David in The Times – AI and employee ‘voice’ theft

Artificial intelligence could simulate the personal intellectual property of an employee long after they leave

Senior-level employees may be giving up far more than they realise when they sign “standard” employment contracts in an artificial intelligence-driven workplace — those agreements must evolve quickly.

Intellectual property provisions in employment contracts have for years contained broad assignment provisions in the employer’s favour. The aim was simple: to ensure that intellectual property created “in the course of employment” belonged to the employer. But what happens to the personal “voice” that employees bring with them?

Knowledge workers generate a constant stream of intellectual property: reports, emails, software code, playbooks and data sets. Increasingly, employers can aggregate and even monetise that output by feeding it into their AI systems, creating derivative tools that may replicate an individual’s style and reasoning.
Reports have recently surfaced suggesting that companies are beginning to implement “digital twins” that ingest employee working styles and thought processes, yet the question of who owns those digital dupes remains unclear and untested. This may mean that emails sent over years of employment could effectively give an employer’s AI the ability to simulate and use the personal intellectual property of an employee long after they leave.

Comparisons with music and film work are hard to ignore. When artists or actors sign a contract they can assign or license rights in their performance, and the label or studio can, in some cases, exploit that performance indefinitely. In response, artists and actors are negotiating “AI carve-outs” to protect themselves. These clauses explicitly prohibit the use of performances to train AI systems for new content. Alternatively, as Taylor Swift has done, they may file trademark applications to protect voice and image rights in response to AI concerns.

An employee who signs an employment contract may without realising it be permitting the employer to store, mine and adapt their “image” by training its AI tools to preserve and use that employee’s professional “voice” as a reusable and monetised asset.

The “voice” that an employee develops over a career is not usually carved out or protected in standard UK employment contracts. Employers will rely on standard intellectual property clauses drafted for a pre-AI world to argue that such use is permitted. Very few mention AI explicitly.

The legal risk for employers will lie in consent, with employees arguing that they did not give informed permission for their work to be used in ways that dramatically extend its lifespan and reach.

Future employment contract provisions are likely to spell out the extent to which employee-generated intellectual property can be used for AI training, what happens on termination, how pre-existing personal intellectual property is protected and whether limits apply to internal or external exploitation of the “image” of the employee.