> Mitch Glazier, the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, said that Johansson may have a strong case against OpenAI if she brings forth a lawsuit.
> He compared Johansson’s case to one brought by the singer Bette Midler against the Ford Motor Co. in the 1980s. Ford asked Midler to use her voice in ads. After she declined, Ford hired an impersonator. A U.S. appellate court ruled in Midler’s favor, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized use.
> But Mark Humphrey, a partner and intellectual property lawyer at Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, said any potential jury probably would have to assess whether Sky’s voice is identifiable as Johansson.
> Several factors go against OpenAI, he said, namely Altman’s tweet and his outreach to Johansson in September and May. “It just begs the question: It’s like, if you use a different person, there was no intent for it to sound like Scarlett Johansson. Why are you reaching out to her two days before?” he said. “That would have to be explained.”
* A.K.A. "Personality rights": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
> Ford Motor created an ad campaign for the Mercury Sable that specifically was meant to inspire nostalgic sentiments through the use of famous songs from the 1970s sung by their original artists. When the original artists refused to accept, impersonators were used to sing the original songs for the commercials. Midler was asked to sing a famous song of hers for the commercial and refused. Subsequently, the company hired a voice-impersonator of Midler and carried on with using the song for the commercial, since it had been approved by the copyright-holder. [1]
If you ask an artist to sing a famous song of hers, she says no, and you get someone else to impersonate her, that gets you in hot water.
If you (perhaps because you are savvy) go to some unknown voice actress, have her record a voice for your chatbot, later go to a famous actress known for one time playing a chatbot in a movie, and are declined, you are in a much better position. The tweet is still a thorn in OA's side, of course, but that's not likely to be determinative IMO (IAAL).
It's not just a random "voice for your chatbot", it's that particularly breathy, chatty, voice that she performed for the movie.
I would agree with you completely if they'd created a completely different voice. Even if they'd impersonated a different famous actress. But it's the fact that Her was about an AI, and this is an AI, and the voices are identical. It's clearly an impersonation of her work.
Did she? The article claims that:
1. Multiple people agree that the casting call mentioned nothing about SJ/her
2. The voice actress claims she was not given instructions to imitate SJ/her
3. The actress's natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice
I don't personally think it's anywhere near "identical" to SJ's voice. It seems most likely to me that they noticed the similarity in concept afterwards and wanted to try to capitalize on it (hence later contacting SJ), opposed to the other way around.
That's a very broad definition of impersonation, one that does not match the legal definition, and one that would would be incredibly worrying for voice actors whose natural voice happens to fall within a radius of a celebrity's natural voice ("their choice to cast you was unconsciously affected by similarity to a celebrity, therefore [...]")
Otherwise your argument lets off not just this scandal but an entire conceptual category of clever sleazy moves that are done "after the fact". It's not the the Kafka trap you're making it out to be.
At most the obviousness should the burden of discovery on them, and if they have no records or witnesses that would demonstrate the intent, then they should be in the clear.
> I would start to collect a LOT of paperwork documenting that the casting selection was done without a hint of bias towards a celebrity's impression.
IMO having records that explicitly mention SJ or Her in any way would be suspicious.
IANAL