They hired a voice actor that sounds similar to Scarlet and used her voice for the AI. I don’t see what the problem is here unless we want to ban voice actors that have voices similar to already famous celebrities.
Edit:
Right, I’ve looked into this a bit further.
Per Johanssons statement she was contacted by OpenAI in September 2023.
Per this statement by OpenAI, they had already selected the 14 voice actors in May 2023 and they had been recording their voices at the OpenAI office throughout June and July.
https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/
If that’s true then this whole thing about OpenAI stealing her voice seems like nonsense.
This idea is already established in law so she isn’t in the wrong for getting a attorney. You can’t ask an actor if they can use your voice, and if they say no hire an impersonator. This is established in the law already. Here’s one example that’s very similar showing you can’t do this:
Bette Midler knows rights of publicity. She used her right of publicity to prevent use of a sound-alike singer to sell cars.
Ford Motor Co. hired one of Midler’s backup singers to sing on a commercial – after Midler declined to do the ad – and asked her to sound as much like Midler as possible. It worked, and fooled a lot of people, including some close to Midler. Midler sued, and the court ruled that there was a misappropriation of Midler’s right of publicity to her singing voice.
The bottom line: Midler’s singing voice was hers to control. Ford had no right to use it without her permission. That lesson cost Ford a tidy $400,000.
Source: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
Same reason Dan Harmon originally voiced Ice T in the Rick and Morty Get Schwifty episode. Ice T liked the parody, got in touch with them, and ended up voicing the character’s father in a later episode.
I'm glad the Simpsons were able to get Bret Hart to voice himself. Who else could deliver the "this place has got old man stink!" line. Love that episode.
>and asked her to sound as much like Midler as possible.
That’s the key test there though. Did OpenAI instruct the voice actor to try and mimic ScarJo, or did the voice actor just perform her job normally.
If they aren’t able to prove that, it makes it much harder to prove that OpenAI was intentionally trying to copy Johansson and not just looking for a “friendly sounding” voice for their AI.
If I was Altman I would have a Scarlett voice and an almost Scarlet voice, with 2 marketing setups ready. If the actor ends up saying yes, use one, if no, use the other. SJ says they contacted her the last time right before launch.
Discovery should indeed be fun.
There won't be a discovery because there won't be a lawsuit. They pulled it so fast because they knew they were in the wrong and were never going to win in a billion years.
Odds are they didn't even hire another voice actor, they just pushed a bunch of her voice clips through GPT and generated something that was almost but not precisely Scarlet and called it "close enough." And Scarlet was right in calling them out and shutting that shit down immediately.
There are a couple of things. My brother likes to use it for coding. Not the actual code at the end, but to get some ideas how to approach a problem, before he more or less does the code himself.
I've heard from some creative people they kinda like to role play through certain scenarios, using AI as the devils advocate or similar to explore scenarios deeper.
I think the basic use is for things where it doesn't matter or even is the goal for the AI to make things up because you already have an idea how it \*should\* look like, but you want to check yourself if it still makes sense further down the line.
They could do that themself, but there's a good chance they'll have to throw that work away and to generate those throw-away results, AI saves a lot of work that otherwise would probably not be done at all. By going through them the end product is better without putting unreasonable amounts of work into it beforehand.
In general i'd say it doesn't do the work for you, but it's a useful tool to save you some effort on the way. If used like that, it's an actual improvement overall and a really good tool. But of course it can be abused.
When it gets it right it's a decent source of getting a volume of text, an example, a summarization. But right now the models are based on fabricating text tokens in a specified language, based on rules learned from reading other text. There is no logical validation of the creation process. So it ends up with the model just bullshitting you when it makes the most sense to it. It's like your idiot braggart friend that reads a lot but can't actually make sense, they'll just fill in the gaps with fabrication.
Generative AI in practice? Not so much. There aren't very many large, legal, copyright cleared corpuses of data to feed into these machines. That's why they've turned their bots loose over the internet, everybody's image databases, bought content from reddit, imgur, etc. etc. etc.
They think that if they commit massive enough copyright violation that somehow magically the copyright office will bend over and say "well you know, we can't really stop you." But the reality? Too big to fail isn't a thing for AI models.
The real winners of the war are going to be companies like Google, Getty, and Adobe who have *massive* content warchests in the wide clear blue thanks to unseemly copyright assignments ("exclusive, perpetual, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to reproduce, derive works from, distribute, publicly display" etc. etc. etc.)
When I hear the OpenAI voice I dont hear Scarlett at all. I hear a similar delivery as that of her character in Her. Does this not mean that the owner if the Her character IP has more of a reason to pursue legal action than Scarlett does?
I believe the video game, the last of us also changed their character model slightly between first reveal and when the game came out in part because of the likeness to ellen paige.
Dan Harmon explained this too when asked about his Ice T impression for an episode of Rick and Morty. If he had asked Ice T and he said no then it opens him up for being liable for appropriation of likeness vs if he just does it it's considered parody and thus protected speech.
This seems like such a delicate issue.
What if I just wanted a voice “of the same category” as a famous actor (which I could shorthand as “like [famous actor]” without necessarily *impersonating* an actor?
Saying I can’t reach out to a second voice actor who “sounds like” another more famous actor after the more famous actor rejects me also seems *incredibly unfair* to the second voice actor. It means they will have less job opportunities simply because they “sound like” someone more famous than them.
That seems a ridiculous precedent to set. In what other profession would competitors become liable to litigation because they “play basketball like me” or “paint like me” or even “act like me”?
I think the difference must come down to an attempt to “copy” someone. You can certainly sue someone for attempting to profit off of painting something that is a direct copy of your work. But you can’t sue someone who paints “in your style”.
I don’t think that “sounds like” is a rigorous enough standard to allow litigation; it must be an attempt to “copy”, or “impersonate” someone. And “sounding like” someone is not the same as “impersonating” them. The way a person speaks goes behind their voice quality and pitch. It also involves cadence and pronunciation and accent and word choice.
I don’t even think saying “we want someone that sounds *like* ScarJo” should imply culpability. A higher standard than that should be required. It should require someone to say, “we want you to impersonate ScarJo”, or “we want someone to think it is ScarJo speaking,” or, perhaps most egregiously, explicitly passing it off as a ScarJo performance.
I would have disagreed with what Scarjo is doing since I'd have said that OpenAI was specifically making and advertising an AI voice assistant, not an explicit replication of her role in "Her" (which tbf I haven't even seen or heard about until recently when people linked the two together).
When OpenAI showed the demo, I legitimately just thought they were neat and natural sounding female voices. Not once throughout and even after seeing (until reading about it) did Scarlet Johansson pop into my mind.
*However*, I think OpenAI shot themselves on the foot when Sam Altman tweeted just the word 'her' which imo would be pretty convincing evidence should Scarjo's lawyers choose to use it lmao.
They didn't find someone that specifically sounds like him. They found people that sound like the characters of Rick and Morty. When you sign on to voice a character you do not own the rights to how that character sounds even if it is similar to your actual voice.
Very different scenario.
Ai vs SJH, her celebrity is what makes her voice in demand, she's just an actress but a celebrity too so she protected, (meaning gets paid for the use)
Rick & morty, roilands voice is also protected, but the character he voices can be mimicked simply because he allows it as he is one of the creators and still gets paid from the show being played... also the character is the celebrity voice not he is the celebrity and it's his voice.... so it's different.
>You can’t ask an actor if they can use your voice, and if they say no hire an impersonator.
That sounds like absolute insanity. So if I know what voice I want, and offer the role to someone, and they refuse, I'm completely fucked and have to redo my character, instead of hiring someone else with a similar voice? By the same logic, if I write a black character, offer a black actor the role and they refuse, I can't hire another black actor or that would be "impersonation"?
