OpenAl is sticking to its story that it never intended to copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice when seeking an actor for ChatGPT’s “Sky” voice mode.
This all “feels personal," the voice actress said, "being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”
This comes at a time when many studios are otherwise intrigued by the idea of using AI for things like digital effects but remain, after a long history of avoiding copyright conflicts, hesitant to connect with any company potentially viewed as stealing artists’ work without consent, Reuters reported.
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The issue is Altman made it murky. If my name is Joe McDonald, I’m allowed to open a hamburger shop. What I can’t do is purposefully confuse customers for my personal gain.
This isn’t parody, it’s image and likeness. It is much less murky when they are promoting it as “Her” as in the movie starring Johansson as the voice of a sentient AI assistant.
What doing satire has to do with the matter?
How do you think it would go if OpenAI had used actors with the voices of Biden or Trump and Altman had tweeted “POTUS” just before the event?
Altman knew exactly what he was doing.
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I strongly feel she has a case. Altman may not have violated criminal law, but he has used backdoor marketing, climbing on her shoulders to sell a product.
For example
https://www.iptechblog.com/2023/06/no-first-amendment-right-to-confuse-consumers-high-court-holds/
Also that he reached out to her to get an agreement just before he went live with the sky voice and tweeted “Her”.
The circumstantial evidence is very high as well. This voice actor saying she doesn’t sound like Scarlett Johanson is absolutely meaningless. Sucks she got pulled into this I guess?
Yeah, that she wasn’t given direction is meaningless when you have editing software. Not to mention that there are a ton of videos showing how easy it is to train LLMs to reproduce a voice given samples.
Provided no “modifications” or “instruction” to make it sound like…
Parody is legal. This is not parody.
To be fair, I have not looked into this case enough to have an opinion. Just wanted to point out the logic error.
So like, can you a record label sue another band for ‘sounding like’ the band that they are promoting?
It was more of a thing in the 90s, but there were always competing follow up bands (Sublime being followed by 311) that chased the sound of another artist.
Like should NSync be sued for being a boy band following in Backstreet Boys wake?
Not parody, but mimicry is fundamental to art.
I suppose my rather extreme views on copyright and up leaves me the outlier here, but I think the whole thing is rather absurdist.
Chat GPT is not art, it is an LLM sold by a business that courted Scarlett Johansson to endorse and/or voice their LLM.
She refused and they released an LLM named Sky with a similar voice and personality to the Sam (Samantha) character she played, while also openly referencing the Her movie with their social media.
If I created an “AI” ska band that sounded like Sublime and trained it on Bradley Nowell’s singing voice, with a similar-sounding vocalist to fill in the gaps, I’m pretty sure Sub Lime featuring Badly Novell would get fucked so hard by copyright attorneys that all I would have left is my dog and some weed.
It is not allowed. See Tom Waits vs. Frito Lay. Vocal timbre is considered to part of a celebrities’ “likeness” and reproducing it to imply endorsement will get you landed in court. ScarJo is a huge Tom Waits fan so she knows the story.
That’s not the same thing, they hired an impersonator and copied something really distinct about how he talked. Johansen’s deep mid western accent is not distinct, and Sky was not doing an impression.
Lots of women speak like Scarlet. The first person to become famous cannot copyright a way millions of people speak and act.
The point is they said “we want Scarlett” and when she said no, they went ahead with someone similar and implied a connection. That’s definitely unethical, and arguably illegal.
That said, while she definitely has a case, I fully expect it to be settled fairly quickly, because I don’t think she’d win.
I’m going to say this because it bothers the crap out of me.
Sam Altman has admitted to being a huge Her fan. He says it’s his favorite movie. IIRC, he even said he was ‘obsessed’ with the movie and that it inspired him.
Two days before they announced GPT-4o, which they apparently gave the hard sell to Johansson to try to get her join up on, Sam Altman was on Reddit and said OpenAI was exploring how to allow their service for erotica.
Giiiiiirrll.
My apologies to Tom Waits.
Lol. You should read the reviews of the album. They are decidedly …mixed. Everyone seems to agree that it wasn’t your typical Hollywood vanity project - she took it seriously as an artistic endeavour.
That having been said her singing voice is freakishly low and the mixing is muddy and obscuring. It shows something that can’t be immediately dismissed, but the poor execution doesn’t allow you to grasp exactly what that spark might be.
It’s worth listening to once.
Eta: Town With No Cheer https://youtube.com/watch?v=qsDaaVIvXig
Nah I’m good, I don’t give Zionists and illegal settlers my time. Fuck OpenAI, and fuck ScarJo, couldn’t happen to a better person, except maybe Gal Gadot or McShit Rapoport.
Removed by mod
I stand by what i said fuck Zionists especially those who support illegal settlements. And even more so those who profit from their support.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WVba-OFKKY
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Parody is supposed to be comedic in nature. This is not.
Look up parody in the dictionary, 'cause that isn’t what it means.
I mean maybe you should be looking it up in case law, because what it means in a dictionary is irrelevant relative to case law.
If the voice actor actually made an obvious parody of the HER voice (as an example giving it an over the top southern drawl to subvert expectations about southern ludditism) but parodies can’t just be “like that thing but we hired a cheaper voice actor”.
It was murky from the getgo. Open AI immediately came out and stated it was the voice of a hired voice actor and that all four or five voice options were, and that it was the voice actor using her own natural voice. The media has just chose to mostly completely ignore that and instead wanted to run with rumors that they stole ScarJos voice from the movie or by sampling a bunch of her work, because that sounds way more gossipy.
To your 2nd point though. The trump voicing stuff is a clear and apparent “parody” which is protected to be legally used. Even when Weird AL does his music, he doesn’t actually have to get the artists permission. He just always has because he’s a world treasure.
Yes well Sam (I’m a total dipshit, but it’s ok cause I’m rich now) Altman tweeting out “Her” on launch day did not help matters.
Very true right there. It could just as easily be described as him flaunting technology like what was in the movie, though. I posted a side by side a bit ago and the voices are pretty different.
I listen to it and no they’re not that different. The way she speaks is eeriely similar to the way Scarlett Johansson does.
Friendly and flirty?
What would be neat is if ScarJo sues and wins, could the Jane Doe voice actor then hit ScarJo with an antitrust lawsuit? I mean, if the poor lady can’t get work because the market for “that voice” is dominated by one actor: then what?
Yeah this was the case right from the start. I’m not sure why people are just coming around now, I guess it helps that the actual voice actor has spoken out so it’s concrete proof that she at least exists.