> 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
These startups break laws, pay the fines and end up just fine.
Remember that it was Sam Altman who proposed to change the YC questionnaire to screen applicants by incidents where they have successfully broken rules. YC even boasts about that.
That thought process puts them in the same boat as: Theranos, FTX, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Countrywide Financial, Enron, Washington Mutual, Kidder Peabody, and many other companies which no longer exist.
So if (since?) they lack the ethical compass to not break the rules, perhaps a simple history of what happens to companies that do break the rules might be useful guidance...