When the offer was declined by scarjo, they could still train on her works of art and just hire a soundalike to make recordings regardless of whether they used it during training.
Then, at release time - either they get the buzz of artist-licensed "Her" or they get the buzz /outrage/Streisand of unlicensed "Her". Even if they take it down, OpenAI benefits.
I feel like the folks who fear the tech are wrong. But when the supposed stewards do such a moustache-twirling announcement, it seems like maybe we do need some restraint.
If a trade group can't put some kind of goodwill measures in place, we will inevitably end up with ham fisted legislation.
For me to believe this was genius I'd have to see some actual response from Sam. From the outside-looking-in, it appears that he was caught with his pants down when Jonhansson said no and went ahead even though he was rejected a second time and obviously knew it was the wrong choice. There's no Streisand effect at play here, OpenAI already owned the news cycle with their 4o announcement and could have kept it quiet. But Sam just had to have his One More Thing, and now he's getting his just deserts.