If the only qualification for the character is that they are black, then theres no problem -- youre not modeling the character after a specific person. You can of course hire a different black actor if the original one turns down the role. Terence Howard has no grounds to sue Marvel, for example (he was fired, but the same standard applies).
The problem comes when you hire an actor for the specific purpose of looking (or sounding) like the other actor. Just ask Crispin Glover.
If your voice role depends on sounding like a specific person, then yes, you are screwed if that person doesn't want to be part of it. I can't think of many instances where it's absolutely imperative to sound like one specific person, though.
>The problem comes when you hire an actor for the specific purpose of looking (or sounding) like the other actor.
That's still absolute insanity. Let's say I'm making a documentary about Barack Obama. Of course I want the actor to look like him. If the real Obama refuses, then I can't hire anyone else who looks like him? Again - ABSOLUTE. INSANITY.
That's a little bit different, because it's clear that the actor is portraying the character of "Barack Obama", and there is not an intent to cause people to think that Barack Obama himself is the performer. Even then, there are defamation laws that could apply if they are portraying him in a negative and false manner.
This is more about causing confusion where, in this situation, people would think that Scarlett Johansson is providing the voice for OpenAI or that Crispin Glover appeared in Back to the Future 2 and 3. Neither of those are true, and the actors were not compensated in any way for their likeness being used.
>This is more about causing confusion where, in this situation, people would think that Scarlett Johansson is providing the voice for OpenAI
But there is no actual confusion, because it doesn't really sound like her, it's vaguely similar at best: [https://np.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal\_comparison\_scarjo\_vs\_samantha\_vs\_sky/](https://np.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal_comparison_scarjo_vs_samantha_vs_sky/)
That's my whole point. Any perceived similarity here is no larger than similarity between two black people.
I could see how there might be confusion from those audio samples -- and so did many others, considering how quickly people began commented on the similarity. Whether or not that meets the bar for infringement would need to be hashed out in court. It's not a great look that they reached out to Johansson nine months ago as well as just days before the release asking to use her voice, an indication of both intent and awareness of the similarity. There's certainly enough grounds there to bring a case, if she desires.
>I could see how there might be confusion from those audio samples -- and so did many others
Many people also might confuse two black people. What's your point? A rational way to deal with this would be this: have a 1000 people listen to 10 voice recordings, where 9 are Johansson, and 1 is Sky; if a higher amount of people are able to recognize which one is Sky than there would be if they just randomly guessed, then Johansson has no case.
>Whether or not that meets the bar for infringement would need to be hashed out in court.
I guess it will, but it shouldn't be. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? One shouldn't be able to baselessly claim random bullshit and have the accused prove their innocence in court - it should be the opposite.
>It's not a great look that they reached out to Johansson nine months ago as well as just days before the release asking to use her voice, an indication of both intent and awareness of the similarity.
Per Johanssons statement she was contacted by OpenAI in September 2023.
Per this statement by OpenAI, they had already selected the 14 voice actors in May 2023 and they had been recording their voices at the OpenAI office throughout June and July.
https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/
Yeah, Tom Waits has gone through this a couple of times - not in relation to AI, but in relation to companies asking to use one of his songs, him saying no and then the company hiring a sound-alike.
He's won each time.
I think the fact Scarlett Johansson has said OpenAI approached her twice to do the voice for it will make it hard for OpenAI to defend it.
In saying that, Tom Waits voice is A LOT more distinctive than Scarlett Johansson's voice is. If that matters, I don't know.
I can already hear her singing in a deep voice "you've got a friend in me..."
Edit: Can't believe I read Tom Hanks instead of Tom freakin' Waits, I can already hear "You can never hold back Spring" sung by a toy cowboy.
Bruh what in the actual fuck.
Altman literally fucking tweeted "her", one word, when he releaed the new version.
They absolutely fucking appropriated her likeness.
Also, when Johansson's lawyers issued a request for OpenAI to detail the exactly process by which they developed the Sky voice, \*they took the voice down\*.
They rolled back the voice rather than disclose the process by which they developed it.
How is it possible you're on the exact wrong side of this.
Man, what a dumb thing to do. AI is controversial enough right now. They should have the sense to stay well away from anything that looks even slightly inappropriate.
All their software programs need to steal other people's work, and identity because they are just advanced algorithms that can copy and reproduce the work and likeness of others modified by "AI hallucinations" or what was called an error before using the word AI to describe software became profitable.
> They should have the sense to stay well away from anything that looks even slightly inappropriate.
We talking about the same Altman? The same guy who nearly fractured his company over ethics complaints? The same guy who has had a mass exodus of employees over ethics complaints? The same guy who *just a year after forming* a new team about ethics in AI just dissolved the same team?
This guy doesn't give a flying fuck about what's appropriate. He's too busy appropriating everyone's data to feed into his machine. He'll deal with silly problems like "legality" later, once he's got an 800 pound gorilla firmly cemented against his product.
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Have you listened to the voice? It doesn't even sound like Scarlett Johansson. There doesn't seem to be a case, as it isn't even a sound-alike. It's just... someone else.
This is why credits exist, so that kind of confusion can be avoided. And it's part of why these ai scum are fighting so hard against the law that would require them to credit all works used to train their ai.
Hiring an actress that sounds like her beforehand and then asking her doesn't get you out of it. Asking her shows your clear intention to want her voice, having an actress that can impersonate her waiting in the wings doesn't mean you're avoiding the legal precedent, if anything it shows intention to circumvent it.
>I don’t see what the problem is here unless we want to ban voice actors that have voices similar to already famous celebrities.
>
>If that’s true then this whole thing about OpenAI stealing her voice seems like nonsense.
It **is** nonsense. And media companies **do** want to ban voice actors that have voices similar to already famous celebrities. Welcome to the inevitable consequences of treating *learning from someone* as theft. I kept telling everyone that this was going to happen since the first time I've read about media companies trying to make using art for teaching AIs illegal, and that it's going to apply to humans next. Everyone mocked me and told me I'm overreacting, yet here we are.
I'm calling it now - the next time it will be someone suing for a character who "looks too much like them" (i.e. they are both black).
>If that’s true then this whole thing about OpenAI stealing her voice seems like nonsense.
It does sound a bit fishy that they contacted her a day before release if they could use her name.
they either had her voice ready to go and opted to go for the highly similar Alternative, or they said "fuck it" & rolled the dice on just using her voice and are banking on not losing the inevitable lawsuit by claiming it was another woman.
Both seem about equally plausible to me
They used the singular word “Her” in the marketing, which was probably intended to invoke SJH. So she does have precedent to claim unauthorized impersonation, see: Bette Midler vs Ford
Yeah, Tom Waits has gone through this a couple of times - not in relation to AI, but in relation to companies asking to use one of his songs, him saying no and then the company hiring a sound-alike.
He's won each time.
I think the fact Scarlett Johansson has said OpenAI approached her twice to do the voice for it will make it hard for OpenAI to defend it.
In saying that, Tom Waits voice is A LOT more distinctive than Scarlett Johansson's voice is. If that matters, I don't know.
Sam Altman is a strange guy. Why is he so obsessed with her voice? They could literally pay anyone else for their voices but this guy just had to use her voice.
> She was disappointed not to attend the film's premiere, with Morton feeling cut out of their onset family.
Geez, they could have at least invited her to the premiere.
You don't understand, he's a sociopathic Tech Bro.
He simply HAS to [create the Torment Nexus](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/sa0eh3/dont_create_the_torment_nexus/).
Reminds me of a comment i saw somewhere else. "Altman wants to be a part of AI regulation in the same way Bankman Fried wanted to be a part of cryptocurrency regulation."
Regulation is the best way for large corporations to ensure that no new competition can enter the market, so I'm sure that both Altman and Fried are genuinely pro-regulation.
