SJ is not the “AI” portrayed in the movie her. And AFAIK she does not in fact have all the same idiosyncrasies and tones in real life as the voice does in the movie because she was in fact directed to act like that.
Not only that but the voices are not the same because there was another actress for sky as we have seen.
To me It seems as if the case for SJ is DOA unless it comes out somehow that they in fact trained on her voice specifically. But since that doesn’t seem like the case I have no idea how SJ can legally own all voices that sound like hers.
It would obviously be a different story if OpenAI were saying that sky was SJ but that’s not the case. To me the question should be is “can the studio own the character in her that openAI was copying and any similar things”. Which given that systems like SIRI were already out there in the world when the movie came out and we knew this tech was on the way. The answer should be no but IANAL.
I’m not a huge fan of OpenAI anymore and I think they deserve criticism for many things. But this situation isn’t one of them.
Clarification: Of course if it turns out that they in fact trained on SJ or altered the voice to be more like hers then I’d think differently. I still think the studio has more of a claim though look from the outside and not being a lawyer.
Edit: clarification
Tom Waits is a singer known for his raspy singing voice. Back in the late 1980s, Frito-Lay, Inc., the makes of Doritos, thought it was a great idea to run an ad in which the music had the atmosphere and feel of a Tom Waits song. Except the professional singer they hired for that got the job done a bit too well: the sounds of his voice in the commercial was so close to Tom Waits' work (he had for ten years sang in a band covering Tom Waits songs) that in November 1988, Waits successfully sued Frito-Lay and the advertising company Tracy-Locke Inc., for voice misappropriation under California law and false endorsement under the Lanham Act [1].
Now, when you hear Tom Waits speak in interviews, I find that his voice does not sound nearly as raspy as in his performances. But the point is that it does not matter so much whether OpenAI used the actual voice of Johansson or hired someone to imitate her performance.
Given the fact that Johansson was initially contacted by OpenAI to provide her voice and declined, we can surely assume that the selection of the particular voice actress they ended up using was no coincidence.
[1] http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications...