Tom Waits is a singer known for his raspy singing voice. Back in the late 1980s, Frito-Lay, Inc., the makes of Doritos, thought it was a great idea to run an ad in which the music had the atmosphere and feel of a Tom Waits song. Except the professional singer they hired for that got the job done a bit too well: the sounds of his voice in the commercial was so close to Tom Waits' work (he had for ten years sang in a band covering Tom Waits songs) that in November 1988, Waits successfully sued Frito-Lay and the advertising company Tracy-Locke Inc., for voice misappropriation under California law and false endorsement under the Lanham Act [1].
Now, when you hear Tom Waits speak in interviews, I find that his voice does not sound nearly as raspy as in his performances. But the point is that it does not matter so much whether OpenAI used the actual voice of Johansson or hired someone to imitate her performance.
Given the fact that Johansson was initially contacted by OpenAI to provide her voice and declined, we can surely assume that the selection of the particular voice actress they ended up using was no coincidence.
[1] http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications...
This order is wrong according to the article, the VA was contracted before ever reaching out to SJ.g
Additionally here is a relevant anecdote, for instance, that may or may not change your mind?
>In a statement from the Sky actress provided by her agent, she wrote that at times the backlash “feels personal being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”
It would suck to be blacklisted from your career because your voice may sound too similar to another famous person, if viewed from a certain light.
Be that as it may, but it's clear that OpenAI had early on considered a her-like voice for their product. According to OpenAI, they started with over 400 candidate voices and narrowed them down to [1]. I find it would be quite the amazing if the one that sounded very close to the her voice was chosen purely by coincidence - and then they went:
- Wait a minute, you know what she sounds like? Have you ever seen that movie Her?
- Man, you're right, it does sound quite like that voice. Wasn't that Scarlett Johansson in the movie?
- Yeah, I think so.
- Whoa, whoa, tell you what: why don't we hire Scarlett Johansson directly?
- After we just went through 400 voices to select these five?
- So what? She's a star! Think of the marketing impact! "OpenAI has developed real-life her"
- Cool, dude! But what are the odds that Johansson would do that?
- I guess there's only one way to find out...
> Yeah, man, you're right. Let's do it!
I wonder if that was how it happened...
> It would suck to be blacklisted from your career
That's true. Is that's what's happening?
[1] https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho...