Bill Kurtis says he found more than 200 unauthorized AI copies of his voice

Bill Kurtis says a voice he spent 60 years building a career around is being used without his permission. In a November 10 opinion essay for the Chicago Tribune, the television journalist and narrator describes finding more than 200 voice-over examples that he says used AI replicas of his voice—without his knowledge or consent.

The warning came from a viewer

The discovery began with an October 1 email. A viewer had heard a voice-over on a cable show that sounded like Kurtis, but she was unsure whether he had actually recorded it. She suspected AI and contacted him because she objected to someone replicating his voice without permission.

Kurtis says he then investigated. Nobody had contacted him or requested permission to use either his voice or his voiceprint, he writes, and some of those responsible appeared to be outside the United States. His essay does not explain how he identified the recordings as AI-generated.

Kurtis describes almost 1,000 narrations over his career, spanning news, true crime, nature programs and special events. He defines that work as more than reading aloud: it means turning written words into audio that fits the pictures.

They are stealing not only my voice but also my journalistic reputation. I’m not going to give it away.

Bill Kurtis, writing in the Chicago Tribune

Consent, compensation and the courts

Kurtis places his experience alongside a broader legal challenge over recorded voices. He writes that Ross Kimbarovsky, a Chicago-based attorney at Loevy & Loevy, has filed 13 proposed class actions against companies including Google, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple and ElevenLabs. He does not identify those defendants as the makers of the voice-overs he discovered.

He points to Illinois laws restricting the creation and distribution of digital replicas of a person’s voice, image or likeness, and the use of audio to train synthetic-voice models without notice and permission.

He also cites a possible federal response. In his account, the No Fakes Act, backed by entertainment union SAG-AFTRA, has won approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee and awaits a full Senate vote.

For Kurtis, the economic concern is direct: if people can obtain his voice for free, he argues, the ability to charge for his narration could disappear. He warns that this could end a career built over six decades.