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
I thought it sounded like Jodie Foster.

>>andrew+Me
Scar Jo thought it sounded like herself, and so did people who knew her personally.

That is what matters. OWNERSHIP over her contributions to the world.

>>ncr100+th
I mostly agree with you, but I actually don't think it matters if it sounded exactly like her or not. The crime is in the training: did they use her voice or not?

If someone licenses an impersonator's voice and it gets very close to the real thing, that feels like an impossible situation for a court to settle and it should probably just be legal (if repugnant).

>>smt88+4q
If OpenAI commissioned a voice actor to lend their voice to the Sky model, and cast on the basis of trying to get someone who is similar sounding to the Scarlett Johannson, but then did not advertise or otherwise use the voice model created to claim it was Scarlett Johannson - then they're completely in the clear.

Because then the actual case would be fairly bizarre: an entirely separate person, selling the rights to their own likeness as they are entitled to do, is being prohibited from doing that by the courts because they sound too much like an already famous person.

EDIT: Also up front I'm not sure you can entirely discuss timelines for changing out technology here. We have voice cloning systems that can do it with as little as 15 seconds of audio. So having a demo reel of what they wanted to do that they could've used on a few days notice isn't unrealistic - and training a model and not using it or releasing it also isn't illegal.

>>XorNot+JH
That's confidently incorrect. Many others already posted that this has been settled case law for many years. I mean would you argue that if someone build a macbook lookalike, but not using the same components would be completely clear?

>>cycoma+UN
I ask you what do you call the Framework [1]? Or Dell's offerings?[2] Compared to the Macbook? [3]

Look kind of similar right? Lot of familiar styling queues? What would take it from "similar" to actual infringement? Well if you slapped an Apple Logo on there, that would do it. Did OpenAI make an actual claim? Did they actually use Scarlett Johannson's public image and voice as sampling for the system?

[1] https://images.prismic.io/frameworkmarketplace/25c9a15f-4374...

[2] https://i.dell.com/is/image/DellContent/content/dam/ss2/prod...

[3] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_1...

>>XorNot+AO
You're not arguing your way out of jurisprudence, especially when the subject is a human and not a device nor IP. They (OpenAI) fucked up.

>>mrbung+uT
There is not clear jurisprudence on this. They're only in trouble if they actually used ScarJo's voice samples to train the model, or if they intentionally tried to portray their imitation as her without her permission.

The biggest problem on that front (assuming the former is not true) is Altman's tweets, but court-wise that's defensible (though I retract what I had here previously - probably not easily) as a reference to the general concept of the movie.

Because otherwise the situation you have is OpenAI seeking a particular style, hiring someone who can provide it, not trying to pass it off as that person (give or take the Tweet's) and the intended result effectively being: "random voice actress, you sound too much like an already rich and famous person. Good luck having no more work in your profession" - which would be the actual outcome.

The question entirely hinges on, did they include any data at all which includes ScarJo's voice samples in the training. And also whether it actually does sound similar enough - Frito-Lay went down because of intent and similarity. There's the hilarious outcome here that the act of trying to contact ScarJo is the actual problem they had.

EDIT 2: Of note also - to have a case, they actually have to show reputational harm. Of course on that front, the entire problem might also be Altman. Continuing the trend I suppose of billionaires not shutting up on Twitter being the main source of their legal issues.

>>XorNot+lX
A bit late here, but... You are ignoring a lot of evidence. SJ stating they asked for permission twice. One of which was requested days before they released it. The Her tweet would seem to corroborate it's meant to sound like her. They then take it down (presumably since they aren't confident they'd win and don't want to be subjected to discovery.) Because of their tweet, even if the voice actors normal voice was identical to SJ, it's pretty clear they were trying to profit off her voice.

>>zdp7+YV5
I repeatedly referred to the fact that they tried to contact SJ, and Sam Altman's tweet, as being the biggest problems.