Carl Sagan’s widow sues AI company over alleged use of husband’s voice in ads

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Druyan-Sagan Associates, the company which owns the intellectual property rights of Carl Sagan, the famed US astronomer and science educator, is suing AI startup Luma AI in a California federal court, alleging that it used an eight second audio clip of Sagan’s commentary from a seminal 1980 documentary, "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage without permission"

The recording at issue features Sagan saying: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first ⁠invent the universe."  

The law suit filing can be found here (paywall).

Ironically, Luma’s ad promotes its AI video-generation platform Ray 3.14., which the start-up is aggressively targeting at advertising and marketing creatives. 

Druyan-Sagan Associates, owned by Sagan's widow Ann Druyan, represents Sagan’s estate. It claims in its filing that Luma's use of the clip infringes its copyright, falsely implying that the estate has endorsed the company. 

According to a news story in Forbes magazine: 

“Druyan-Sagan Associates said it notified Luma of the alleged infringement in early February, but the firm denied the claims and the advertisement remained on Facebook, drawing more than 2.7 million views as of the court filing date, according to the complaint.” 

Forbes adds: 

“Druyan-Sagan, formerly Carl Sagan Productions, has licensed Sagan's voice and likeness for decades, including in 2017 for an iPhone campaign by Apple, Fiat Chrysler in 2019 and Netflix in 2025. The estate is now managed by Ann Druyan, Sagan's widow, and claims Luma's advertisement eroded the exclusivity associated with Sagan's branding.” 

“Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” was co-created by Sagan, Ann Druyan, and astrophysicist Steven Soter in 1980, the same year that Sagan and Druyan married. Carl Sagan died in 1996. 

The current lawsuit highlights concerns over the ease with which AI can find and copy material online, and the rise of ‘deepfakes,’ AI generated audio and video which imitates people (usually in the public eye, such as actors, musicians, personalities, and politicians) either to make it appear they endorse a product or opinion, of for criminal purposes, such as fraud. 

Two years ago, actress Scarlett Johansson complained that OpenAi’s new chatbot Sky, on its ChatGPT AI model, was a deliberate imitation of her voice (as this BBC story reports). She further claimed that OpenAI had approached her months before to provide a voice for its planned new AI assistant, but she had refused. Johansson had earlier voiced an AI in the Spike Jonze film, Her, released in 2013.  

When OpenAI launched Sky, as Johannson said in a statement, the company’s founder, Sam Altman "even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word 'her' - a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human." 

ChatGPT removed the Sky voice, but claimed it had not deliberately copied her voice. As a story in Variety reported:  

Asked for comment, OpenAI sent this statement from Altman: “The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”