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
SJ doesn’t get to own the voice rights to everyone that sounds at all like her just because she is famous.
There's 1 billion English speakers, there are going to be voice overlaps.
That the voice is called Sky is actually part of what's suspicious about this to me. They had all the world of female names to choose from for the voice that would recreate "Her" (and there's plenty of evidence that suggests that the movie was used as inspiration), and they chose one that started with the same rare consonant cluster as this actress. The only other names that Wikipedia lists with that consonant cluster are Skyler and Scarlett [0]. If they truly were trying to separate themselves from her rather than subtly cue the likeness, why Sky?
> She isn't that well known, I didn't even know she was in Her.
She's the second-highest-grossing actor (and the highest-grossing actress) of all time [1]. You might not know her (and neither do I), but that says more about you and me than it does about her.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Englis...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_act...
Okay so we can't use voices that are similar to actress voices, and we can't use names that starts with the same "rare consonant cluster" as actress names.
This is getting ridiculous