Here's a voice fight that doesn't need a single line of AI code to matter for AI. Johnny Cash's estate, through the John R. Cash Revocable Trust, sued The Coca-Cola Company in Nashville federal court on November 25, 2025. The ad at issue is a fall 2025 college-football commercial called "Go the Distance."
Coca-Cola's answer, filed May 8, 2026, admits it "engaged an advertising agency to create an advertisement for use in a fall 2025 football marketing campaign," and that "a vocal artist (the 'Singer') was hired to sing the vocal track for the song in the Advertisement." It also "denies that the Advertisement is infringing" and rejects the trust's label "Sound-Alike Singer." So the hire is admitted, and both sides agree it isn't Cash's own voice. The complaint calls him "a Johnny Cash tribute singer." Whether the voice reads as Johnny Cash is the fight. The lead claim is under Tennessee's ELVIS Act (the trust also pleads Tennessee consumer-protection and federal Lanham Act counts), and that law was written with voice clones in mind.
Takeaway #1: Tennessee's ELVIS Act protects a simulation of your voice
FROM THE RULE
"\"Voice\" means a sound in a medium that is readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual, regardless of whether the sound contains the actual voice or a simulation of the voice of the individual"
What it means for you. In Tennessee, your voice is a property right, and it isn't limited to recordings of you. A simulation counts if it's "readily identifiable and attributable" to you. That covers a human impersonator and an AI clone the same way. Liability for an ad requires that someone "knowingly uses" the voice without consent. The law took effect July 1, 2024.
The Cash case, before Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. in Nashville, will test that line in court. Coca-Cola's answer also raises defenses, including that the claims are barred "by the First Amendment." Nothing has been decided. These are allegations and denials, nothing more yet.
Your move. Performers: if your voice is commercially valuable, keep proof of it. Gather recordings, press calling your voice distinctive, licensing offers. Identifiability is what you'll have to show.
Takeaway #2: The tool clause
FROM THE RULE
"A person is liable to a civil action if the person distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available an algorithm, software, tool, or other technology, service, or device, the primary purpose or function of such algorithm, software, tool, or other technology, service, or device is the production of a particular, identifiable individual's photograph, voice, or likeness, with knowledge that distributing, transmitting, or otherwise making available the photograph, voice, or likeness was not authorized by the individual ..."
What it means for you. This reaches past the ad agency to whoever makes the cloning tool available, but only a tool whose "primary purpose or function" is producing one identifiable person's voice or likeness, and only "with knowledge" it wasn't authorized. A general-purpose voice app is a harder fit than a "sound like [named star]" model.
California gets to a similar place through older law. In July, a federal judge sent former NPR host David Greene's suit over Google's NotebookLM voice back to state court. Greene says the AI's default male voice sounds like his. The judge didn't decide whether Google is liable; he decided where the case belongs. His reasoning: "Midler is illustrative." He wrote that "Greene's voice misappropriation claims are just like those in Midler, but with AI rather than a voice actor." Midler is the classic 1988 sound-alike case: a licensed song, an imitated voice. The order's key sentence for creators: "Because Greene's claims are based on the output (his likeness) of Google's AI and not its input (copying), the claims fall outside the reach of the Copyright Act." Translation: your voice isn't a copyright, so a clone-of-your-voice claim lives in publicity law.
Your move. Agencies and brands: if a brief says "sounds like" anyone, get that person's written consent or change the brief. Tool builders: don't market a model by a real person's name unless you have that person's license.
And always remember, don't sign it till you read it, my friends.
General information, not legal advice. Reading this doesn't create an attorney-client relationship. Talk to a lawyer about your own voice or campaign.
Sources
- John R. Cash Revocable Trust v. The Coca-Cola Company, M.D. Tenn. No. 3:25-cv-01373, Defendant's Answer (Dkt. 28), filed May 8, 2026
- Tennessee Public Chapter No. 588 (2024), Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security Act
- Greene v. Google LLC, N.D. Cal. No. 3:26-cv-01773-CRB, Order Granting Motion to Remand (Dkt. 38), July 23, 2026
- John R. Cash Revocable Trust v. The Coca-Cola Company, M.D. Tenn. 3:25-cv-01373, Complaint (Dkt. 1)
