To me, it sounds like they had the idea to make their AI sound like "her". For the initial version, they had a voice actor that sounds like the movie, as a proof of concept.
They still liked it, so it was time to contact the real star. In the end, it's not just the voice, it would have been the brand, just imagine the buzz they would have got if Scarlett J was the official voice of the company. She said no, and they were like, "too bad, we already decided how she will sound like, the only difference is whether it will be labelled as SJ or not".
In the end, someone probably felt like it's a bit too dodgy as it resemblance was uncanny, they gave it another go, probably ready to offer more money, she still refused, but in the end, it didn't change a thing.
I think this possibility doesn't receive enough attention, there is a class of people who've figured out that they can say the most scandalous things online and it's a net positive because it generates so much exposure. (As a lowly middle class employee you can't do this - you just get fired and go broke - but at a certain level of wealth and power you're immune from that.) It is the old PT Barnum principle, "They can say whatever they want about me as long as they spell my name right." Guys like Trump and Musk know exactly what they're doing. Why wouldn't Sam?
Johansson's complaint is starting to look a little shaky especially if you remove that "her" Tweet from the equation. I wouldn't put this past Altman at all, he knows exactly what happened and what didn't inside OpenAI, so maybe he knew she didn't have a case and decided to play Sociopathic 3D Chess with her (and beat her in one round)
In order to sue, there need to be damages, and if they didn’t copy the voice then the rest doesn’t matter, which sam and team clearly knew and were fast to work with the news. I agree that smart people take advantage of what they can get away with, but this controversy couldn’t have turned out better for increasing brand awareness good or bad (as you say, just like trump and musk know how to do)
What if it wasn’t a computer voice model but rather a real-life voice actress that you could pay a few cents to try to imitate Scarlett Johansson’s voice as best as she could?
That’s effectively what’s happening here, and it isn’t illegal.
It guess it also leads to the bigger question: do celebrities own their particular frequency range? Is no one allowed to publicly sound like them? Feels like the AACS DVD encryption key controversy all-over again.
That was just a few days before launch, right? What was their plan if she said yes at that point? Continue using the "not-her" voice but say it was her? Or did they also have her voice already cloned by then and just needed to flip a switch?
One or the other. It doesn't really matter as SJ herself would not have necessarily been able to make sure it is not her and not a glitch in how the tech work with her voice.
It is more complicated than that. Check out Midler v. Ford Motor Co, or Waits V. Frito Lay.
people are allowed to sound like other people. But if you go to actor 1 and say we want to use your voice for our product, and then they say no, and then you go to actor 2 and tell them I want you to sound like actor 1 for our product, and then you release a statement hey you know that popular movie by actor 1 that just used their voice in a context extremely reminiscent of our product?!? Well, listen to what we got: (actor 2 voice presented)
Then you may run into legal problems.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
on edit: assuming that reports I am reading that the actress used for the voicework claimed not to have been instructed to sound like Her vocal work it sounds like it is probably not likely that a suit would be successful.
She's allowed to be a voice actor using her real voice.
Your can point to the "Her" tweet, but it's a pretty flimsy argument.
> That’s effectively what’s happening here, and it isn’t illegal.
Profiting from someone else's likeness is illegal.
And besides, it sounds more like Rashida Jones anyway. It's clearly not an impersonation.
Nothing in this article changes the essence of her complaint.
The only real, though partial, rebuttal to her is that OpenAI copied a work product she did for a movie, and the movie was was more than her voice, so it's not totally her own work. So maybe the movie team as a whole has a stronger complaint than the voice actor alone.
She didn't lose any game of wits. She just got done dirty by someone who got away with it. She doesn't need money from them. She has respect from people who matter, SAM and OpenAI behaved badly like big tech always does. If OpenAI permanently stops using Johansson-like Sky voice, she'll win what she wanted.
Of course, anyone whose voice sounds like an AI has the unpleasantness of that experience, and a rich person is more able to endure it than a regular Johansson.
e.g.
Vanna White vs Samsung - https://w.wiki/AAUR
Crispin Glover Back to the Future 2 lawsuit - https://w.wiki/AAUT#Back_to_the_Future_Part_II_lawsuit
It's not necessarily what will prove true at the end of the day but I think we owe people the presumption of innocence.
Though admittedly, so does Johansson in "Her". I don't think the voices are very similar but the style is.
That's not what she said happened. She said they released it anyway before she and Sam could connect, after Sam had reached out, for the second time, two days prior to the release.
But when it comes to specific questions that hinge on evidence, I think you have to maintain the typical presumption of innocence, just to balance out the possibilities of mob psychology getting out of control.
As I understand it, that's essentially OpenAI's defense here.
No, you do not owe "corporations, especially those with a tendency, incentive, and history of being ruthless in this way."
Wise up, people.
A more similar context would be: they ask Tom Hanks to create a voice similar to Woody, the cowboy from Toy Story . Tom Hanks says no, Disney says no. Then they ask you to voice their cowboy voice. It's obviously related: they tried the OG, failed, they're going for a copycat after.
But if never approached Tom Hanks or Disney, then there would be room for deniability - without mentions to real names, it would require someone to judge if it's an unauthorized copycat or just a random actor voicing a random cowboy voice.
It was a bad play from their part.
I need 1.5x speeds even if I have to use a worse voice. I am a TTS power user, listening to all online text since 2010s. Maybe GPT-4o has a more flexible voice, perhaps you can just ask it to speak faster.
It's like, the people dropping leaflets in your physical mailbox are delivering spam, but you wouldn't automatically assume those same people are also trying to scam you and your neighbors by delivering you physical letters meant to trick people into parting with their savings. In both cases, the messages are spam, but one is legal, other is not, and there's a huge gap between them.
So in your opinion, if a movie needs to have a tall, skinny red head, and then they approach someone who has those qualities and the role is turned down, then it would be illegal to get any other different tall skinny red head.
That sounds absurd to me. If you have a role, obviously the role has qualities and requirements.
And just because person 1 who happens to have those qualities turns you down, it is still valid to get a different person who fulfils your original requirements.
I'm not making arguments which are not already explicitly written in my post.
My argument is simple: jorvi commented that you can hire "a real-life voice actress" to "try to imitate Scarlett Johansson’s voice as best as she could", and that is not illegal.
I said that the legality of that is more complicated. What jorvi describes might or might not be illegal based on various factors. And I pointed them towards the two references to support my argument.
I explicitly didn't say in that comment anything about the OpenAI/ScarJo case. You are reacting as if you think that I have some opinion about it. You are wrong, and it would be better if you would not try to guess my state of mind. If I have some opinion about something you will know because I will explicitly state it.
But they are subject to right of publicity in many US jurisdictions.
Which, while more like trademark than copyright (the other thing that keeps getting raised as if it should dispose of this issue), is its own area of law, distinct from either trademark or copyright.
> The ONLY way they get in trouble is if they claim to be Morgan Freeman.
That’s…not true. Though such an explicit claim would definitely be a way that they could get in trouble.
Those of us accusing and talking about it have no power -- thus there is literally no harm, and possible good in, putting them on the defense about this.
edit: In fact, the First Amendment of the Constitution essentially directly upholds the idea of "people saying whatever they want" in this regard.
People don't need to be careful just talking; in fact we generally support the idea of "people saying whatever" in the form of the First Amendment.
https://www.inta.org/topics/right-of-publicity/#:~:text=In%2....
As people tend to look up at celebrities and admire them they start associating this with good things and I think this is why they adopted such styles for chatbots.