zlacker

>>panark+(OP)
Altman would have us believe it's all just an innocent misunderstanding but without actually saying so:

"We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson."

Is he trying to suggest the company did not try to make the voice sound like her without her permission?

The statement sounds like it's written by a lawyer to be technically true while implying something that is actually false.

These are weasel words.

He sounds sneaky, evasive and intentionally deceptive.

We should not give a sneaky, deceptive and manipulative person this much power over our future.

>>panark+m1
There are hundreds of people with similar voices. If any voice actor can pull the same accent than Ms. Johansson, it should be fair game, as long it was the original training material? Voices cannot be copyrighted or be exclusive, although I am sure Hollywood will try to copyright them in some point.

>>miohta+Y1
He kind of ruined that argument when he tweeted “Her” alongside the video. Pretty clearly drawing a line between the voice and Johansson’s portrayal in the movie.

Incredible, really. It would have been so easy to just… not do that.

>>afavou+z3
Let's take a parallel situation from around 20 years ago, and see how you feel about it. I'm going back that far as a reminder of what was long considered OK, before AI.

In the movie The Seed of Chucky, Britney Spears gets killed. You can watch the clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3kCg5o0cHA. It is very clearly Britney Spears.

Except Britney Spears was not hired for the role. They hired a Britney Spears impersonator for the scene. They did everything that they could to make it look like Britney, and think it was Britney. But it really wasn't.

Do you think that Britney should have sued the Chucky franchise for that? If so, should Elvis Presly's estate also sue all of the Elvis Presly impersonators out there? Where do you draw the line? And if not, where do you draw the line between what happened in Chucky, and what happened here?

I really don't see a line between now having someone who sounded like the actress, and then tweeting the name of one of her movies, and what happened 20 years ago with Chucky killing someone who looked like Britney, then showing a license plate saying "BRITNEY1", and THEN saying, "Whoops I did it again." (The title of her most famous song at the time.) If anything, the movie was more egregious.

>>btilly+I9
There is a distinction between the image of a celebrity and their voice. The image of a celebrity is usually pretty cut and dried, it’s them, or obviously intended to be them. If the use of their image isn’t meant to be satirical, it’s problematic. The Crispin Glover/Back to the Future 2 case is a good example of non-satirical use that was problematic. Zemeckis used previous footage of Glover, plus used facial molds of Glover to craft prosthetics for another actor.

Voices…are usually not so distinctive. However, certain voices are very distinct—Tom Waits, Miley Cyrus, James Earl Jones, Matt Berry. Those voices are pretty distinctively those people and simulating their voices it would be obvious who you are simulating. Other celebrity voices are much more generic. Scarlett fits into this with a pretty generic female voice with a faint NY/NJ accent.

Open AI screwed up by taking a generic voice and making it specific to the celebrity by reference and by actually pursuing the actor for the use of their voice.