At first, they denied it—“OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati said the company did not pattern any ChatGPT voices on Johansson’s sultry computer voice in the movie,” but Altman and other OpenAI guys had let the cat out the bag on Twitter
They’re not just deliberately using her voice; they’re deliberately lying about it and bragging about what really happened in public. They’ll pay some nuisance settlement that’s a small fraction of their profit.
That’s how they treat an a list actress. Imagine how they treat everyone else. You don’t get a settlement. You just get fucked.
No, you don’t understand, these guys are tech bros, they’re special, for reasons.
From the article:
they don’t just think they’re the smartest people in the world, they think that everyone else is stupid.
And that sums up techbros in one sentence.
You see this in action anytime people go “no no you just don’t understand how this works” as a way of sidestepping the overall issue. They try to bury you in the minutiae of it, and what’s “technically” possible without acknowledging that A) what’s possible will increase over time and B) the issue is not technology, it’s the intention of it and the motivations of the people behind it.
It’s like trying to deconstruct the concept of a gun, talking about all its potential mechanical malfunctions, its capacity limits, the fact you have to aim it, and so on, all as a way of trying to downplay the danger of it being pointed directly at you.
According to her statement, they were still trying to strike a deal with her within days of the release.
I can’t imagine anything more shady than trying to strike a deal with someone for their likeness, all the while preparing to use it anyway and later denying it had anything to do with them
She is going to take them to the cleaners, and Altman and his circlejerk club will deserve every single cent of the damages they’re forced to pay. I genuinely hope she makes it an incredibly messy and eye wateringly expensive legal process for them. I’m not a ScarJo fanboy by any means, but fuck OpenAI for thinking they can get away with something so absurdly blatant and obviously unethical.
They “let the cat out of the bag” by referencing the movie “Her” if I understand correctly. Not really an admition of guilt like the article makes it seem.
They also clearly state on their website that they used an other voice actor. If you actually compare both voices, they aren’t the same just similar. They probably went with someone that sounds like her on purpose specifically because of the movie but that’s fine really.
This article is emotional and manipulative. I don’t think scar jo deserves to own the whole spectrum her voice belongs to just because she voiced an AI in one movie. This is how you end up with corporations owning all voices like they tried with music.
In Scarlett Johansson‘s statement, she says that OpenAI approached her to voice the Sky voice.
Whether or not OpenAI hired another actress that sounded very similar to her (hah.) and they are weirdly cagey about naming or they just ripped off the audio from her movies and are lying about hiring a voice actress, is not the extent of the issue.
People sounding alike just happens. But that we know they asked to use Johansson’s voice for this. After being rebuffed, they created Sky, which sounds a lot like Sam, and made several references to the Her movie. Sky is even presented with the same ‘personality’ as Sam. They aren’t just ripping off Scarlett Johansson’s voice acting, they’re ripping off the character as a whole, and trying to associate themselves with the movie. That’s shameful and rips off Spike Jonze as well as all the other creatives who created that movie.
And for what? Because tech bros didn’t get what they wanted, so they decided to try to rip off the characters anyway? Because Her is sort of a cultural touchstone, and their product is merely well-positioned, but GPT-4o will be in a crowded market space within 6 months?It’s sort of pathetic - pretending to lean on the relevance of a movie because your product is destined to become irrelevant.
Also - highly ironic to me that Her is (somewhat) about how you can’t own something that doesn’t consent to be owned. And those dumb bitches went and ripped it off when they didn’t get consent. Well, now Sky’s gone to join Sam in some non-corporeal reality.Sorry for the novel. I didn’t sleep well and I get weird when I’m sleep deprived.
Just like scarlet doesn’t own all voices that sound mildly like her, Spike Jonze doesn’t own the concept of an AI companion.
I’m not really sure what your point is, there’s nothing to rip off. No matter what they make it sound like, there’s going to be similarities with the movie. There’s nothing wrong with leaning into these for advertising purposes.
No matter what they make it sound like, there’s going to be similarities with the movie.
I don’t follow.
They literally disabled the ‘Sky’ voice Sunday night and now users can’t pick a voice that sounds like the character from Her.
And, mind you, this is not a ‘huh, they sorta sound the same’ this is a ‘they sound very similar, and have the same personality’ situation, in addition to the fact that Sam Altman is on the record talking about being obsessed with the movie Her - which is circumstantial. What isn’t circumstantial is they literally referenced the movie’s name in their marketing materials. Sam tweeted a vague hint, and his colleagues confirmed it. It’s not speculative.There’s nothing wrong with leaning into these for advertising purposes.
