Incredible, really. It would have been so easy to just… not do that.
He sued Universal, and reportedly settled for $760,000.
Example article on the topic - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bac...
the same with white noise videos, they strike copyright infringement easy or at least they were. Did not check but I assume so it still is the case.
Why? The grandparent is not saying it's coincidence. Why is it not okay to hire someone who has a voice similar to celebrity X who you intentionally want to immitate? I mean if you don't actually mislead people to believe that your immitation is actually X - which would be obviously problematic?
It’s really a shame.
Setting a precedent that if your natural voice sounds similar to a more famous actor precludes you from work would be a terrible precedent to set.
Eg, James Earl Jones performing Darth Vader vs Mufasa vs Terence Mann are three different things.
See also Midler v. Ford Motor Co. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
I don't believe Sam Altman, but I am interested in the general “is it legal/ethical to immitate something uncopyrightable” argument.
If it was just an actor, it might be a case of inspiration gone awry. But this particular actor sued Disney in 2021 after making a lot of movies and a lot of money making movies for them.
Deliberately poking a fight with a litigation happy actor is weird. Most weird is really benign. But this is the kind of weird that forces out of court settlements. It’s reckless.
Edit - mistyped the date as 2001. Changed to 2021.
Voice *actors* act. It is in the name. The voice they perform in is not their usual voice. A good voice actor can do dozens of different characters. If you hire a voice actor to impersonate someone else's voice, that is infringement. Bette Midler vs Ford, Tom Waits vs Frito Lay are the two big examples of court cases where a company hired voice actors to impersonate a celebrity for an ad, and lost big in court.
When they did all that and still promoted the launch by directly referring to a Scarlett Johansson role, it got even more questionable.
I’m not pulling out my pitchforks but this is reckless.
How do you know?
In the movie The Seed of Chucky, Britney Spears gets killed. You can watch the clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3kCg5o0cHA. It is very clearly Britney Spears.
Except Britney Spears was not hired for the role. They hired a Britney Spears impersonator for the scene. They did everything that they could to make it look like Britney, and think it was Britney. But it really wasn't.
Do you think that Britney should have sued the Chucky franchise for that? If so, should Elvis Presly's estate also sue all of the Elvis Presly impersonators out there? Where do you draw the line? And if not, where do you draw the line between what happened in Chucky, and what happened here?
I really don't see a line between now having someone who sounded like the actress, and then tweeting the name of one of her movies, and what happened 20 years ago with Chucky killing someone who looked like Britney, then showing a license plate saying "BRITNEY1", and THEN saying, "Whoops I did it again." (The title of her most famous song at the time.) If anything, the movie was more egregious.
The new voice2voice from OpenAI allows for a conversational dialect, most prominently demonstrated in pop culture by the movie Her. Sam's tweet makes perfect sense in that context.
Sky's voice has been the default voice in voice2voice for almost a year now, and no one has made a connection to the Her voice until it started acting more conversational. It seems pretty obvious that OpenAI was looking for a more conversational assistant, likely inspired by the movie Her, and it would have been cool if the actress had helped make that happen, but she didn't, and here we are.
Also Juniper has always been the superior voice model. I just now realized that one of my custom GPTs kept having this annoying bug where the voice kept switching from Juniper to Sky, and that seems to be resolved now that Sky got removed.
The movie producers didn't produce a simulation of Britney's voice and attempt to sell access to it.
However you feel about an probably-unapproved celebrity cameo in a movie, it's not the same thing as selling the ability to impersonate that celebrity's voice to anyone willing to pay, in perpetuity.
1. The plot of "Her" (guy falls in love with synthesized voice, played by Johansson)
2. Altman's affinity for the film (the article says he's called it his "favorite movie")
Reaching out to Johansson about cloning her voice, then doing so without permission feels like Altman is creeping on her.
The sooner this bubble pops, the better.
This isn't some college kid with an idea and too much passion.
The biggest difference that I see is that technology has made the simulation cheaper and easier.
Yes, but literally no one anywhere is suggesting that the voice actress used would be banned from work because of any similarity between her voice and Johansson's; that’s an irrelevant strawman.
Some people are arguing that there is considerable reason to believe that the totality of the circumstances of OpenAI’s particular use of her voice would make OpenAI liable under existing right of personality precedent, which, again, does not create liability for mere similarity of voice.
Oops, that sounds like a match with Rashida Jones. Here’s one one of Scarlett J.:
https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_...
I have a suspicion that most people with strong opinions on this haven’t actually compared Sky and Scarlett Johansson directly.
