- 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.
When discovery happens and there’s a trail of messages suggesting either getting ScarJo or finding someone that sounds enough like her this isn’t going to look good with all the other events in timeline.
If it goes to court, they’ll settle.
I'm not a lawyer, but this seems unfair to the voice actor they did use, and paid, who happens to sound like ScarJo (or vice versa!)
So if I sound like a famous person, then I cant monetize my own voice? Who's to say it isnt the other way around, perhaps it is ScarJo that sounds like me and i'm owed money?
The problem here is that someone inside of OpenAI wanted to create a marketing buzz around a new product launch and capitalize on a movie. In order to do that they wanted a voice that sounded like that movie. They hired a voice actor that sounded enough like ScarJo to hedge against actually getting the actor to do it. When she declined they decided to implement their contingency plan.
If they're liable is for a jury to decide, but the case precedent that I've seen, along with the intent, wouldn't look good if I were on that jury.
If her customers can get sued for using her voice, then this voice actor can never get another job and can never get paid again -- all because she happens to sound like ScarJo. That seems unfair to the voice actor.
If you had a voice like Scarlett, and you were hired to create the voice of an AI assistant, there's no legal problem - as long as the voice isn't marketed using references to Scarlett.
However, in this case, the voice is similar to Scarlett's, AND they referenced a popular movie where Scarlett voiced an AI assistant, and named the assistant in a way that is evocative of Scarlett's name, and reached out to Scarlett wanting to use her voice. It is those factors that make it legally questionable, as it appears that they knowingly capitalized on the voice's similarity to Scarlett's without her permission.
It is about intent, and how the voice is marketed. Voice sounds like a famous person = fine, voice sounds like a famous person and the voice is marketed as being similar to the famous person's = not fine.
It is not a clear-cut 'this is definitely illegal' in this case, it is a grey area that a court would have to decide on.