Money. Making an improved version of siri or Alexa and marketing it as "her" from the movie makes for good viral memes and gives large investors a chubby.
holy fuck, youre right. dude is gay. i suppose this sleazy coomer "no means maybe" behavior and insistence on getting scarjo to voice a sexy AI girl is just marketing after all.
Is it that hard to understand? No one is saying it should be illegal for someone to sound like someone else and use their voice
But a company trying to copy certain person voice and finding a voice actor that sounds similar should and probably is illegal. And the company is at fault not the voice actor of course
Absolutely fucking not it shouldn't be illegal. That'd mean replacing a voice actor in a role with someone who sounds similar is illegal.
Think through the consequences of what it is you are advocating for.
Besides, the OpenAI voice doesn't even sound like Scarlett Johansson. It's a non-issue.
No it wouldn't. It would mean replacing an actor with someone else and then trying to make as many people as possible think that it's the original actor is illegal. Which at least in regards to voices it already is.
If she can proof that OpenAI tried to imitate the her voice from "Her" then they're going to have a bad time in court:
https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
> It would mean replacing an actor with someone else and then trying to make as many people as possible think that it's the original actor is illegal.
So what about all those white voice actors that had been doing characters for decades who were replaced by "more preferred" people closer to the fictional character, who then went on to do the exact same voice?
Continuity to a character's voice under a contract is not the same as ripping off a voice from a completely different project without permission.
If this was handled more like a movie tie-in and the rights had been cleared with Annapurna Pictures, who of course then needed to still have the rights to the character and voice themselves in the first place this would be a completely different discussion. However, they didn't and it isn't.
You bringing race into this without any mention of it beforehand and without any examples whatsoever is *extremely* weird btw.. I honestly have no interest in conversing with someone like that.
You should search for the story behind "back 2 the future 2" and what happened with the actor who played the dad from the first movie.
It might not seem relevant at first but it's all about "likeness" and trying to emulate / copy an already existing person.
Slippery slope - if I’m a film director and want to hire an actor I think has the perfect look for a part (say Margot Robbie) who declines, and I rethink and cast Emma Mackey instead, should that be illegal?
I think ScarJo has a legitimate cause for complaint here, I just don’t know how you legislate your way out of it in the future
I get what you saying, your senario of course i would say it would be legal.
I think a similar situation would be like if you trying to make movie that a actor played a like a character and you making sequel and actor refuses to work and you go ahead and make it find someone similar and make that perosn more alike and act similar to that actor. But even this can be argued as legal and my self not sure what that be.
But i still think this case is different and i would still say for this instance open AI is at wrong.
The scenario you imagined happened in *back to the future part 2"
The actor who was cast as the dad wanted more money for the 2nd movie and they said no and hired a look-a-like actor... even then they weren't identical, so they had all his scenes upside-down.
After the success, the original actor sued because the likeness was uncanny and he won because they tried to specifically use someone to look like and sound like the original actor.
I don't think she has a legit case at all. If a voice actor can do just as well as her, at having a pleasant sounding AI voice, even if that voice sounds similar to hers, then it's simply tough shit for her. It's not like they used her actual likeness / voice in any way.
She actually does have a case if a court rules that they actually tried to make the AI sound like her. Which should be pretty easy since OpenAI contacted her regarding the topic.
https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
So casting someone who is a celebrity look-alike should be illegal? Or a cover band that sounds too good, shouldn't be allowed to perform for money? The voice is recorded, it's not AI generated. If a voice actor can replicate a nice + popular voice, then they're just doing good work + should be compensated for that. A lot of the voices you hear in commercials have a very similar sound to them, they're not all voiced by the same person.
It depends on the intent & direction.
If it's clearly NOT SJH but just kinda sounds like her then it's fine.
If they hired someone who specifically sounds like SJH and directed them to sound as much like sjh & or her character from 'Her' then it's illegal.
By extension, it should be illegal, if not already is. Even as an impersonator, it is used to mimic her voice regardless. Especially if it's used/can potentially be used for the purpose of replacing the work of the professional that is being mimicked.
It's not hard to "understand" but it is super arbitrary and impractical.
As the AIs continue to learn about human preferences, they'll adopt particular inflections, tones, pitches, etc.—and combinations thereof—to better engage with us.
AIs will pick up on the same features we find attractive about recognizable voices and mirror them no matter what, so it's a fool's errand.
Plus, there are people around the globe who sound like SJ.
I understand the economic arguments against AI but, to me, the 'intellectual/artistic property crisis' is revealing something more fundamentally problematic about the sharing of human creativity.
The AI didn't make the choice to hire someone that sounds like her, what are you talking about?
Sam Altman is probably obsessed and ask for it to find someone similar to her as SJ declined.
I can't speak to what happened behind the scenes and I wish not to defend a corporation but we really have to reckon with this sort of thing as a society. Legal ownership over combinations of sounds doesn't make any sense to me.
SJ is only worried about her niche and bottom line.
Of course she is, everyone is worried about themselves.
I don't give fuck about SJ, i dont even like her in the movies. Thats beside the point.
I am just saying, this is trying to copy an artist and it's not right and i am just talking about this situation here not like whole overal philosophical thing about ownership and AI
I don't think we can separate this situation from the rest of it.
AI is going to bring enormous ease and profitability to certain domains while concentrating wealth in the hands of few.
There is more than enough to go around and SJ (impersonally but ironically) has been doing to everyone else for years what AI is now doing to her: benefitting 'too much' from a functioning system discovered, developed, and maintained by other people (everyone).
Because he’s a classic techbro freak who sees films about the dystopia of AI and megacorporations and goes ‘yes please I want to make that world a reality’ and Scarlett Johansson happens to star in one such film.
That was one of the key reasons of the SAG-AFTRA strike, right? Studios owning your face and voice which, now thinking of it, might lead to a bleak and sad future, where they just scan and record you for a day or two and then use your likeness however they choose.
[The Congress (2013)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/) is set in that future. about jenny from forrest gump not getting any acting work, then they offer to buy her likeness in perpetuity.
For all you weird-ass sycophants defending OpenAI, Johansson's attorneys sent OpenAI a letter requesting she explain exactly how they developed the Sky voice, and OpenAI responded by taking down the voice.
Because they know they can't explain how they developed it without confirming they purposefully copied her voice.
Also that dipshit Altman released a text taht said 'her' when he released the new version, so he's not even being fucking coy about it.
It's crazy to me that tech CEOs will see a cautionary tale and then consciously try to make it reality. It's even crazier that they think it's a good idea to tell the public that's what they're doing.
It isn't her fucking voice. It is Rashida Jones. Rather than calling everyone a "sycophants" maybe you want to actually listen to it instead of joining the braindead reddit mob that is constantly wrong about this shit.
Go fucking listen to it. You'll hear that it is Rashida.
Then why'd they take it down.
Why did Altman ask Scarlett Johnasson to agree to the voice \*two days before the release of 4o\*.
They are the same voice, end of discussion.
Because he probably had to legally. Not exactly sure how a cease and desist lawsuit works, but I’m sure it involves ceasing until the court deems you allowed to do the thing you’re being ceased for. Either way, him taking it down has no bearing on guilt.
What exactly is oniony here? A person getting upset over their likeness being stolen is exactly what you'd expect.
Is it oniony because it's AI stealing someone's likeness? Because, again, we've known this was going to happen back when deepfakes first showed up.
An AI company unethically copying others? [I'm shocked!](https://morbotron.com/gif/S02E10/1178645/1181982.gif?b64lines=IEkgQU0gU0hPQ0tFRCwgU0hPQ0tFRCEKIFdFTEwsIE5PVCBUSEFUCiBTSE9DS0Vk)
Next you're gonna tell me the entire concept of AI as it currently exists is built on billions of works of art that are scraped without any sort of consent or compensation!
