If it weren't for their attempt to link the voice to SJ (i.e. with the "her" tweet), would that be OK?
- It's fine to hire a voice actor.
- It's fine to train a system to sound like that voice actor.
- It's fine to hire a voice actor who sounds like someone else.
- It's probably fine to go out of your way to hire a voice actor who sounds like someone else.
- It's probably not fine to hire a voice actor and tell them to imitate someone else.
- It's very likely not fine to market your AI as "sounds like Jane Doe, who sounds like SJ".
- It's definitely not fine to market your AI as "sounds like SJ".
Say I wanted to make my AI voice sound like Patrick Stewart. Surely it's OK to hire an English actor who sounds a lot like him, so long as I don't use Sir Patrick's name in the advertising. If so, would it have been OK for OpenAI to do all this as long as they didn't mention SJ? Or is SJ so clearly identifiable with her role in "Her" that it's never OK to try to make a product like "Her" that sounds like SJ?
Pretty sure this is fine, otherwise cartoons like the simpsons or south park would've gotten in trouble years ago.
This particular area of law or even just type of "fairness" is by necessity very muddy, there isn't a set of well-defined rules you can follow that will guarantee an outcome where everyone is happy no matter what, sometimes you have to step back and evaluate how people feel about things at various steps along the way.
I'd speculate that OAI's attempts to reach out to SJ are probably the result of those evaluations - "this seems like it could make her people upset, so maybe we should pay her to not be mad?"
Thanks to Sam, this OpenAI case is clearer than others since he made a number of clear evidence against him.
I'll defer to a judge and jury about the legalities. As you noted, Sam gave them a lot of help.
Not necessarily, when you're hiring them because they like someone else—especially someone else who has said that they don't want to work with you. OpenAI took enough steps to show they wanted someone who sounded like SJ.
> Surely it's OK to hire an English actor who sounds a lot like him, so long as I don't use Sir Patrick's name in the advertising.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co. and also Tom Waits vs. Frito-Lay.
> as long as they didn't mention SJ
Or tried to hire SJ repeatedly, even as late as 2 days before the launch.
You can make a Saturday Night Live sketch making fun of Darth Vader.
You cannot use a Darth Vader imitator to sell light sabers.
You can hear them here:
Midler version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFVhL0jbutU&t=22s
Car ad https://youtu.be/hxShNrpdVRs
It protect celebrities who rely on endorsements and “who they are” for income.
It very clearly prohibits copycats with near-likeness as a workaround to getting permission from a celebrity.
OpenAI asked SJ to use her voice. That right there helps her case immensely.
She said no. They went ahead anyway, presumably with someone or someone’s with a similar voice.
They publicized the product by referencing SJ.
These facts are damning.
They might be just a part of the story. Maybe 100 actresses, all sounding roughly the same, were given the offer over a two year period.
Maybe they all were given the same praise. Maybe one other, who signed an agreement, was praised on social media much more.
But this isn’t a slippery slope or a grey area. SJ was asked and said no.
That prohibits using a similar sounding copycat and publicizing as SJ.
No.
The fact that it sounds very much like her and it is for a virtual assistant that clearly draws a parallel to the virtual assistant voiced by SJ in the movie (and it was not a protected use like parody) makes it not OK and not legal.
> Surely it's OK to hire an English actor who sounds a lot like him, so long as I don't use Sir Patrick's name in the advertising.
Nope.
If you made it sound identical to Patrick Stewart that would also likely not be OK or legal since his voice and mannerisms are very distinctive.
If you made it sound kind of like Patrick Stewart that is where things get really grey and it is probably allowed (but if you're doing other things to draw parallels to Patrick Stewart / Star Trek / Picard then that'd make your case worse).
And the law deals with grey areas all the time. You can drag experts in voice and language into the court to testify as to how similar or dissimilar the two voices and mannerisms are. It doesn't nullify the law that there's a grey area that needs to get litigated over.
The things that make this case a slam dunk are that there's the relevant movie, plus there's the previous contact to SJ, plus there's the tweet with "Her" and supporting tweets clearly conflating the two together. You don't even really need the expert witnesses in this case because the behavior was so blatant.
And remember that you're not asking a computer program to analyze two recordings and determine similarity or dissimilarity in isolation. You're asking a judge to determine if someone was ripping off someone else's likeness for commercial purposes, and that judge will absolutely use everything they've learned about human behavior in their lifetime to weigh what they think was actually going on, including all the surrounding human context to the two voices in question.
Then there's no actual confusion.
Taking the recent screwup out of account... It's tough. A commercial product shouldn't try to assossiate with another brand. But if we're being realistic: "Her" is nearly uncopyrightable.
Since Her isn't a tech branch it would be hard to get in trouble based on that association alone for some future company. Kind of like how Skynet in theory could have been taken by a legitimate tech company and how the Terminator IP owner would struggle to seek reparations (to satisfy curiosity, Skynet is a US govt. Program. So that's already taken care of).
As long as you don't leave a trail, you can probably get away with copying Stewart. But if you start making Star trek references (even if you never contacted Stewart), you're stepping in hit water.
Yes
> Say I wanted to make my AI voice sound like Patrick Stewart
Don't tweet "engage" of "boldly go where no man has gone before" when you release the product and you should be ok.
Even if this did go down the way you suppose, once they realized the obvious similarities, the ethical thing to do was to not use the voice. It doesn’t matter if the intention was pure. It doesn’t matter if it was an accident.
Isla Fischer / Amy Adams
Margot Robbie / Samara Weaving / Jamie Pressley
Justin Long / Ezra Miller
Not to mention all of the token/stereotype characters where it hardly matters who the actor is at all. Need to fill the funny fat lady trope? If Rebel Wilson wasn't available, maybe they can get Melissa McCarthy.
The voice from Her isn't even the first voice I'd think of for a female computer voice. That trope has been around for decades. I'm sure OpenAI just wanted SJ specifically because she's currently one of the most popular celebrities in the world.
This is where your post breaks down. Many people say they don't think the voice sounds like SJ. Others do. But it appears you've made up your mind that they deliberately emulated her voice?
Bryce Dallas Howard & Jessica Chastain
Selena Gomez & Lucy Hale
Amy Adams & Isla Fisher
Keira Knightley & Natalie Portman
Not to mention that anytime an actor ages out of the early adulthood age range, a lookalike begins to play the same roles.
If you can't think of any examples, it's probably because you haven't been able to tell them apart yourself.
Wait, which one is the "off-brand" here?
> Bryce Dallas Howard & Jessica Chastain
I must confess I used to confuse these two!
Another one you didn't mention: until relatively recently, I thought actors Elias Koteas (Exotica) and Christopher Meloni (CSI: Special Victims Unit) were the same person!