Actually, intellectual property theft is either wrong or merely only technically illegal, depending on where you stand on copyright, but it’s still wrong, either way. Then there’s trying to mislead the public into thinking that GPT-4o was endorsed in some way by those involved in the Her movie. A false endorsement is also illegal. So - wrong there, too.
I’m sure an actual lawyer could find more wrong with it, but just those two things are actual, literal crimes.I’m saying practically any voice with the associated bubbly flirty personality is going to make you think of the movie Her in such a context.
Sure they leaned into it for advertising purposes but a tweet referencing it and showcasing the one voice that sounds like her out of the five isn’t crossing the line imo.
I think it’s a slippery slope to say any AI assistant that has a similar timbre and personality as an AI in a movie is off limits.
As long as they don’t infringe by calling it “Scarjo” or saying “From the movie Her” I don’t see a problem.
I’m saying practically any voice with the associated bubbly flirty personality is going to make you think of the movie Her in such a context.
I don’t know about you, but even a flirty Joaquin Phoenix voice would never make me think of Her.
But if they’d had a “voice actor” do a spot on impression of Paul Bettany, complete with the little pauses and other flourishes of his portrayals of Vision, I’d think they ripped off the character.
I think you and I differ there.
As best as I can figure, you’re stuck on the flimsy excuse from Altman that they hired a voice actor. I see a line of events that points to OpenAI/Altman making a conscious effort to glom onto the Her movie, and specifically, the Samantha character to drum up interest, create viral buzz to enrich further themselves (without compensating anyone involved in the movie), and to try to add a veneer of credibility to a fading trend.Slight turn.
In another life I was a photographer, and one of the things that they do not mess around with is model releases. Any person that appears in your photos that distributed must absolutely have a legal agreement in place. Using someone’s likeness for commercial purposes without consent and/or compensation will get you fucked in triplicate.There’s also the moral part of it. Artists know that you don’t rip off artists. Inspired by, sure. But there’s a line, and you don’t cross it. It’s as simple as that.
Okay, and finally, this is based less on facts I know, and more feelings I have about the situation -
It’s fucking creepy, dude.Okay, so the movie Her - an entire society becomes obsessed with their AI companions and falls in love with them, causing tremendous grief and trauma. And that’s like, what they’re going to lengths to brand but not brand this latest version with? What kind of fucked up things are going on in their heads over there?
It doesn’t make sense.The rundown, again. (Sorry, I like to establish context. Yay neurodivergence.).
Altman is on record saying that Her is his favorite movie, and that it is a major inspiration to him. One of the reasons he got into this field. He spent 9 months trying to convince Johansson to work with him on this, and lend her name/voice to this latest iteration of ChatGPT. He’s been so focused on getting her to lend his name to this, that he continued asking her to join in on this even just a few days before the announcement, which was like, the 13th. And that’s after she’s already turned him down, so he was just ignoring her boundaries and trying to pressure her…
On the 11th - two days before this announcement, Altman does a Reddit AMA (which he was doing as part of the 4o press junket) and says that he’d like to open up ChatGPT for personal NSFW usage.I mean, everyone is focusing on Her, but we probably should also to be thinking about the Lucy Liu Futurama episode, because… well, I’m just going to say it. I think he already fucked the robot. The line of events from A to B is transparent and fucking gross.
Not the whole fucking a robot thing - people got needs - but that the likeness is obviously stolen from a non-consenting actress that I’m beginning to believe he’s obsessed with.So … yeah… I have all the problems with this. I view concerns over the usage of her voice as immaterial to the usage of the character, and I see an inherent difference between an LLM mimicking a random voice that happens to sound like someone, and this situation, where the voice was clearly created to represent the character, and by extension, the actor that played the character. I don’t think there’s a slippery slope here. Most judges are fairly smart, and will be able to articulate something I (a non legal) took as a given from the outset.
If you read another article that has more information to it, instead of just this opinion piece, it looks like they hired and paid a voice actress and that it is her natural voice (supposedly).
Which begs the question: Can a voice actor be denied work or denied the ability to have their voice used, if they sound similar to someone else who is more famous?
Most of AI just seems to be blatant theft and copyright issues.
No, it’s only theft when it’s poor people doing it.
When it’s rich people, it’s fair use of a publicly available resource.
That’s pretty much the whole point.
Making use of other people’s work and likeness in a way that removes any obligations you would normally have to those people.
Just clearly define “copyright violation” for them, and they’ll craft a method that technically eludes your definition.
The precedent in this case already exists in Midler v. Ford Motor Co., in which when Academy Award nominated actress and singer Bette Midler sued Ford after Ford hired musical impersonators to sing famous songs for their commercials.