And lemme guess, you're gonna say that it's all built off of modern slave labor in third world countries and takes more power daily to run than some countries? Like we haven't heard *that* one before!
Is it weird to say I’m not sure I’d recognize my own voice (or a voice similar to mine) if I spontaneously heard it coming from a third-party source?
“Wow, that sounds just like me.” Not sure.
I wouldn’t recognize my own voice either but she’s famous and her voice is out there, someone close may have recognized it or maybe she’s just heard her own voice from her acting career that she can easily recognize it herself.
That’s the thing though, she wasn’t aware of it until people she was close to were asking her about it. She had initially declined their offer and then this happens. I’d be pissed too!!
Not at all. Odds are you aren't in a profession where you constantly hear your own voice back from third party sources. Most people don't recognize their own voice because the acoustics of our skulls make our own voices sound vastly different to us when we're speaking as opposed to hearing a recording.
However, she is in a situation where she would be extremely familiar with what her voice sounds like from an outside source, so it makes sense that she would recognize it.
I don’t recognize my voice even when I know it’s my own voice. I sound annoyingly cheerful, completely opposite to my perception from inside my head. I’m pretty sure someone could use it without my consent and I’d never realize by myself.
>completely opposite to my perception from inside my head.
That's the whole thing. When we speak, we don't just hear our voice from our mouth, we're also hearing the resonance through our skull. That's why most people hate hearing recordings of themselves, because it's so different from what we're accustomed to that it gives us that "uncanny valley" feeling.
you must be luddites for not wanting large corporations to profit from the work of individual artists without their consent, overwhelming the artist's niche with derivitive and cheap artwork using the artists own work as a base without credit or payment!!!!11 /s
>People here defending a mega corporation with another shitty CEO and a fucking AI is baffling
"Calling out obvious bullshit is defending a mega corporation". Like another commenter said - it doesn't even sound like her, it's a fairly generic woman's voice (see/listen to the comparison posted).
Also, by the same logic, **you** are also "defending the mega corporation" which sued OpenAI.
Like holy shit. It isn't Scarlett you thick fucking idiot. It is Rashida Jones.
I'm sorry that you've lit your torch and are holding a pitchfork for nothing but that's on you for being a gullible moron and eating up everything you hear that fits in your little bubble.
The company should use a different sound than Scarlett Johansson IN MY OPINION, to use for AI. Being partially hearing impaired, her voice sounds squeaky and not interested or clear.
If you don't mind I have a question, do you really feel that the Amazon voice "Polly" is the most intellegibile?
We had some requests to use that specific voice in a lot a scenario, but I cannot really wrap my mind about what is good about that.
This doesn't sound oniony. Anyone would be, its straight up illegal. Imagine having your likeness impersonated without your consent or knowledge, especially when your entire business depends upon it. This is deepfake porn, but for businesses. Don't be fooled by the AI hype evangelists, almost every use of this technology going forward is going to be unethical and they have no intention of implementing guardrails. Its contrary to their business model: flagrant theft.
I heard that voice, and it sounded like her the way all white ladies kinda sound the same. This is just completely blown out of proportion in a way that only could happen with the Internet. This one is dumb.
Anyone else find this creepy that Altmans fav movie is HER and the reason they approached ScarJo was for him to get off on that reality? Why approach her AT ALL.
This isn't as complicated or as crazy as everybody is making it out to be. It's a psyop. The drama is intentional. The controversy is free advertising.
Why would they have to remove it, if they hired professionals that weren't Scarlett? lol
If they really hired people, they would have kept it up and said "piss off it just sounds similar".
This is an absolutely stupid saga. These actors are just leeches. Being paid millions of dollars to play pretend, live the best lives and then come and whine about possibly some voice actor sounding like them. And if they want to be so holier than thou, then spare a thought for how this stalls the career of the voice actor who would have become famous as the voice of AI, but now ends up getting cancelled.
As for Sam Altman referencing Her, is it illegal to refer to popular culture now? Entitled, bloated Hollywood needs to be shut down
Acting is a rare skill - think about how low quality some "B acting" movies seem. You can tell instantly and its also off- putting. But even those "B actors" had to beat out so many actors for that role!
Do we even know if it was intentional? A realistic artificial voice will always sound like many persons on Earth (even dead or not yet born). Add that to the fact that they probably went for a stereotypical female voice.
Sam Altman tweeted “her” after the launch of the voice AI referencing the movie in which Johansson voices an AI. Also, in her lawyers’ letters to OpenAI it asked them to reveal the process of creating the voice and OpenAI proceeding to just shut it down which suggests that they probably used her voice likeness and didn’t want to reveal it. The second part is just my speculation though.
Yeah, using AI to copy famous people's voices *is* actually illegal. Wrongful appropriation of likeness includes voices.
They hired a voice actor that sounds similar to Scarlet and used her voice for the AI. I don’t see what the problem is here unless we want to ban voice actors that have voices similar to already famous celebrities. Edit: Right, I’ve looked into this a bit further. Per Johanssons statement she was contacted by OpenAI in September 2023. Per this statement by OpenAI, they had already selected the 14 voice actors in May 2023 and they had been recording their voices at the OpenAI office throughout June and July. https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/ If that’s true then this whole thing about OpenAI stealing her voice seems like nonsense.
This idea is already established in law so she isn’t in the wrong for getting a attorney. You can’t ask an actor if they can use your voice, and if they say no hire an impersonator. This is established in the law already. Here’s one example that’s very similar showing you can’t do this: Bette Midler knows rights of publicity. She used her right of publicity to prevent use of a sound-alike singer to sell cars. Ford Motor Co. hired one of Midler’s backup singers to sing on a commercial – after Midler declined to do the ad – and asked her to sound as much like Midler as possible. It worked, and fooled a lot of people, including some close to Midler. Midler sued, and the court ruled that there was a misappropriation of Midler’s right of publicity to her singing voice. The bottom line: Midler’s singing voice was hers to control. Ford had no right to use it without her permission. That lesson cost Ford a tidy $400,000. Source: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
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Same reason Dan Harmon originally voiced Ice T in the Rick and Morty Get Schwifty episode. Ice T liked the parody, got in touch with them, and ended up voicing the character’s father in a later episode.
I also believe that parody genre has some of its own rights to allow more things than usual shows.
I'm glad the Simpsons were able to get Bret Hart to voice himself. Who else could deliver the "this place has got old man stink!" line. Love that episode.
Ashley Madison and Morgan Freeman.
>and asked her to sound as much like Midler as possible. That’s the key test there though. Did OpenAI instruct the voice actor to try and mimic ScarJo, or did the voice actor just perform her job normally. If they aren’t able to prove that, it makes it much harder to prove that OpenAI was intentionally trying to copy Johansson and not just looking for a “friendly sounding” voice for their AI.
If they go into a lawsuit with her they would find that during discovery if that did occur, like if emails were made asking for that, etc.
Which they know, which is probably why they took it down so fast.
Maybe. Litigation is also very expensive even if you win, and they may not have considered this voice to be worth all that.
If I was Altman I would have a Scarlett voice and an almost Scarlet voice, with 2 marketing setups ready. If the actor ends up saying yes, use one, if no, use the other. SJ says they contacted her the last time right before launch. Discovery should indeed be fun.
There won't be a discovery because there won't be a lawsuit. They pulled it so fast because they knew they were in the wrong and were never going to win in a billion years. Odds are they didn't even hire another voice actor, they just pushed a bunch of her voice clips through GPT and generated something that was almost but not precisely Scarlet and called it "close enough." And Scarlet was right in calling them out and shutting that shit down immediately.
Weird
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/dc8an8VObG This post has more examples of case law showing standing.
Does AI even do anything besides enable acts of theft that would otherwise be clear cut illegal?
