zlacker

>>richar+(OP)
The thing that worried me initially was that:

- the original report by Scarlett said she was approached months ago, and then two days prior to launch of GPT-4o she was approached again

Because of the above, my immediate assumption was that OpenAI definitely did her dirty. But this report from WaPo debunks at least some of it, because the records they have seen show that the voice actor was contacted months in advance prior to OpenAI contacting Scarlett for the first time. (also goes to show just how many months in advance OpenAI is working on projects)

However, this does not dispel the fact that OpenAI did contact Scarlett, and Sam Altman did post the tweet saying "her", and the voice has at least "some" resemblance of Scarlett's voice, at least enough to have two different groups saying that it does, and the other saying that it does not.

>>skille+CM
Yes, but it changes the narrative from “they couldn’t get Scarlett to record the voice, so they copied her voice” to something much less malicious. Contacting Scarlett, when you already have voice recordings ready but would prefer someone famous, isn’t that bad of a thing imho.

>>stingr+HN
> Yes, but it changes the narrative from “they couldn’t get Scarlett to record the voice, so they copied her voice” to something much less malicious.

I don't think it's less malicious if they decided to copy her voice without her consent, but just didn't tell her until the project was underway, then continued even after she said no.

There's legal precedent that hiring a copycat is not OK, so it's not like proving it was a copycat salvages their situation.

I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason they hired a copycat early is because they realized they'd need far more of Johansson's time than she'd be willing to provide, and the plan was typical SV "ask forgiveness not permission, but do it anyway regardless."

>>tivert+iO
They used a different person, so it is not her voice.

>>MattGa+ZO
> They used a different person, so it is not her voice.

That doesn't matter because it's an impersonation. Ford lost, even though they didn't use Bette Midler's voice either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

>>tivert+jP
Ford commissioned a cover of a 1958 song[1] using a singer that would clearly be mistaken for Bette Midler's existing cover of that song, as part of an advertisement campaign where they first tried to get the rights to the original songs.

If you listen to the imitation version linked from that Wikipedia article and the original 1958 you'll hear that they didn't only find a singer that sounded like her, but copied the music and cadence from Bette's version.

I think that's way past what whatever OpenAI did in this case. It would be analogous if they were publishing something that only regurgitated lines Scarlett Johansson is famous for having said in her movies.

But they're not doing that, they just found a person who sounds like Scarlett Johansson.

This would only be analogous to the Ford case if the cover artist in that case was forbidden from releasing any music, including original works, because her singing voice could be confused with Bette Midler's.

Now, would they have done this if Scarlett Johansson wasn't famous? No, but we also wouldn't have had a hundred grunge bands with singers playing up their resemblance to Kurt Cobain if Nirvana had never existed.

So wherever this case lands (likely in a boring private settlement) it's clearly in more of a gray area than the Ford case.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_You_Want_to_Dance