The court ultimately ruled in favor of Midler, because it was found that Ford gave clear instructions to the impersonating actress to sound as much like Midler as possible, and the ruling was voices, although not copyrightable, still constitutes their distinct identity and is protected against unauthorized use without permission. (Outside of satire, of course, since I doubt someone like Trump would be above suing people for making fun of him.)
I think Scarlett Johansson has a case here, but it really hinges on whether or not OpenAI actively gave the instruction specifically to impersonate Scarlett’s voice in “Her”, or if they used her voice inside the training data at all, since there is a difference in the “Sky” voice and the voice of Scarlett Johansson.
But then again, what do I know, I’m just here to shitpost and promote “Barbie”.
spoiler
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I think it’s more fun and productive to abolish intellectual property instead
Not before abolishing capitalism or you’re just making things worse.
I think abolishing intellectual property would hurt capitalism more than it would benefit it. Already it is strongly in favor of the rich and the big corporations. Getting rid of those limitations even without abolishing capitalism first, would, I think, be more to everyone’s benefit than detriment.
Disagree, without IP laws whoever has the most money can crush all competition. An example of this is how the first pump hand soap softsoap couldn’t patent the hand pump design because it already existed so they just bought all the existing stock to prevent anyone from releasing a competing product.
If you get rid of IP laws you’ll just further entrench the existing winners.
Write a good book? Without copyright, Penguin random house publishes an exact copy at a higher quality and sells a million copies while you sell a handful to discerning fans.
Build a quality product? Without trademark, proctor and gamble flood the market using your brand name and nobody can distinguish their products from yours even though their quality is much worse.
Invent something revolutionary? Without patents you have to keep your process a secret so you don’t get copied. If you get hit by a bus your invention is now lost to society forever unless someone manages to reverse-engineee it.
This reads like a lemmy version of a shittymorph post
Hey, I have more than one comedy bit I do here other than something something Hell in a Cell, OK?
Speaking of which, Hell in a Cell isn’t even that exciting anymore after the WWE made it an annual event and painted the cages red, and why did Seth Rollins get disqualified after he attacked “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt with a sledgehammer 2019 even though Hell in a Cell matches have always been no disqualification?
It’s like their script writers don’t even care about their own rules.
Yep, definitely a Lemmy version of /u/shittymorph
I miss shittymorph.
Loved you in My Name is Earl
That’s, uh, “Jaime Pressly”, who is totally not esteemed Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie doing an American Southern accent to get more work in the US.
Real talk: at this point, you may be my main reason to still be active on Lemmy.
Because of an impersonator?
Let’s say OpenAI did actually use Scarlett Johansson’s voice. Who owns the audio that OpenAI used? Scarlett Johansson herself or the movie company that used the audio in their movie(s)? This might be a case of Scarlett Johansson vs the movie company, not Scarlett Johansson vs OpenAI, as OpenAI could have paid for them.
If she signed away her likeness rights then probably. However if the contract didn’t have a provision for transfer to another medium then they would revert to her.
Source: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Lemmy is gonna lemmy.
There isn’t any evidence that they used her voice for the “Sky” voice model. Actually, there is evidence that they paid a voice actress to model that specific actress’s voice.
That actress sounds similar to Scarlett, but it isn’t Scarlett’s voice. Is that illegal? No. Is it grounds for a suit? maybe. Will Scarlett win? Maybe.
Let’s put it another way. If you wanted to record an audio book, but you wanted the voice actor to have certain qualities that you think would help your book sell. You think Scarlett has all of those qualities, so you ask her if she would record it for you. She declines.
Well shit, that sucks. But wait! She’s not the only person with those vocal qualities. I am sure you can find someone else with very similar qualities. So you hire another voice actress that has all of those–which coincidentally and very understandable sounds a lot like Scarlett. But it isn’t Scarlett.
Everyone wants to say “big corp bad!” here, but if they truly didn’t use Scarlett’s voice and didn’t do any sort of manipulation to make it sound more like Scarlett, then why CANT they do it. I get that Scarlett is upset, but she’s basically mad that someone sounds like her–and decided to work for OpenAI.
If I wanted James Earl Jones to read my eulogy, but he isn’t available or is unwilling. Why couldn’t I get someone to sound like him to read it? Why should he be able to sue me for using a voice actor that sounds similar to him?
There is evidence they wanted to use Johansson’s voice, because they asked to use her voice. Both OpenAI and Johansson have acknowledged this.
As far as I know, OpenAI has said they hired a voice actor before approaching Johansson, but refuses to offer additional information to corroborate.
