zlacker

> They clearly thought it was close enough that they asked for permission, twice.

You seem to be misunderstanding the situation here. They wanted ScarJo to voice their voice assistant, and she refused twice. They also independently created a voice assistant which sounds very similar to her. That doesn't mean they thought they had to ask permission for the similar voice assistant.

>>avarun+(OP)
And... No. That is what OpenAI will assert, and good discovery by Scar Jo reps may prove or disprove.

>>avarun+(OP)
So, what would they have done if she accepted? Claimed that the existing training of the Sky voice was voiced by her?

>>avarun+(OP)
You seem to be misunderstanding the legalities at work here: reaching out to her multiple times beforehand, along with tweets intended to underline the similarity to her work on Her, demonstrates intention. If they didn’t think they needed permission, why ask for permission multiple times and then yank it when she noticed?

Answer: because they knew they needed permission, after working so hard to associate with Her, and they hoped that in traditional tech fashion that if they moved fast and broke things enough, everyone would have to reshape around OAs wants, rather than around the preexisting rights of the humans involved.

>>chroma+a4
Voice cloning could be as simple as a few seconds of audio in the context window since GPT-4o is a speech to speech transformer. They wouldn't need to claim anything, just switch samples. They haven't launched the new voice mode yet, just demos.

>>voltai+d4
You could also ask: If Scarlett has a legal case already, why does she want legislation passed?

>>KHRZ+3a
To prevent it from happening again, with more legal authority than a legal precedent.

>>chroma+a4
> Claimed that the existing training of the Sky voice was voiced by her?

That claim could very well be true. The letter requested information on how the voice was trained - OpenAI may not want that can of worms opened lest other celebrities start paying closer attention to the other voices.

>>avarun+(OP)
> You seem to be misunderstanding the situation here. They wanted ScarJo to voice their voice assistant, and she refused twice. They also independently created a voice assistant which sounds very similar to her.

And promoted it using a tweet naming the movie that Johansson performed in, for the role that prompted them to ask her in the first place.

You have to be almost deliberately naive to not see that the were attempting to use her vocal likeness in this situation. There’s a reason they immediately walked it back after the situation was revealed.

Neither a judge, nor a jury, would be so willingly naive.

>>KHRZ+3a
Because a legal case under the current justice system and legislative framework would probably take hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to bring a case that requires discovery and a trial to accomplish.

Maybe (maybe!) it’s worth it for someone like Johansson to take on the cost of that to vindicate her rights—but it’s certainly not the case for most people.

If your rights can only be defended from massive corporations by bringing lawsuits that cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, then only the wealthy will have those rights.

So maybe she wants new legislative frameworks around these kind of issues to allow people to realistically enforce these rights that nominally exist.

For an example of updating a legislative framework to allow more easily vindicating existing rights, look up “anti-SLAPP legislation”, which many states have passed to make it easier for a defendant of a meritless lawsuit seeking to chill speech to have the lawsuit dismissed. Anti-SLAPP legislation does almost nothing to change the actual rights that a defendant has to speak, but it makes it much more practical for a defendant to actually excercise those rights.

So, the assumption that a call for updated legislation implies that no legal protection currently exists is just a bad assumption that does not apply in this situation.

>>voltai+d4
> If they didn’t think they needed permission, why ask for permission multiple times and then yank it when she noticed?

Many things that are legal are of questionable ethics. Asking permission could easily just be an effort for them to get better samples of her voice. Pulling the voice after debuting it is 100% a PR response. If there's a law that was broken, pulling the voice doesn't unbreak it.

>>chroma+a4
Maybe they have second trained on her voice.

>>KHRZ+3a
She has a personal net worth of >$100m. She’s also married to a successful actor in his own right.

Her voice alone didn’t get her there — she did. That’s why celebrities are so protective about how their likeness is used: their personal brand is their asset.

There’s established legal precedent on exactly this—even in the case they didn’t train on her likeness, if it can reasonably be suspected by an unknowing observer that she personally has lent her voice to this, she has a strong case. Even OpenAI knew this, or they would not have asked in the first place.

>>voltai+d4
> If they didn’t think they needed permission, why ask for permission multiple times and then yank it when she noticed?

One very easy explanation is that they trained Sky using another voice (this is the claim and no reason to doubt it is true) wanting to replicate the stye of the voice in "Her", but would have preferred to use SJ's real voice for the PR impact that could have.

Yanking it could also easily be a pre-emptive response to avoid further PR drama.

You will obvious decide you don't believe those explanations, but to many of us they're quite plausible, in fact I'd even suggest likely.

(And none of this precludes Sam Altman and OpenAI being dodgy anyway)

>>ncalla+gj
This is a genuine question. If it turns out they trained Sky on someone else's voice to similarly replicate the style of the voice in "Her", would you be ok with that? If it was proven that the voice was just similar, to SJ's would that be ok?

My view is, of course it is ok. SJ doesn't own the right to a particular style of voice.

>>KHRZ+3a
Before Roe vs Wade was overturned you might have asked if abortion is legal why do abortion rights advocates want legislation passed?

The answer is without legislation you are far more subject to whether a judge feels like changing the law.

>>munksb+zR1
I actually believe that’s quite plausible. The trouble is, by requesting permission in the first place, they demonstrated intent, which is legally significant. I think a lot of your confusion is attempting to employ pure logic to a legal issue. They are not the same thing, and the latter relies heavily on existing precedent — of which you may, it seems, be unaware.

>>parine+Gl
They are trying to wriggle out of providing insight into how that voice was derived at all (like Google with the 100% of damages check). It would really suck for OpenAI if, for example, Altman had at some point emailed his team to ensure the soundalike was “as indistinguishable from Scarlet’s performance in HER as possible.“

Public figures own their likeness and control its use. Not to mention that in this case OA is playing chicken with studios as well. Not a great time to do so, given their stated hopes of supplanting 99% of existing Hollywood creatives.

>>chroma+a4
They would create a voice in partnership with her? Not sure why you’re assuming it’s some insanely laborious process. It would obviously have been incredible marketing for them to actually get her on board.