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)
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.
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.