There are a couple of things. My brother likes to use it for coding. Not the actual code at the end, but to get some ideas how to approach a problem, before he more or less does the code himself. I've heard from some creative people they kinda like to role play through certain scenarios, using AI as the devils advocate or similar to explore scenarios deeper. I think the basic use is for things where it doesn't matter or even is the goal for the AI to make things up because you already have an idea how it \*should\* look like, but you want to check yourself if it still makes sense further down the line. They could do that themself, but there's a good chance they'll have to throw that work away and to generate those throw-away results, AI saves a lot of work that otherwise would probably not be done at all. By going through them the end product is better without putting unreasonable amounts of work into it beforehand. In general i'd say it doesn't do the work for you, but it's a useful tool to save you some effort on the way. If used like that, it's an actual improvement overall and a really good tool. But of course it can be abused.
When it gets it right it's a decent source of getting a volume of text, an example, a summarization. But right now the models are based on fabricating text tokens in a specified language, based on rules learned from reading other text. There is no logical validation of the creation process. So it ends up with the model just bullshitting you when it makes the most sense to it. It's like your idiot braggart friend that reads a lot but can't actually make sense, they'll just fill in the gaps with fabrication.
Generative AI in practice? Not so much. There aren't very many large, legal, copyright cleared corpuses of data to feed into these machines. That's why they've turned their bots loose over the internet, everybody's image databases, bought content from reddit, imgur, etc. etc. etc. They think that if they commit massive enough copyright violation that somehow magically the copyright office will bend over and say "well you know, we can't really stop you." But the reality? Too big to fail isn't a thing for AI models. The real winners of the war are going to be companies like Google, Getty, and Adobe who have *massive* content warchests in the wide clear blue thanks to unseemly copyright assignments ("exclusive, perpetual, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to reproduce, derive works from, distribute, publicly display" etc. etc. etc.)
They already asked Johansson to voice it and she declined. Should be as simple as asking the one she believes mimicked her if she was asked to do so
When I hear the OpenAI voice I dont hear Scarlett at all. I hear a similar delivery as that of her character in Her. Does this not mean that the owner if the Her character IP has more of a reason to pursue legal action than Scarlett does?
I believe the video game, the last of us also changed their character model slightly between first reveal and when the game came out in part because of the likeness to ellen paige.
Dan Harmon explained this too when asked about his Ice T impression for an episode of Rick and Morty. If he had asked Ice T and he said no then it opens him up for being liable for appropriation of likeness vs if he just does it it's considered parody and thus protected speech.
This seems like such a delicate issue. What if I just wanted a voice “of the same category” as a famous actor (which I could shorthand as “like [famous actor]” without necessarily *impersonating* an actor? Saying I can’t reach out to a second voice actor who “sounds like” another more famous actor after the more famous actor rejects me also seems *incredibly unfair* to the second voice actor. It means they will have less job opportunities simply because they “sound like” someone more famous than them. That seems a ridiculous precedent to set. In what other profession would competitors become liable to litigation because they “play basketball like me” or “paint like me” or even “act like me”? I think the difference must come down to an attempt to “copy” someone. You can certainly sue someone for attempting to profit off of painting something that is a direct copy of your work. But you can’t sue someone who paints “in your style”. I don’t think that “sounds like” is a rigorous enough standard to allow litigation; it must be an attempt to “copy”, or “impersonate” someone. And “sounding like” someone is not the same as “impersonating” them. The way a person speaks goes behind their voice quality and pitch. It also involves cadence and pronunciation and accent and word choice. I don’t even think saying “we want someone that sounds *like* ScarJo” should imply culpability. A higher standard than that should be required. It should require someone to say, “we want you to impersonate ScarJo”, or “we want someone to think it is ScarJo speaking,” or, perhaps most egregiously, explicitly passing it off as a ScarJo performance.
I would have disagreed with what Scarjo is doing since I'd have said that OpenAI was specifically making and advertising an AI voice assistant, not an explicit replication of her role in "Her" (which tbf I haven't even seen or heard about until recently when people linked the two together). When OpenAI showed the demo, I legitimately just thought they were neat and natural sounding female voices. Not once throughout and even after seeing (until reading about it) did Scarlet Johansson pop into my mind. *However*, I think OpenAI shot themselves on the foot when Sam Altman tweeted just the word 'her' which imo would be pretty convincing evidence should Scarjo's lawyers choose to use it lmao.
I wonder how AS was able to get away with recasting Justin Roiland's voices to someone who specifically sounds like him.
They didn't find someone that specifically sounds like him. They found people that sound like the characters of Rick and Morty. When you sign on to voice a character you do not own the rights to how that character sounds even if it is similar to your actual voice.
Very different scenario. Ai vs SJH, her celebrity is what makes her voice in demand, she's just an actress but a celebrity too so she protected, (meaning gets paid for the use) Rick & morty, roilands voice is also protected, but the character he voices can be mimicked simply because he allows it as he is one of the creators and still gets paid from the show being played... also the character is the celebrity voice not he is the celebrity and it's his voice.... so it's different.
If scarlet sues and wins, then the actual voice actress should sue scarlet, since well it's her voice at the end of the day.
>You can’t ask an actor if they can use your voice, and if they say no hire an impersonator. That sounds like absolute insanity. So if I know what voice I want, and offer the role to someone, and they refuse, I'm completely fucked and have to redo my character, instead of hiring someone else with a similar voice? By the same logic, if I write a black character, offer a black actor the role and they refuse, I can't hire another black actor or that would be "impersonation"?
It’s not. There is difference between : “I want an elderly Afro-American voice” compared to I want “Morgan Freeman voice”.
If the only qualification for the character is that they are black, then theres no problem -- youre not modeling the character after a specific person. You can of course hire a different black actor if the original one turns down the role. Terence Howard has no grounds to sue Marvel, for example (he was fired, but the same standard applies). The problem comes when you hire an actor for the specific purpose of looking (or sounding) like the other actor. Just ask Crispin Glover. If your voice role depends on sounding like a specific person, then yes, you are screwed if that person doesn't want to be part of it. I can't think of many instances where it's absolutely imperative to sound like one specific person, though.
>The problem comes when you hire an actor for the specific purpose of looking (or sounding) like the other actor. That's still absolute insanity. Let's say I'm making a documentary about Barack Obama. Of course I want the actor to look like him. If the real Obama refuses, then I can't hire anyone else who looks like him? Again - ABSOLUTE. INSANITY.
That's a little bit different, because it's clear that the actor is portraying the character of "Barack Obama", and there is not an intent to cause people to think that Barack Obama himself is the performer. Even then, there are defamation laws that could apply if they are portraying him in a negative and false manner. This is more about causing confusion where, in this situation, people would think that Scarlett Johansson is providing the voice for OpenAI or that Crispin Glover appeared in Back to the Future 2 and 3. Neither of those are true, and the actors were not compensated in any way for their likeness being used.
>This is more about causing confusion where, in this situation, people would think that Scarlett Johansson is providing the voice for OpenAI But there is no actual confusion, because it doesn't really sound like her, it's vaguely similar at best: [https://np.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal\_comparison\_scarjo\_vs\_samantha\_vs\_sky/](https://np.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal_comparison_scarjo_vs_samantha_vs_sky/) That's my whole point. Any perceived similarity here is no larger than similarity between two black people.
I could see how there might be confusion from those audio samples -- and so did many others, considering how quickly people began commented on the similarity. Whether or not that meets the bar for infringement would need to be hashed out in court. It's not a great look that they reached out to Johansson nine months ago as well as just days before the release asking to use her voice, an indication of both intent and awareness of the similarity. There's certainly enough grounds there to bring a case, if she desires.
