zlacker

>>richar+(OP)
Well, here are some things that aren't really being disputed:

* OpenAI wanted an AI voice that sounds like SJ

* SJ declined

* OpenAI got an AI voice that sounds like SJ anyway

I guess they want us to believe this happened without shenanigans, but it's bit hard to.

The headline of the article is a little funny, because records can't really show they weren't looking for an SJ sound-alike. They can just show that those records didn't mention it. The key decision-makers could simply have agreed to keep that fact close-to-the-vest -- they may have well understood that knocking off a high-profile actress was legally perilous.

Also, I think we can readily assume OpenAI understood that one of their potential voices sounded a lot like SJ. Since they were pursuing her they must have had a pretty good idea of what they were going after, especially considering the likely price tag. So even if an SJ voice wasn't the original goal, it clearly became an important goal to them. They surely listened to demos for many voice actors, auditioned a number of them, and may even have recorded many of them, but somehow they selected one for release who seemed to sound a lot like SJ.

>>jmull+P12
Clearly an SJ voice was the goal, given that Altman asked her to do it, asked her a second time just two days before the ChatGPT-4o release, and then tweeted "her" on the release day. The next day Karpathy, recently ex-OpenAI, then tweets "The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson".

Altman appears to be an habitual liar. Note his recent claim not to be aware of the non-disparagement and claw-back terms he had departing employees agree to. Are we supposed to believe that the company lawyer or head of HR did this without consulting (or more likely being instructed by) the co-founder and CEO?!

>>HarHar+r82
They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ. The reaction on this site to the news that this story was false is kind of mindbending.

>>tptace+B82
My guess: Sam wanted to imitate the voice from Her and became aware of Midler v. Ford cases so reached out to SJ. He probably didn't expect her decline. Anyway, this prior case tells that you cannot mimic other's voice without their permission and the overall timeline indicates OpenAI's "intention" of imitation. It does not matter if they used SJ's voice in the training set or not. Their intention matters.

>>summer+6m2
A random person's normal speaking voice is nobody's intellectual property. The burden would have been on SJ to prove that the voice actor they hired was "impersonating" SJ. She was not: the Washington Post got her to record a voice sample to illustrate that she wasn't doing an impersonation.

Unless & until some 3rd other shoe drops, what we know now strongly --- overwhelmingly, really --- suggests that there was simply no story here. But we are all biased towards there being an interesting story behind everything, especially when it ratifies our casting of good guys and bad guys.

>>tptace+kX2
You’re right that a random person’s voice is not IP, but SJ is not a random person. She’s much more like Mr. Waits or Ms. Milder than you or I.

I don’t believe the burden would be to prove that the voice actor was impersonating, but that she was misappropriating. Walking down the street sounding like Bette Midler isn’t a problem but covering her song with an approximation of her voice is.

You are dead right that the order of operations recently uncovered precludes misappropriation. But it’s an interesting situation otherwise, hypothetically, to wonder if using SJ’s voice to “cover” her performance as the AI in the movie would be misappropriation.

>>tangen+eh3
> You are dead right that the order of operations recently uncovered precludes misappropriation.

I don't think that follows. It's entirely possible that OpenAI wanted to get ScarJo, but believed that simply wasn't possible so went with a second choice. Later they decided they might as well try anyway.

This scenario does not seem implausible in the least.

Remember, Sam Altman has stated that "Her" is his favorite movie. It's inconceivable that he never considered marketing his very similar product using the film's IP.

>>qarl+Ez3
There are 4 other voices including male and androgynous ones. It wasn’t a second choice. Those voices have been available since 2023.

>>throwt+1P6
That's irrelevant. According to Midler v. Ford:

"We hold only that when a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated in order to sell a product, the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs and have committed a tort in California."

Ford having multiple ads would not have changed the determination.