TikTok settles lawsuit with actress over its original text-to-speech voice

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TikTok has agreed to settle a lawsuit with Bev Standing, the voice actress who said she was behind the app’s original text-to-speech voice. Standing sued TikTok in May, saying that the app was using her voice without permission. A robotic version of what sounded like Standing’s voice had been in the app for months, speaking over what felt like every other video at the time.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed. TikTok and a lawyer for Standing were not immediately available for comment.

It sounds as though some strange mixup led to Standing’s voice being used by TikTok. Standing said that she made recordings for a text-to-speech feature “several years ago” but...

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