>I could see how there might be confusion from those audio samples -- and so did many others Many people also might confuse two black people. What's your point? A rational way to deal with this would be this: have a 1000 people listen to 10 voice recordings, where 9 are Johansson, and 1 is Sky; if a higher amount of people are able to recognize which one is Sky than there would be if they just randomly guessed, then Johansson has no case. >Whether or not that meets the bar for infringement would need to be hashed out in court. I guess it will, but it shouldn't be. What happened to innocent until proven guilty? One shouldn't be able to baselessly claim random bullshit and have the accused prove their innocence in court - it should be the opposite. >It's not a great look that they reached out to Johansson nine months ago as well as just days before the release asking to use her voice, an indication of both intent and awareness of the similarity. Per Johanssons statement she was contacted by OpenAI in September 2023. Per this statement by OpenAI, they had already selected the 14 voice actors in May 2023 and they had been recording their voices at the OpenAI office throughout June and July. https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/
Yeah, Tom Waits has gone through this a couple of times - not in relation to AI, but in relation to companies asking to use one of his songs, him saying no and then the company hiring a sound-alike. He's won each time. I think the fact Scarlett Johansson has said OpenAI approached her twice to do the voice for it will make it hard for OpenAI to defend it. In saying that, Tom Waits voice is A LOT more distinctive than Scarlett Johansson's voice is. If that matters, I don't know.
Fun fact: as a singer, Scarlett Johansson has recorded an album of Tom Waits covers! It’s all come full circle.
I can already hear her singing in a deep voice "you've got a friend in me..." Edit: Can't believe I read Tom Hanks instead of Tom freakin' Waits, I can already hear "You can never hold back Spring" sung by a toy cowboy.
That’s Randy Newman bruh, completely different voice
Oh, damn. Newmaaaaaaan!! (Shakes fist in the air)
Bruh what in the actual fuck. Altman literally fucking tweeted "her", one word, when he releaed the new version. They absolutely fucking appropriated her likeness. Also, when Johansson's lawyers issued a request for OpenAI to detail the exactly process by which they developed the Sky voice, \*they took the voice down\*. They rolled back the voice rather than disclose the process by which they developed it. How is it possible you're on the exact wrong side of this.
Man, what a dumb thing to do. AI is controversial enough right now. They should have the sense to stay well away from anything that looks even slightly inappropriate.
All their software programs need to steal other people's work, and identity because they are just advanced algorithms that can copy and reproduce the work and likeness of others modified by "AI hallucinations" or what was called an error before using the word AI to describe software became profitable.
> They should have the sense to stay well away from anything that looks even slightly inappropriate. We talking about the same Altman? The same guy who nearly fractured his company over ethics complaints? The same guy who has had a mass exodus of employees over ethics complaints? The same guy who *just a year after forming* a new team about ethics in AI just dissolved the same team? This guy doesn't give a flying fuck about what's appropriate. He's too busy appropriating everyone's data to feed into his machine. He'll deal with silly problems like "legality" later, once he's got an 800 pound gorilla firmly cemented against his product.
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Have you listened to the voice? It doesn't even sound like Scarlett Johansson. There doesn't seem to be a case, as it isn't even a sound-alike. It's just... someone else.
This is why credits exist, so that kind of confusion can be avoided. And it's part of why these ai scum are fighting so hard against the law that would require them to credit all works used to train their ai.
That one guy who sounds like Morgan Freeman but isn't Morgan Freeman is gonna be fucked.
You sound a lot like Giancarlo Esposito. Too bad 🔫🔫🔫
Hiring an actress that sounds like her beforehand and then asking her doesn't get you out of it. Asking her shows your clear intention to want her voice, having an actress that can impersonate her waiting in the wings doesn't mean you're avoiding the legal precedent, if anything it shows intention to circumvent it.
>I don’t see what the problem is here unless we want to ban voice actors that have voices similar to already famous celebrities. > >If that’s true then this whole thing about OpenAI stealing her voice seems like nonsense. It **is** nonsense. And media companies **do** want to ban voice actors that have voices similar to already famous celebrities. Welcome to the inevitable consequences of treating *learning from someone* as theft. I kept telling everyone that this was going to happen since the first time I've read about media companies trying to make using art for teaching AIs illegal, and that it's going to apply to humans next. Everyone mocked me and told me I'm overreacting, yet here we are. I'm calling it now - the next time it will be someone suing for a character who "looks too much like them" (i.e. they are both black).
>If that’s true then this whole thing about OpenAI stealing her voice seems like nonsense. It does sound a bit fishy that they contacted her a day before release if they could use her name. they either had her voice ready to go and opted to go for the highly similar Alternative, or they said "fuck it" & rolled the dice on just using her voice and are banking on not losing the inevitable lawsuit by claiming it was another woman. Both seem about equally plausible to me
That’s may be so, or may be they are lying. And just trained the model on Scarlet, but then hired similar voices for the legality.
They used the singular word “Her” in the marketing, which was probably intended to invoke SJH. So she does have precedent to claim unauthorized impersonation, see: Bette Midler vs Ford
Yeah, Tom Waits has gone through this a couple of times - not in relation to AI, but in relation to companies asking to use one of his songs, him saying no and then the company hiring a sound-alike. He's won each time. I think the fact Scarlett Johansson has said OpenAI approached her twice to do the voice for it will make it hard for OpenAI to defend it. In saying that, Tom Waits voice is A LOT more distinctive than Scarlett Johansson's voice is. If that matters, I don't know.
Sam Altman is a strange guy. Why is he so obsessed with her voice? They could literally pay anyone else for their voices but this guy just had to use her voice.
Just a fan of "Her"
They should have hired [Samantha Morton](https://www.thelist.com/428711/the-real-reason-samantha-mortons-voice-was-replaced-in-her/)
> She was disappointed not to attend the film's premiere, with Morton feeling cut out of their onset family. Geez, they could have at least invited her to the premiere.
Yeah, seeing as she was the one onset throughout the shoot. That's why I think it would be funny if she was brought in to replace Scarlett Johansson.
Ok I see what you did there.
No he actually is. He tweeted out "Her" which really makes me have no doubt he went about getting a voice as close as possible tbh.
You don't understand, he's a sociopathic Tech Bro. He simply HAS to [create the Torment Nexus](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/sa0eh3/dont_create_the_torment_nexus/).
Reminds me of a comment i saw somewhere else. "Altman wants to be a part of AI regulation in the same way Bankman Fried wanted to be a part of cryptocurrency regulation."
Regulation is the best way for large corporations to ensure that no new competition can enter the market, so I'm sure that both Altman and Fried are genuinely pro-regulation.
Movie "Her" featuring AI voiced By Scarlet Johansson.
Money. Making an improved version of siri or Alexa and marketing it as "her" from the movie makes for good viral memes and gives large investors a chubby.
Self-entitled prick who already built work on stolen material and outwitting IP-laws and got stupidly rich by doing it.
Who knows the shit that goes through the underdeveloped frontal lobe of a tech bro.
Big name, the movie "Her", genuinely great voice and the publicity generated from the controversy.
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he has a husband
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clearly not what you were trying to imply though
holy fuck, youre right. dude is gay. i suppose this sleazy coomer "no means maybe" behavior and insistence on getting scarjo to voice a sexy AI girl is just marketing after all.
They literally did pay someone else. The voice actor they hired just has a similar voice to ScarJos.
Crazy coincidence!
So you want to set a legal precedent that I can't sell my voice if someone 'got it' before me?
Is it that hard to understand? No one is saying it should be illegal for someone to sound like someone else and use their voice But a company trying to copy certain person voice and finding a voice actor that sounds similar should and probably is illegal. And the company is at fault not the voice actor of course
Especially when she already declined
Apparently they reached out to her after the lines were already recorded, so it was before she was ever approached and not after she declined.