Could they be trying to avert possible negative public perception even if they believe all they did was 100% legal? If you have ample funds and are willing to pay someone to make X easier for you does your offer to pay them imply that X is against the law? If your voice sounds like someone famous now you are prevented from getting any voice acting work? Because that famous person owns the rights to your voice? Tell me which law says this?
No.[1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_r...
If anything OpenAI tried to mimic the AI from the film Her and owners of that film may try to seek compensation. I hope that fails but they can try.
> This scene was included in promotional spots for the film, most specifically Seed of Chucky's trailer, but the distributing company associated with the film, Focus Features, made the decision to significantly cut the scene down and add a disclaimer. The disclaimer that ran with the promotional spot, which was altered to only show a brief glimpse of Ariqat as Spears, stated: "Britney Spears does not appear in this film."
https://screenrant.com/seed-of-chucky-movie-promos-britney-s...
The biggest difference here is obviously one of scale. I don't think ScarJo would be threatening to sue you, the individual, if you did a voice impression of her for a talent show or a friends wedding.
It's not. The original comment in this chain was drawing parallel to a lawsuit in which someone intentionally took steps to impersonate an actor.
This situation is a voice actor using their "natural voice" as a source of work.
If a lawsuit barring OpenAI from using this voice actor is successful, due to similarities to a more famous actor, that puts this voice actor's future potential at risk for companies actively wanting to avoid potential for litigation.
Suggesting a calming female persona as a real time always present life assistant draws parallel to a movie about a calming female persona that is a real time always present life assistant is not a smoking gun of impropriety.
Pursuing a more famous name to attach to marketing is certainly worth paying a premium over a lesser known voice actor and again is not a smoking gun.
Sky voice has been around for a very long time in the OpenAI app dating back to early 2023. No one was drawing similarities or crying foul and decrying how it "sounds just like Scarlett" ..
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/20/1252495087/openai-pulls-ai-vo...
Generally the "Right to Publicity" laws are clear about expiring at death. It's not like copyright.
Believe it or not, these issues have been around for decades, and have been well settled for nearly as long.
> Sky voice has been around for a very long time in the OpenAI app dating back to early 2023. No one was drawing similarities or crying foul and decrying how it "sounds just like Scarlett" ..
No.[1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_r...
OpenAI has been plastered across the news cycles for the last year, most of that time with Sky as the default voice. There was no discernable upheaval or ire in the public space suggesting the similarities of the voice in any meaningful public manner until this complaint was made.
Or Altman could reveal the identity of the voice actress OpenAI did use. I'm sure that will happen, and remove all doubt...
Instead, I’ll repeat my earlier claim - this was reckless. If they were trying to avoid a strong negative perception, they failed. And they failed with an actor who sued Disney shortly after they paid her $20 million to make a movie.
This could be kinda like the dot com bubble -- the Internet went on to become BIG, but the companies just went bust... (and the ones that strive are probably not well known)
Most people don't use ChatGPT. Many people who use ChatGPT don't use voice generation. OpenAI's September update didn't have a demo watched by millions unless I missed something. Altman hyped the May update with references to Her. Some people thought the recent voice generation changes made the Sky voice sound more like Johansson. Some people gave OpenAI the benefit of the doubt before Johansson revealed they asked her twice. And what do you believe it would prove otherwise?
You mean this?
"Each of the personas has a different tone and accent. “Sky” sounds somewhat similar to Scarlett Johansson, the actor who voiced the AI that Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with in the movie “Her.” Deng, the OpenAI executive, said the voice personas were not meant to sound like any specific person."
As I stated prior, and thank you for making my point, despite being publicly available for near a year, there was minor mention of similarities with no general public sentiment.
>Altman hyped the May update with references to Her
If by "hype" you mean throwaway comments on social media that general population was unaware.
Drawing a parallel to a calming persona of an always on life assistant from pop culture in a few throwaway social media posts from personal accounts such as "Hope Everyone's Ready" isn't hyping it as Her any more than Anthropic is selling their offerings as a Star Trek communicator despite a few comments they've made on social media.
Ambiguous "some people" overstates any perceived concern and "most people don't use ChatGPT" understates how present they've been on the news.
Mobile app, which heavily emphasized voice and has "Sky" as it's default voice The ChatGPT mobile application had over 110+ million downloads across iOS and Android platforms before the May announcement.
In regards to the November announcement, yes, voice was very prominent in it with Sky as the default language. (https://youtu.be/pq34V_V5j18?si=66lEWxgteBbtKifl)
I went to ask the Internet "best AI tools", and there's no clear consensus:
Various Redditors go on to suggest "here's 100 you might like to try".
