probably the 148th person to ask this, but did you license your voice to Google?” Greene’s former co-worker wrote in an email in fall 2024, after the tool’s launch. “It sounds very much like you!”
According to the lawsuit, Greene’s inboxes were soon flooded with messages from family, friends and colleagues asking whether Greene had struck a deal with Google to use his voice to train its podcast tool – which has a male podcaster voice and a female one that converse.
“I was, like, completely freaked out,” Greene told the Washington Post. “It’s this eerie moment where you feel like you’re listening to yourself.”
“I’m not some crazy anti-AI activist. It’s just been a very weird experience.”
Google, which launched its automated podcast tool in 2024, denied the claims in the lawsuit, which was filed Jan. 23.
“These allegations are baseless. The sound of the male voice in NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews is based on a paid professional actor Google hired,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda told The Post.
Greene – who landed his first job at NPR in 2005 – said the male podcast voice on NotebookLM sounded just like him, with the same cadence and intonation and occasional “uhs” and “likes.”
“My voice is, like, the most important part of who I am,” Greene told the Washington Post, adding that his wife’s eyes popped when he played the AI podcast for her.
His lawsuit alleges but does not offer proof that Google spoofed his voice for its AI-powered podcast generator.
The complaint cites an unnamed AI forensic firm that used its software to analyze audio from NotebookLM – giving it a 53% to 60% rating that Greene’s voice was used to train the bot. This is a “relatively high” confidence rating, according to the lawsuit.
Greene’s lawsuit is just the latest to question a major tech firm over possible copyright infringement in its training of AI tools.
Scarlett Johansson threatened legal action against OpenAI in 2024, when it released a “Sky” chatbot voice that sounded similar to the famous actress – after she turned down an offer from the company to voice one of its upcoming bots. OpenAI ultimately wiped Sky from its platform.
Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, faced backlash in 2024 after sexually explicit “deepfake” images of Taylor Swift were viewed millions of times on the app.
The platform temporarily removed the singer’s name and related terms from its search bar – though one of the AI-generated images had already been viewed 47 million times before it was taken down.
Greene’s lawyer – Joshua Michelangelo Stein, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner – is also representing book authors including comedian Sarah Silverman and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates in their AI copyright lawsuit against Meta.
“We have faith in the court and encourage people to listen to the example audio themselves,” Stein told the Washington Post.
Stein did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