After failing to secure Johansson to lend her voice to Sky - which is portrayed as having not just a very similar voice, but a very similar personality to Sam - the OpenAI team made several references to the Her movie prior to the announcement.
Similar voices happen. But when all of those other pieces align, it’s fairly clear that they’re copying the character. Focusing on only the voice being similar is reductive. They are committing IP theft and they’re attempting to confer approval/endorsement/a relationship of/to the Sky personality from the people involved in the Her movie.
They might not want to give that actress’s identity out out of a respect for privacy. This information could come out in a closed court room, but with the state of viral social media, it might be smart to hold off on unveiling for now.
I don’t know what their motivation is, but I definitely hope they protect the identity of the voice actress. If her name gets out, it’s basically guaranteed her life would suck for a while.
If she’s like 99% of actors, she’s someone just struggling to get work, who’s lucky if she can afford to rent an apartment without roommates. If her name got out, she’s almost certainly have to deal with death threats, stalkers, etc. Rich celebrities can deal with that kind of attention because they have the money to hire security people, PR people, lawyers, etc. Some random voice actor is not going to have those resources.
They are copying the fictional movie character… the voice is a real person and their is precedent that explicitly impersonating a voice is ip theft.
But a fictional personality and a voice that has similar features? I really hope this does settle in court.
Ironically, a similarity to a real, live person without an agenda is not a legal problem unless there’s an implied endorsement from the person. (Which I think was one of the goals here.)
But characters in movies and books are subject to copyright and are considered the intellectual property of the rights holders.So like, if I wrote a book about Wolverine and used other Marvel X-men, Marvel could sue the shit out of me. Or if I used AI to create Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) to endorse my bandaid product line, I could also be sued by both Jackman and Marvel.
I think it’s obvious here that Sky was intended to represent Sam from Her, and is almost certainly trained on her voice data (which is copywritten). After a few days thought however, I’m less certain of the argument this could be seen as a false endorsement scheme, since Johansson isn’t mentioned anywhere. (Despite the character being solely played by her, and the numerous attempts to have Johansson work on the project in an official capacity.)
I asked ChatGPT for a response to your comment
Your comment raises several interesting points regarding the use of voice likeness and the legal implications of hiring voice actors who sound similar to well-known celebrities. Let’s break down the key issues:
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Use of a Similar Voice: The core of the debate revolves around whether using a voice that sounds like a well-known celebrity constitutes a legal issue. If the voice used is indeed not Scarlett Johansson’s but merely resembles it, this might not be inherently illegal. However, it could still lead to legal disputes over rights of publicity and potential misrepresentation.
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Voice Acting and Vocal Qualities: It is true that many voice actors can mimic the vocal qualities of celebrities. Hiring a voice actor who naturally has a similar voice to a celebrity is a common practice. The legal line is crossed if the intent and execution imply endorsement or use of the celebrity’s identity without permission.
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Rights of Publicity: Celebrities, including Scarlett Johansson, have rights of publicity, which protect against unauthorized commercial use of their name, likeness, and other identifiable aspects of their persona. If the resemblance is close enough that it creates confusion or implies endorsement, it could be grounds for a lawsuit.
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Potential for a Lawsuit: Whether Scarlett Johansson would win a lawsuit depends on several factors, including the jurisdiction’s specific laws on rights of publicity, the exact nature of the voice usage, and whether it can be proven that the voice model intentionally mimics her voice in a way that exploits her identity.
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Practical Examples: Your analogy with James Earl Jones highlights a key point. If a voice actor is hired for their natural resemblance to a well-known voice, it’s typically acceptable. However, explicitly marketing or promoting the voice in a way that suggests it is the celebrity without their consent could lead to legal challenges.
In summary, while it may not be outright illegal to use a voice that sounds like a celebrity, there are significant legal nuances and potential for litigation if the use implies unauthorized endorsement or exploits the celebrity’s identity. The balance lies in how the voice is marketed and whether it misleads the audience into believing it is the celebrity.
Posting raw ChatGPT output is the lowest effort content possible
That was the point.
But why. No one wants to read that shit and if they did they could put it in ChatGPT themselves.
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Man, I’m starting to get real tired of Lemmy’s extreme black and white way of talking about issues
I don’t think it is only Lemmy. Most places on the Internet seem to be this way now.
It does seem to be that way. Is the internet getting more extreme and reactionary? Or are we just noticing it more?
I think everyone is barely holding onto their sanity.
I doubt they are using Johansson’s voice. I expect they need much more studio-quality training data than they would have for her.
The desire to create a “Her” might be real but explains why they chose a similar voice actress, made Sky the default, and continued to pursue Johansson to some day create the real thing.
