Bette Midler

Bette Midler (born 1945) is a singer, actress, and comedian whose five-decade career spans Beaches, Hocus Pocus, Broadway’s Hello, Dolly!, and four Grammy Awards. Long before generative AI existed, she fought — and won — the case that now governs machines that imitate human voices.

The precedent: Midler v. Ford

In 1985, Ford’s ad agency asked Midler to sing “Do You Want to Dance” for a commercial. She refused — so the agency hired one of her backup singers to imitate her, instructing her to sound as much like Midler as possible. Midler sued, and in 1988 the Ninth Circuit ruled in her favor, holding that “a voice is as distinctive and personal as a face” and that deliberately imitating a famous singer’s voice for commercial gain violates her right of publicity. Nearly four decades later, Midler v. Ford Motor Co. is the precedent lawyers reach for in every AI voice-cloning dispute, from the fake-Drake track to Scarlett Johansson’s clash with OpenAI.

Midler has joined the modern fight directly. In February 2024, she was among the roughly 300 artists — alongside Nicki Minaj, Chuck D, and Kevin Bacon — who signed the Human Artistry Campaign’s USA Today open letter backing the No AI FRAUD Act, the House bill to create a federal right against unauthorized AI replicas of voice and likeness. Legal commentators note the irony: the protections Congress is now trying to legislate are ones Midler carved out of common law in the analog era, one soundalike at a time.