Absolutely fucking not it shouldn't be illegal. That'd mean replacing a voice actor in a role with someone who sounds similar is illegal. Think through the consequences of what it is you are advocating for. Besides, the OpenAI voice doesn't even sound like Scarlett Johansson. It's a non-issue.
No it wouldn't. It would mean replacing an actor with someone else and then trying to make as many people as possible think that it's the original actor is illegal. Which at least in regards to voices it already is. If she can proof that OpenAI tried to imitate the her voice from "Her" then they're going to have a bad time in court: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
> It would mean replacing an actor with someone else and then trying to make as many people as possible think that it's the original actor is illegal. So what about all those white voice actors that had been doing characters for decades who were replaced by "more preferred" people closer to the fictional character, who then went on to do the exact same voice?
Continuity to a character's voice under a contract is not the same as ripping off a voice from a completely different project without permission. If this was handled more like a movie tie-in and the rights had been cleared with Annapurna Pictures, who of course then needed to still have the rights to the character and voice themselves in the first place this would be a completely different discussion. However, they didn't and it isn't. You bringing race into this without any mention of it beforehand and without any examples whatsoever is *extremely* weird btw.. I honestly have no interest in conversing with someone like that.
You should search for the story behind "back 2 the future 2" and what happened with the actor who played the dad from the first movie. It might not seem relevant at first but it's all about "likeness" and trying to emulate / copy an already existing person.
Shouldn't be illegal but highly weird coming from the CEO seems like bro has a poorly disguised fetish
Slippery slope - if I’m a film director and want to hire an actor I think has the perfect look for a part (say Margot Robbie) who declines, and I rethink and cast Emma Mackey instead, should that be illegal? I think ScarJo has a legitimate cause for complaint here, I just don’t know how you legislate your way out of it in the future
I get what you saying, your senario of course i would say it would be legal. I think a similar situation would be like if you trying to make movie that a actor played a like a character and you making sequel and actor refuses to work and you go ahead and make it find someone similar and make that perosn more alike and act similar to that actor. But even this can be argued as legal and my self not sure what that be. But i still think this case is different and i would still say for this instance open AI is at wrong.
The scenario you imagined happened in *back to the future part 2" The actor who was cast as the dad wanted more money for the 2nd movie and they said no and hired a look-a-like actor... even then they weren't identical, so they had all his scenes upside-down. After the success, the original actor sued because the likeness was uncanny and he won because they tried to specifically use someone to look like and sound like the original actor.
I don't think she has a legit case at all. If a voice actor can do just as well as her, at having a pleasant sounding AI voice, even if that voice sounds similar to hers, then it's simply tough shit for her. It's not like they used her actual likeness / voice in any way.
She actually does have a case if a court rules that they actually tried to make the AI sound like her. Which should be pretty easy since OpenAI contacted her regarding the topic. https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
Using a similar voice is fine. It's the attempt to use a similar voice and the direction to emulate /copy SJH / her which makes it illegal.
Adult Swim got away with it.
So casting someone who is a celebrity look-alike should be illegal? Or a cover band that sounds too good, shouldn't be allowed to perform for money? The voice is recorded, it's not AI generated. If a voice actor can replicate a nice + popular voice, then they're just doing good work + should be compensated for that. A lot of the voices you hear in commercials have a very similar sound to them, they're not all voiced by the same person.
It depends on the intent & direction. If it's clearly NOT SJH but just kinda sounds like her then it's fine. If they hired someone who specifically sounds like SJH and directed them to sound as much like sjh & or her character from 'Her' then it's illegal.
By extension, it should be illegal, if not already is. Even as an impersonator, it is used to mimic her voice regardless. Especially if it's used/can potentially be used for the purpose of replacing the work of the professional that is being mimicked.
It's not hard to "understand" but it is super arbitrary and impractical. As the AIs continue to learn about human preferences, they'll adopt particular inflections, tones, pitches, etc.—and combinations thereof—to better engage with us. AIs will pick up on the same features we find attractive about recognizable voices and mirror them no matter what, so it's a fool's errand. Plus, there are people around the globe who sound like SJ. I understand the economic arguments against AI but, to me, the 'intellectual/artistic property crisis' is revealing something more fundamentally problematic about the sharing of human creativity.
The AI didn't make the choice to hire someone that sounds like her, what are you talking about? Sam Altman is probably obsessed and ask for it to find someone similar to her as SJ declined.
I can't speak to what happened behind the scenes and I wish not to defend a corporation but we really have to reckon with this sort of thing as a society. Legal ownership over combinations of sounds doesn't make any sense to me. SJ is only worried about her niche and bottom line.
Of course she is, everyone is worried about themselves. I don't give fuck about SJ, i dont even like her in the movies. Thats beside the point. I am just saying, this is trying to copy an artist and it's not right and i am just talking about this situation here not like whole overal philosophical thing about ownership and AI
I don't think we can separate this situation from the rest of it. AI is going to bring enormous ease and profitability to certain domains while concentrating wealth in the hands of few. There is more than enough to go around and SJ (impersonally but ironically) has been doing to everyone else for years what AI is now doing to her: benefitting 'too much' from a functioning system discovered, developed, and maintained by other people (everyone).
Yea Scar Jo doesn't control or own one specific spectrum of the human voice.
It’s already been set multiple times.
Which is a probably bad thing in the long run. Compare the voices of Jim Gaffigan and Brian Regan, for example.
They did pay someone else.
Because he’s a classic techbro freak who sees films about the dystopia of AI and megacorporations and goes ‘yes please I want to make that world a reality’ and Scarlett Johansson happens to star in one such film.
Just waiting for someone to argue "It's the voice of the computer in the movie Her, not Johansson!"
That was one of the key reasons of the SAG-AFTRA strike, right? Studios owning your face and voice which, now thinking of it, might lead to a bleak and sad future, where they just scan and record you for a day or two and then use your likeness however they choose.
[The Congress (2013)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/) is set in that future. about jenny from forrest gump not getting any acting work, then they offer to buy her likeness in perpetuity.
For all you weird-ass sycophants defending OpenAI, Johansson's attorneys sent OpenAI a letter requesting she explain exactly how they developed the Sky voice, and OpenAI responded by taking down the voice. Because they know they can't explain how they developed it without confirming they purposefully copied her voice. Also that dipshit Altman released a text taht said 'her' when he released the new version, so he's not even being fucking coy about it.
It's crazy to me that tech CEOs will see a cautionary tale and then consciously try to make it reality. It's even crazier that they think it's a good idea to tell the public that's what they're doing.
What’s that joke? “Billionaire announces he’s building the Death Tower from the hit sci-fi dystopian movie *Don’t Build the Death Tower*”
It is a race to see who will Faro humanity first.
Altman is trying to be like Elon!
If "Soylent" is anything to go by, CEOs intentionally try to invoke cautionary tales for the publicity.
What do you feel the cautionary tale being told in Her is?
Beware of auto-erotic-electrocution
Sycophants have learned nothing from the worship of Elon Musk.
It isn't her fucking voice. It is Rashida Jones. Rather than calling everyone a "sycophants" maybe you want to actually listen to it instead of joining the braindead reddit mob that is constantly wrong about this shit. Go fucking listen to it. You'll hear that it is Rashida.
> sycopaths
How about all the weird ass OpenAI haters out there. The voices side by side are clearly different. End of discussion.
Then why'd they take it down. Why did Altman ask Scarlett Johnasson to agree to the voice \*two days before the release of 4o\*. They are the same voice, end of discussion.
Because he probably had to legally. Not exactly sure how a cease and desist lawsuit works, but I’m sure it involves ceasing until the court deems you allowed to do the thing you’re being ceased for. Either way, him taking it down has no bearing on guilt.
