That is what matters. OWNERSHIP over her contributions to the world.
If someone licenses an impersonator's voice and it gets very close to the real thing, that feels like an impossible situation for a court to settle and it should probably just be legal (if repugnant).
This is a civil issue, and actors get broad rights to their likeliness. Kim Kardashian sued Old Navy for using a look-alike actress in an ad; old Navy chose to settle, which makes it appear like "the real actress wasn't involved in any way" may not be a perfect defense. The timeline makes it clear they wanted it to sound like Scarlett's voice, the actual mechanics on how they got the AI to sound like that is only part of the story.
Does that mean if cosplayers dress up like some other character, they can use that version of the character in their games/media? I think it should be equally simple to settle. It's different if it's their natural voice. Even then, it brings into question whether they can use "doppelgangers" legally.
If the voice was only trained on the voice of the character she played in Her, would she have any standing in claiming some kind of infringement?
It's a "I know it when I see it" situation so it's not clear cut.
Because then the actual case would be fairly bizarre: an entirely separate person, selling the rights to their own likeness as they are entitled to do, is being prohibited from doing that by the courts because they sound too much like an already famous person.
EDIT: Also up front I'm not sure you can entirely discuss timelines for changing out technology here. We have voice cloning systems that can do it with as little as 15 seconds of audio. So having a demo reel of what they wanted to do that they could've used on a few days notice isn't unrealistic - and training a model and not using it or releasing it also isn't illegal.
They literally hired an impersonator, and it cost them 2.5 million (~6 million today).
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-st...
Look kind of similar right? Lot of familiar styling queues? What would take it from "similar" to actual infringement? Well if you slapped an Apple Logo on there, that would do it. Did OpenAI make an actual claim? Did they actually use Scarlett Johannson's public image and voice as sampling for the system?
[1] https://images.prismic.io/frameworkmarketplace/25c9a15f-4374...
[2] https://i.dell.com/is/image/DellContent/content/dam/ss2/prod...
[3] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/IMG_1...
Please point to a case where someone was successfully sued for sounding too much like a celebrity (while not using the celebrity's name or claiming to be them).
The biggest problem on that front (assuming the former is not true) is Altman's tweets, but court-wise that's defensible (though I retract what I had here previously - probably not easily) as a reference to the general concept of the movie.
Because otherwise the situation you have is OpenAI seeking a particular style, hiring someone who can provide it, not trying to pass it off as that person (give or take the Tweet's) and the intended result effectively being: "random voice actress, you sound too much like an already rich and famous person. Good luck having no more work in your profession" - which would be the actual outcome.
The question entirely hinges on, did they include any data at all which includes ScarJo's voice samples in the training. And also whether it actually does sound similar enough - Frito-Lay went down because of intent and similarity. There's the hilarious outcome here that the act of trying to contact ScarJo is the actual problem they had.
EDIT 2: Of note also - to have a case, they actually have to show reputational harm. Of course on that front, the entire problem might also be Altman. Continuing the trend I suppose of billionaires not shutting up on Twitter being the main source of their legal issues.
Frito-Lay copied a song by Waits (with different lyrics) and had an impersonator sing it. Witnesses testified they thought Waits had sung the song.
If OpenAI were to anonymously copy someone's voice by training AI on an imitation, you wouldn't have:
- a recognizable singing voice
- music identified with a singer
- market confusion about whose voice it is (since it's novel audio coming from a machine)
I don't think any of this is ethical and think voice-cloning should be entirely illegal, but I also don't think we have good precedents for most AI issues.
Company identifies celebrity voice they want. (Frito=Waits, OpenAi=ScarJo)
Company comes up with novel thing for the the voice to say. (Frito=Song, OpenAI=ChatGpt)
Company decides they don’t need the celebrity they want (Frito=Waits, OpenAI=ScarJo) and instead hire an impersonator (Frito=singer, {OpenAI=impersonator or OpenAI=ScarJo-public-recordings}) to get what they want (Frito=a-facsimile-of-Tom-Waitte’s-voice-in-a-commercial, OpenAi=a-fascimilie-of-ScarJo’s-voice-in-their-chatbot)
When made public, people confuse the fascimilie as the real thing.
I don’t see how you don’t see a parallel. It’s literally best for beat the same, particularly around the part about using an impersonator as an excuse.
She doesn't have to own anything to claim this right, if the value of her voice is recognizable.
