zlacker

>>mjcl+(OP)
Well, that statement lays out a damning timeline:

- OpenAI approached Scarlett last fall, and she refused.

- Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted her agent and asked that she reconsider. (Two days! This means they already had everything they needed to ship the product with Scarlett’s cloned voice.)

- Not receiving a response, OpenAI demos the product anyway, with Sam tweeting “her” in reference to Scarlett’s film.

- When Scarlett’s counsel asked for an explanation of how the “Sky” voice was created, OpenAI yanked the voice from their product line.

Perhaps Sam’s next tweet should read “red-handed”.

>>anon37+t5
This statement from scarlet really changed my perspective. I use and loved the Sky voice and I did feel it sounded a little like her, but moreover it was the best of their voice offerings. I was mad when they removed it. But now I’m mad it was ever there to begin with. This timeline makes it clear that this wasn’t a coincidence and maybe not even a hiring of an impressionist (which is where things get a little more wishy washy for me).

>>nickth+R7
But it's clearly not her voice right? The version that's been on the app for a year just isn't. Like, it clearly intending to be slightly reminiscent of her, but it's also very clearly not. Are we seriously saying we can't make voices that are similar to celebrities, when not using their actual voice?

>>crimso+y9
> Are we seriously saying we can't make voices that are similar to celebrities, when not using their actual voice?

They clearly thought it was close enough that they asked for permission, twice. And got two no’s. Going forward with it at that point was super fucked up.

It’s very bad to not ask permission when you should. It’s far worse to ask for permission and then ignore the response.

Totally ethically bankrupt.

>>ncalla+jc
> They clearly thought it was close enough that they asked for permission, twice.

You seem to be misunderstanding the situation here. They wanted ScarJo to voice their voice assistant, and she refused twice. They also independently created a voice assistant which sounds very similar to her. That doesn't mean they thought they had to ask permission for the similar voice assistant.

>>avarun+9g
You seem to be misunderstanding the legalities at work here: reaching out to her multiple times beforehand, along with tweets intended to underline the similarity to her work on Her, demonstrates intention. If they didn’t think they needed permission, why ask for permission multiple times and then yank it when she noticed?

Answer: because they knew they needed permission, after working so hard to associate with Her, and they hoped that in traditional tech fashion that if they moved fast and broke things enough, everyone would have to reshape around OAs wants, rather than around the preexisting rights of the humans involved.

>>voltai+mk
You could also ask: If Scarlett has a legal case already, why does she want legislation passed?

>>KHRZ+cq
Because a legal case under the current justice system and legislative framework would probably take hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to bring a case that requires discovery and a trial to accomplish.

Maybe (maybe!) it’s worth it for someone like Johansson to take on the cost of that to vindicate her rights—but it’s certainly not the case for most people.

If your rights can only be defended from massive corporations by bringing lawsuits that cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, then only the wealthy will have those rights.

So maybe she wants new legislative frameworks around these kind of issues to allow people to realistically enforce these rights that nominally exist.

For an example of updating a legislative framework to allow more easily vindicating existing rights, look up “anti-SLAPP legislation”, which many states have passed to make it easier for a defendant of a meritless lawsuit seeking to chill speech to have the lawsuit dismissed. Anti-SLAPP legislation does almost nothing to change the actual rights that a defendant has to speak, but it makes it much more practical for a defendant to actually excercise those rights.

So, the assumption that a call for updated legislation implies that no legal protection currently exists is just a bad assumption that does not apply in this situation.