So there's clearly a bubble, thousands of startups all trying for similar things.
I am personally looking forward to try Wolfram GPT:
Actually, you probably can.[0]
[0] https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc
Edit: Added the context for the reply
Frito Lay wanted to use a Tom Waits song for an ad.
Since Waits is violently opposed to the use of his music in ads he declined.
So they hired an impersinator for the soundtrack.
Waits sued Frito Lay for voice misappropriation and false endorsement and they had to cough up to the tune of 2.6 million for violating his rights.
This was upheld on appeal[0].
So, you absolutely have precedent and in my opinion it's galling that the tech bro'ship just doesn't give a shit about the rights of others.
[0]
Rashida Jones is indeed a closer match, and might well be the person they went to once Scarlett declined and showed no interest.
Voices…are usually not so distinctive. However, certain voices are very distinct—Tom Waits, Miley Cyrus, James Earl Jones, Matt Berry. Those voices are pretty distinctively those people and simulating their voices it would be obvious who you are simulating. Other celebrity voices are much more generic. Scarlett fits into this with a pretty generic female voice with a faint NY/NJ accent.
Open AI screwed up by taking a generic voice and making it specific to the celebrity by reference and by actually pursuing the actor for the use of their voice.
ChatGPT is currently king of the mountain. That could change, but right now that's how it is.
Google's Gemini and Facebook's Llama 3 are clearly in a tier below. The 100s of tools you are seeing are various mixed and matched technologies that also belong in this tier.
Claude (massive context) and Mistral/Mixtral (decent with no censoring/guard rails) are interesting for special cases. And if you're determined and want to put in the effort, you can experiment or self-host and perhaps come up with some capabilities that do something special that suits a use case or something you want to optimize for (although not everyone has time for that).
So I wouldn't say it's just all this one big swirl of confusion and therefore a bubble and due to come crashing down. There's wheat, there's chaff, there's rhyme and reason.
I can see a civil judge or jury being given evidence showing very few listeners think the voices match in _blind voice tests_.
Here for example you can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice? And what does that tell you about likely court result for Johansson? And having reached this conclusion yourself would you now think the other actress Rashida Jones is entitled to compensation based on this similarly test? Because there are no other women with similar voices?
You can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice? And what does that tell you about likely court result for Johansson? And having reached this conclusion yourself would you now think the other actress Rashida Jones is entitled to compensation based on this similarly test? Because there are no other women with similar voices? What might support from friends and family of Rashida Jones be an indication of?
You can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice?
> And they failed with an actor who sued Disney shortly after they paid her $20 million to make a movie.
OpenAI did not fail. They suspended the sky voice and backed down not to further anger a segment of the public who views much of what OpenAI does in a negative light. Given the voice test above do you seriously think OpenAI would lose in court? Would that matter to the segment of population that is already outraged by AI? How are journalists and news companies affected by AI? How might their reporting be biased?
This is completely false. Claude Opus is significantly better than GPT 4.
> Mistral/Mixtral (decent with no censoring/guard rails)
These models have been heavily censored, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Community efforts like Dolphin to fine-tune Mixtral have some success, but no, Karen is definitely still hard at work in France, ensuring that Mistral AI's models don't offend anyone's precious fee-fees.
It's nevertheless true that there is a coherent landscape of better and worse models, and Chat GPT really does have separation from the other models as I mentioned above. I even mentioned that ChatGPTs position would be subject to change. My understanding is that this most recent version of Claude has been out and about in the wild for perhaps 2 months.
I feel like with even a little bit of charitable interpretation you could read my comment in a way that accounts for the emergence of such a thing as a new and improved model of Claude. So I appreciate your correction but it's hard to see how it amounts to anything more than a drive-by cheap shot that's unrelated to the point I'm making.
(Can't for the life of me recall if she sounds anything like Johansson; just putting her forward to tease her relative here. (Who is in the wrong in his arguments above.))
> This situation is a voice actor using their "natural voice" as a source of work.
Work which was then marketed with heavy implications referring to another actor. Which is what makes this situation so similar to the earlier one.
It's not "from pop culture", it's from a specific film. Starring Scarlett Johansson.
Makes sense if you read "California" as "Hollywood", which has movie stars where the rest of the world has intellectual property.
Altman sure af was trying to invoke a character played by (and widely associated with) Johansson. So...
> Obviously not.
...[citation needed]