- 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”.
Someone from OpenAi hired the agency who hired the voice talent (or talents) for the voice data. They sent them a brief explaining what they are looking for, followed by a metric ton of correspondence over samples and contracts and such.
If anywhere during those written communications anyone wrote “we are looking for a ScarlettJ imitator”, or words to that effect, that is not good for OpenAI. Similarly if they were selecting between options and someone wrote that one sample is more Johansson than an other. Or if anyone at any point asked if they should clear the rights to the voice with Johansson.
Those are the discovery findings which can sink such a defense.
It will come down to what makes the complaining celebrity's voice iconic, which for Scarjo is the 'gravelly' bit. Which smooth Sky had none of.
[1] actress reading poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWEEAjRFJKc