I really hope she sues the company to hell and back. She has the resources to fight back and make an example of them, and they have the resources to make it worthwhile.
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Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
221–230 of 1001 posts
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#222Well, that statement lays out a damning timeline: - OpenAI approached Scarlett last fall, and she refused. - Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted her agent and asked that she reconsider. (Two days! This means they already had everything they needed to ship the product with Scarlett’s cloned voice.) - Not receiving a response, OpenAI demos the product anyway, with Sam tweeting “her” in reference to Scarle…
When people cheat on (relatively) small things, it's usually an indication they'll cheat on big things too
Which is what makes me wonder if this might grow into a galvanizing event for the pro-creator protests against these AI models and companies. What happened here isn't particularly unique to voices or even Scarlett Johansson, it is just how these companies and their products operate in general.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> She choose to forego being a billion lonely guys AI girlfriend To suggest that Johansson’s only appeal is to the opposite gender (and ‘lonely’ ones at that!) I think is myopic and reductive of her impact
That was not an exclusive statement. It can be a billion lonely guys, AND lonely women, AND gregarious enbies, AND everyone else.
Indeed, they can find the male voice equivalent.
Though to be fair I think men are MUCH more susceptible to this than women.
That said, Krazam covered this topic well already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiPQdVC5RHU
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#224Well, that statement lays out a damning timeline: - OpenAI approached Scarlett last fall, and she refused. - Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted her agent and asked that she reconsider. (Two days! This means they already had everything they needed to ship the product with Scarlett’s cloned voice.) - Not receiving a response, OpenAI demos the product anyway, with Sam tweeting “her” in reference to Scarle…
I wouldn't necessarily call that damning. "Soundalikes" are very common in the ad industry.
For example, a car company approached the band sigur ros to include some of their music in a car commercial. Sigur ros declined. A few months later the commercial airs with a song that sounds like an unreleased sigur ros song, but really they just paid a composer to make something that sounds like sigur ros, but isn't. So maybe openai just had a random lady with a voice similar to Scarlett so the recording.
Taking down the voice could just be concern for bad press, or trying to avoid lawsuits regardless of whether you think you are in the right or not. Per this* CNN article:
> Johansson said she hired legal counsel, and said OpenAI “reluctantly agreed” to take down the “Sky” voice after her counsel sent Altman two letters.
So, Johansson's lawyers probably said something like "I'll sue your pants off if you don't take it down". And then they took it down. You can't use that as evidence that they are guilty. It could just as easily be the case that they didn't want to go to court over this even if they thought they were legally above board.
* https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/tech/openai-pausing-flirty-ch...
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's clearly not her voice right? The version that's been on the app for a year just isn't. Like, it clearly intending to be slightly reminiscent of her, but it's also very clearly not. Are we seriously saying we can't make voices that are similar to celebrities, when not using their actual voice?
> Are we seriously saying we can't make voices that are similar to celebrities, when not using their actual voice? They clearly thought it was close enough that they asked for permission, twice. And got two no’s. Going forward with it at that point was super fucked up. It’s very bad to not ask permission when you should. It’s far worse to ask for permission and then ignore the response. Totally ethically bankrupt.
> They clearly thought it was close enough that they asked for permission, twice.
You seem to be misunderstanding the situation here. They wanted ScarJo to voice their voice assistant, and she refused twice. They also independently created a voice assistant which sounds very similar to her. That doesn't mean they thought they had to ask permission for the similar voice assistant.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#226This is the first I've heard of this, but I've used the "Sky" voice extensively and never once thought it sounded like Johansson. Has anyone else noticed a similarity? To me they sound pretty different, Johansson's voice is much more raspy.
Looks like you're not the only one who thinks the voices don't sound similar:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414908
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414923
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40419791
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414802
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414902
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40414713
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40415350
Saw some other posters expressing this view who deleted their posts after getting downvoted, lol.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#227[deleted]
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#228Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#229I found the whole ChatGPT-4o demo to be cringe inducing. The fact that Altman was explicitly, and desperately, trying to copy "her" at least makes it understandable why he didn't veto the bimbo persona - it's actually what he wanted. Great call by Scarlett Johansson in not wanting to be any part of it.
One thing these trained voices make clear is that it's a tts engine generating ChatGPT-4o's speech, same as before. The whole omni-modal spin suggesting that the model is natively consuming and generating speech appears to be bunk.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
OpenAI claimed they hired a different professional actor who performed using her own voice [1]. If so, I suspect they’ll be okay in a court of law — having a voice similar to a celebrity isn’t illegal. It’ll likely cheese off actors and performers though. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/05/20/openai-sa...
Seems like sama may have put a big hole in that argument when he tweeted "her", now it is very easy to say that they knowingly cloned ScarJo's likeness. When will tech leaders learn to stop tweeting.
Or perhaps they cloned a character's likeness?
Is there a distinction?
Are they trying to make it sound like Her, or SJ? Or just trying to go for a similar style? i.e. making artistic choices in designing their product
Note: I've never watched the movie.