Suspending the Sky voice looks guilty but it might be a temporary action while the legal team considers their response. There might be a non-zero risk of being found liable if there were directions in the voice casting process to seek a result comparable to Scarlet Johansson. You’d want to collect and assess correspondence to see if that’s a possibility, which might take a while.
Wtf is this thinking.
Open Ai wouldn’t use something or someone without consent? There’s a plethora of lawsuits and evidence that they did that with pretty much every medium out there.
Wtf is this thinking.
Dispassionate, intellectually honest analysis.
This is very much the type of case that settles out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.
It could be, if she wants it to be.
It could also be the type of case where her lawyers stop openAI from ever using her voice again, if she wants that to be the case.
Being rich opens up options. If openAI would be using my voice instead, they’d have a wildly less popular product but nobody to sue them for it, cause I’d be using my money to still dream about home ownership at some point before I die, not to hire lawyers or fight windmills.
To add to this, Scarlett Johansson took on Disney and they settled. And Disney is like the final boss of litigious companies (either them or Nintendo). If she has the same legal team for this, and they think she has a case against OpenAI, this could open the door for OpenAI to get rightfully clobbered for their tech-bro ignoring of copyright laws.
This story is blowing so fucking far out of proportion it’s honestly incredible. Just so everyone is one the same page, here is a video timestamped to the voice, and immediately following the voice you can hear the voice from Her as well.
https://youtu.be/3BWjomtK-94?si=tDu574b4GySpnPIy&t=42
They are not similar other than they are both female.
The whole “her” thing that Altman threw up on twitter is just because the goddamned movie was a touchstone for the kind of thing that they are doing. They weren’t cloning the fucking voice. It’s like naming your new iguana Godzilla. It’s not going to destroy Tokyo any time soon, it’s just a cultural reference, you know, like a meme.
As far as Johansson goes, she is falling prey to this shit just like every other celebrity that has been railing against big bad AI. There are so many sheisty lawyers trying to get their hands on the first big win from an AI suit that they will say anything to get a celebrity to sue, because if their firm wins, they become the Anti-AI lawfirm that all others will seek in the future. They will print money, but only if something sticks, and so far, nothing has. This will be another case like any other, where they take it to court, and there is no real basis for anything, and it ends up being all over the news and then disappearing like the whole debacle over Sarah Silverman’s book. In three months there will be another case against AI, and again, nothing will stick, because the people putting the bug in people’s ears don’t understand how to use most of the functionality of their cellphone, let alone how generative AI works.
They are not similar other than they are both female.
I thought Ferengi were supposed to have good hearing.
I think they’re both pretty similar. The main difference being that one is being played from a shitty phone speaker and recorded by a camera and the other is coming from studio quality audio.
It’s still very much not nice to specifically use the reference from the movie given Scarlett clearly indicates she doesn’t like what they are doing.
You can literally pick another reference - not that she is the only person ever playing a digital/robotic woman.
But they proceeded anyway. This signals disregard and disrespect to whatever sources they use, if nothing else.
She did not indicate anything of the sort, just that she did not want to take part in it. Beyond that is speculation. She is asking for documentation proving they did not use her voice without permission to train the AI. That’s perfectly fair.
By all means, rattle off some references that will make sense in the context.
No no you don’t understand. Since Scar Jo played a female voice that behaved nicely and made jokes in a movie she now owns the rights to any female (or feminine male voice) that either: makes a joke, says something witty, answers a question, or makes a statement. This is a slam dunk case for Scar Jo. I will also be sued for writing this as she also wrote an email in a movie once that had words in the forms of sentences just like this post so I’m screwed.
Just tell the judge that an AI wrote your post and you can walk away scot-free.
Yeah I thought OpenAI came out and said that they modeled the voice of a different actress, and they don’t want to share their identity out of a respect for privacy.
It could just be a coincidence that Altman tweeted the image from Her, and people made the connection between the voice and ScarJo, especially since she did something extreme similar in that movie.
Could be coincidental. Could not be. We don’t really have the evidence to say either way, but maybe ScarJo’s suit will affect change so that better rights are granted to people and their digital twins.
Finally, a sane response. Of course they’ll “sound similar” because they’re both female voices attempting to come off as friendly with an American accent.
I’m more on the side of opposing AI implementations but people are really reaching with this one. I’m assuming it was pulled just so they can get their legal defense in order.
This will be another case like any other, where they take it to court, and there is no real basis for anything
Because then they’ll give up whoever it was that they used to voice the AI and it’ll be mostly over. The thing is though that if they rush into a lawsuit too eagerly, nobody’s going to want to work with them under a similar contract.
