> 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
Called it in the other thread and calling it in this one, there is no wrongdoing on OpenAI's side.
Looking/sounding like somebody else (even if its famous) is not prosecutable. Scarlet Johansson has nothing in this case, whether people like it or not. That's the reality.
Are you not aware of this?
Scarlet Johansson cannot prosecute anyone. She can sue them, in civil court, for civil damages. Prosecution is done in connection with crimes. Nobody is alleging any crimes here.
Source: Cambridge's dictionary (but any other would work as well)
Where did you get this? I'm seeing "to officially accuse someone of committing a crime" [1]. Criminality is esssential to the term. (EDIT: Found it. Cambridge Academic Content dictionary. It seems to be a simplified text [2]. I'm surprised they summarised the legal definition that way versus going for the colloquial one.)
You have to go back to the 18th century to find the term used to refer to initiating any legal action [3][4].
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/prosecut...
[2] https://www.cambridge.org/us/cambridgeenglish/catalog/dictio...
[3] https://verejnazaloba.cz/en/more-about-public-prosecution/hi...
Although I think what lawyers say these days is that it’s not colorable.
Sure, those are other definitions [1], e.g. to prosecute an argument. Within a legal context, however, it is black and white.
> in the UK where you can bring a literal private prosecution
For crimes. One wouldn't say one is prosecuting a defendant for e.g. libel. (Some states have private prosecution [2].)
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prosecute
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prosecution#United_Sta...
This is consistent with my understanding of the term as a native English speaker, having experienced the term "prosecute" being used in reference to both criminal and civil cases in all forms of discourse, verbal and written, formal and informal, for decades, and only first encountering the claim that it shouldn't be used for civil cases here in this thread, today.
Partly why I used that citation. It’s one of the few (adult) dictionaries that acknowledges as much.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Webster 3b usage is incorrect—it’s in some dictionaries and was historically unambiguously correct. But it’s non-standard to a high degree, to the extent that Black’s Law Dictionary only contains the criminal variant. (I’ll leave it open whether publicly referring to someone who has only been sued as someone who has been prosecuted, when intended as an attack, qualifies as defamation.)
More to the point of clear communication, I’d put it in a similar category as claiming one’s usage of terrific or silly was intended in its historic sense [1]. (Though I’ll admit my use of “nice” falls in that category.)
All that said, I’m very willing to entertain there being a dialect, probably in America, where the historic use is still common.
[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/84307/7-words-mean-oppos...