zlacker

Midler is actually quite similar. Midler didn't want to do a commercial, and refused an offer, so they hired a lookalike that fooled her friends. The appellate court held that Ford and its advertising agency had "misappropriated" Midler's voice.

Waits v. Frito Lay, Inc was '92, and cited it. They used a Tom Waits-sounding voice on an original song, and Waits successfully sued:

> Discussing the right of publicity, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the jury’s verdict that the defendants had committed the “Midler tort” by misappropriating Tom Waits’ voice for commercial purposes. The Midler tort is a species of violation of the right of publicity that protects against the unauthorized imitation of a celibrity’s voice which is distinctive and widely known, for commercial purposes.

https://tiplj.org/wp-content/uploads/Volumes/v1/v1p109.pdf

Of course, who knows what a court will find at the end of this. There is precedent, however.

>>leland+(OP)
Thank you. I didn’t know it was similar specifically for voices in commercial use.

That’s annoying, but we live in a country with lots of annoying laws that we nonetheless abide by. In this case I guess OpenAI just didn’t want to risk losing a court battle.

I still think legal = moral is mistaken in general, and from a moral standpoint it’s bogus that OpenAI couldn’t replicate the movie Her. It would’ve been cool. But, people can feel however they want to feel about it, and my personal opinion is worth about two milkshakes. But it’s still strange to me that anyone has a problem with what they did.

>>sillys+44
I was born in 1983 and it is wrong to make profit off of someone else's art without their permission. It isn't strange at all. This includes using an impersonator. This excludes parody intentions.

So the overall argument isn't strange, you just disagree without having articulated exactly what biases you to disagree. It is moral disagreement ultimately.