zlacker

AFAIK they yanked it pretty quickly and the subsequent scandal has widely informed people that it was not authorized by Scarlett Johansson. So while it was clearly a violation resulting from a sequence of very stupid decisions by OpenAI, I am not sure if there would be much in the way of damages.

>>cjbgka+(OP)
In cases like this, don't damages essentially equate to the profit a company makes from the false association with the celebrity?

Otherwise, it'd be impossible to show damages if you weren't personally being denied business because of the association.

>>cjbgka+(OP)
Johansson is rich. The real value she could get from this would be as an advocate for the rights of creatives, performers and rights holders in the face of AI. If this goes to discovery OpenAI is done.

How much do you think Disney or Universal Music or Google or NYT would give to peek inside OpenAI's training mixture to identify all the infringing content?

>>ml-ano+7R
Not a lawyer, but as far as I understand; Certainly, the lack of significant damages would usually prevent a lawsuit because there wouldn't be any money in it, but since the amount of damages are figured out during the trial and the lawsuit alone would be damaging to OpenAI the threat of a lawsuit could be enough for OpenAI to try and settle quickly out of court. Though OpenAI would have to weigh that with against encouraging other similar lawsuits - they might think that dragging out the lawsuit might be better for them as they can continue establishing a foothold in AI in the interim even if they know they will lose and know that discovery would be damaging.

As you state, Mrs. Johansson would benefit reputationally form the lawsuit and could act as a front for other powerful institutions who would greatly benefit from the lawsuit.

>>BeefWe+Wt
That is one way to measure damages but it's difficult. It would be easier to measure what she would have been paid if she had agreed to do it, Mrs. Johansson is in the business of selling rights to use her likeness for large amounts of money - it would be easy to demonstrate that she would have been paid at least as much as the use of her voice in the movie Her. Since she did decline the offer it would be easy to suggest that the amount she would have agreed to would have been much more than the movie Her.

The other aspect is that OpenAIs infringement is open ended, in that it is not equivalent to the single use within a single movie, it is substantially more. People who want Mrs. Johansson to voice their projects could now instead use OpenAI to obtain the same likeness - so the damages are for the deprivation all the future earnings Mrs. Johansson could have made.

Then there is reputational damage, if someone using OpenAI generated and disseminated a voice message before committing a heinous crime then the public would associate the voice with the crime and Mrs. Johansson would be intrinsically linked to the same crime. People hearing her voice would be reminded of the crime. This would again prevent Mrs. Johansson from making money from her likeness but would also negatively impact all aspects of her life and all future earnings, business dealings, and personal life.

Unusually the initial remedy is an injunction to prevent further infringement but OpenAI yanked it immediately so no injunction was needed. One way to repair reputational damage is to pay for news media to widely and publicly correct the reputationally damaging falsehood. As this has been a substantial scandal that media coverage has been already given for free and it is unlikely that there is anyone left who still believes that OpenAI is using Mrs. Johansson's likeness with either tacit or explicit permission.

As stated by your peer comment there are still reasons for Mrs. Johansson to bring a lawsuit for damages even where there are no significant damages - the lawsuit itself would be damaging to OpenAI so it would be in OpenAIs interest to pay to avoid it. At the same time it would be in other large companies interests for it to continue, so there may be a bidding war on whether or not Mrs. Johansson continues with the lawsuit. In addition it would benefit Mrs. Johansson personally and professionally to be seen as a champion of the rights of artists - especially at a time when AI companies like OpenAI are trampling all over those rights.