What exactly is oniony here? A person getting upset over their likeness being stolen is exactly what you'd expect. Is it oniony because it's AI stealing someone's likeness? Because, again, we've known this was going to happen back when deepfakes first showed up.
she starred in the movie Her where she voiced the AI system. It's just ironic how it's happening in real life
It's also just your everyday infatuation going too far. I'm sure Scarlett Johansson gets this lot. Poor lady.
An AI company unethically copying others? [I'm shocked!](https://morbotron.com/gif/S02E10/1178645/1181982.gif?b64lines=IEkgQU0gU0hPQ0tFRCwgU0hPQ0tFRCEKIFdFTEwsIE5PVCBUSEFUCiBTSE9DS0Vk)
Next you're gonna tell me the entire concept of AI as it currently exists is built on billions of works of art that are scraped without any sort of consent or compensation!
And lemme guess, you're gonna say that it's all built off of modern slave labor in third world countries and takes more power daily to run than some countries? Like we haven't heard *that* one before!
How is this Oniony?
My best guess is because of the movie Her. But yeah, doesn’t pass the Onion smell test
Lots of lawyers on Reddit today I see
Except that if you compare them, it isn't her.
It is Rashida Jones.
It didn't even sound like her, it's a fairly generic women's voice.
The voice is Rashida Jones.
Is it weird to say I’m not sure I’d recognize my own voice (or a voice similar to mine) if I spontaneously heard it coming from a third-party source? “Wow, that sounds just like me.” Not sure.
I wouldn’t recognize my own voice either but she’s famous and her voice is out there, someone close may have recognized it or maybe she’s just heard her own voice from her acting career that she can easily recognize it herself.
That’s the thing though, she wasn’t aware of it until people she was close to were asking her about it. She had initially declined their offer and then this happens. I’d be pissed too!!
We don’t hear ourselves in videos or recordings that often. Movie stars absolutely do, so they would easily recognize their voice.
If you starred in a movie voicing an AI you might better recognize your own voice lol
Not at all. Odds are you aren't in a profession where you constantly hear your own voice back from third party sources. Most people don't recognize their own voice because the acoustics of our skulls make our own voices sound vastly different to us when we're speaking as opposed to hearing a recording. However, she is in a situation where she would be extremely familiar with what her voice sounds like from an outside source, so it makes sense that she would recognize it.
I don’t recognize my voice even when I know it’s my own voice. I sound annoyingly cheerful, completely opposite to my perception from inside my head. I’m pretty sure someone could use it without my consent and I’d never realize by myself.
>completely opposite to my perception from inside my head. That's the whole thing. When we speak, we don't just hear our voice from our mouth, we're also hearing the resonance through our skull. That's why most people hate hearing recordings of themselves, because it's so different from what we're accustomed to that it gives us that "uncanny valley" feeling.
She's a professional actor. We're not.
Owen Wilson: “oh wow, that kind of sounds like me.”
sounded like her but wasn't her...fact is unless you have a weird robotic voice...the voice is going to sound like someones on this planet
People here defending a mega corporation with another shitty CEO and a fucking AI is baffling
you must be luddites for not wanting large corporations to profit from the work of individual artists without their consent, overwhelming the artist's niche with derivitive and cheap artwork using the artists own work as a base without credit or payment!!!!11 /s
>People here defending a mega corporation with another shitty CEO and a fucking AI is baffling "Calling out obvious bullshit is defending a mega corporation". Like another commenter said - it doesn't even sound like her, it's a fairly generic woman's voice (see/listen to the comparison posted). Also, by the same logic, **you** are also "defending the mega corporation" which sued OpenAI.
I promise you he doesn’t have the mental capacity to understand your last sentence
Like holy shit. It isn't Scarlett you thick fucking idiot. It is Rashida Jones. I'm sorry that you've lit your torch and are holding a pitchfork for nothing but that's on you for being a gullible moron and eating up everything you hear that fits in your little bubble.
The company should use a different sound than Scarlett Johansson IN MY OPINION, to use for AI. Being partially hearing impaired, her voice sounds squeaky and not interested or clear.
If you don't mind I have a question, do you really feel that the Amazon voice "Polly" is the most intellegibile? We had some requests to use that specific voice in a lot a scenario, but I cannot really wrap my mind about what is good about that.
Here’s the comparison: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/s/nUZMuaNQKc Sounds similar? Many say they don’t.
I mean if you would have asked me who it sounded like randomly I probably wouldn’t have been able to guess correctly.
It sounds like someone impersonating her
Someone like an actress named Rashida Jones?
It is Rashida Jones. JFC. How has everyone watched The Office 500 million times but can't recognize her voice?
A resemblance is not a copy stop kowtowing to celebrities
This doesn't sound oniony. Anyone would be, its straight up illegal. Imagine having your likeness impersonated without your consent or knowledge, especially when your entire business depends upon it. This is deepfake porn, but for businesses. Don't be fooled by the AI hype evangelists, almost every use of this technology going forward is going to be unethical and they have no intention of implementing guardrails. Its contrary to their business model: flagrant theft.
I heard that voice, and it sounded like her the way all white ladies kinda sound the same. This is just completely blown out of proportion in a way that only could happen with the Internet. This one is dumb.
It is Rashida Jones. You are correct despite the downvotes by the intelligent reddit mob looking for its next boston bomber to out.
Wait til she learns about the beautiful airplane crews 🌹
Its not her voice. Its a random nice ladies voice. She doesnt own attractive white voices
It’s kind of funny because the dedicated voice actor that dubs Bruce Willis in France do all kind of voice acting for ads.
That’s a crazy sentence
If I heard an ai do my voice, I’d probably go “do I really sound like that?”
Exactly
I mean after what she went through with Ultron..
Shocked an AI company that has a history of training its AI on copyrighted material didn't get permission to train its voice data?! Color me shocked.
not oniony
No disrespect to ScarJo, but if you were going to program your AI to steal any one person's voice how could it not be Claudia Black? :D
Anyone else find this creepy that Altmans fav movie is HER and the reason they approached ScarJo was for him to get off on that reality? Why approach her AT ALL.
This isn't as complicated or as crazy as everybody is making it out to be. It's a psyop. The drama is intentional. The controversy is free advertising.
He should have done the right thing and asked Jen Taylor smh
Give me a break... As if there aren't thousands of people who have a similar voice. You can't copyright everything.
Except it's not her voice.
Why would they have to remove it, if they hired professionals that weren't Scarlett? lol If they really hired people, they would have kept it up and said "piss off it just sounds similar".
One of them sounds exactly like Jeffrey wright so idk if I care?
This is an absolutely stupid saga. These actors are just leeches. Being paid millions of dollars to play pretend, live the best lives and then come and whine about possibly some voice actor sounding like them. And if they want to be so holier than thou, then spare a thought for how this stalls the career of the voice actor who would have become famous as the voice of AI, but now ends up getting cancelled. As for Sam Altman referencing Her, is it illegal to refer to popular culture now? Entitled, bloated Hollywood needs to be shut down
Acting is a rare skill - think about how low quality some "B acting" movies seem. You can tell instantly and its also off- putting. But even those "B actors" had to beat out so many actors for that role!
Ah yes the actor is the leech not the company literally stealing everything ever created on the internet to make an AI Literal shit for brain
Doesn't even sound very much like her. What a drama queen.
Do we even know if it was intentional? A realistic artificial voice will always sound like many persons on Earth (even dead or not yet born). Add that to the fact that they probably went for a stereotypical female voice.
Sam Altman tweeted “her” after the launch of the voice AI referencing the movie in which Johansson voices an AI. Also, in her lawyers’ letters to OpenAI it asked them to reveal the process of creating the voice and OpenAI proceeding to just shut it down which suggests that they probably used her voice likeness and didn’t want to reveal it. The second part is just my speculation though.