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Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

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Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#291

Post by telotortium »

worstspotgain wrote: post #154

Most of the reactions here are in unison, so there's little left to contribute in agreement. I'll ask the devil's advocate / contrarian question: How big a slice of the human voice space does Scarlett lay a claim to? The evidence would be in her favor in a civil court case. OTOH, a less famous woman's claim that any given synthesized voice sounds like hers would probably fail. Contrast this with copyrighted fiction.…

This is almost an identical case, and resulted in a ruling favorable to Midler, whose voice was imitated in that case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#292

Post by voltaireodactyl »

avarun wrote: post #225
ncallaway wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You seem to be misunderstanding the legalities at work here: reaching out to her multiple times beforehand, along with tweets intended to underline the similarity to her work on Her, demonstrates intention. If they didn’t think they needed permission, why ask for permission multiple times and then yank it when she noticed?

Answer: because they knew they needed permission, after working so hard to associate with Her, and they hoped that in traditional tech fashion that if they moved fast and broke things enough, everyone would have to reshape around OAs wants, rather than around the preexisting rights of the humans involved.

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#294

Post by lolinder »

famouswaffles wrote: post #236
jprete wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they really did that then (A) it's not much better (B) they didn't even wait for an answer from Johansson (C) it's extraordinarily reckless to go from zero to big-launch feature in less than two days.

>(A) it's not much better OP seems to be on the "They secretly trained on her voice" train. The only reason "Two Days!" would be damning is if a finetune was in order to replicate ScarJo's voice. In that sense, it's much better. >(C) it's extraordinarily reckless to go from zero to big-launch feature in less than two days. Open AI have launched nothing. There's no date for new voice mode other than, "alpha testing in…

I'm really confused by this claim. How is it that so many people tried this Sky voice if no one has access yet?

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#295

Post by z7 »

rangerelf wrote: post #249
z7 wrote: post #156

So they wanted Johansson's voice, she declined, they chose another voice actress who sounds somewhat similar. Can someone explain why that is bad? I don't really get it.

Did they really hire another voice actress? Who? As for why it's bad, it's because they set down the precedent of wanting specifically Scarlett Johansen's voice, got declined, doubled down, got declined again, and then went ahead and did it anyway. They can say in their own defense that it's some other voice actress that sounds similar, ok, so produce that name, tell us who she is. Absent that, it's Johansen's voice,…

OpenAI says:

"Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice."

https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho...

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#296

Post by leumon »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #229

I 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.…

I think it is more then a simple tts engine. At least from the demo, they showed: It can control the speed and it can sing when requested. Maybe its still a seperate speech engine, but more closely connected to the llm.

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#297

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

iosjunkie wrote: post #169
npunt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people cheat on (relatively) small things, it's usually an indication they'll cheat on big things too

I would love to see the providence of their training data.

We need laws where companies are forced to reveal source of personal data. Like how did XYZ company get my contact info to spam me?

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#298

Post by globalnode »

reducesuffering wrote: post #185

Remember when the OpenAI board said Sam was "not consistently candid" and most people here advocated he be reinstated and how dare the board? They are speedrunning the Google "Don't Be Evil" rug-pull. Not allocating the superalignment team resources they were promised, "don't criticize OpenAI or mention there's an NDA or you lose all your equity"...

I think the 2 tech leads that just resigned are actually dodging a HUGE bullet.

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#299

Post by monroewalker »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #229

I 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.…

> One thing these trained voices make clear is that it's a tts engine generating ChatGPT-4o's speech, same as before.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of how AI models work but doesn't the ability from some of the demos rule out what you've said above? Eg. The speeding up and slowing down speech and the sarcasm don't seem possible if TTS was a separate component

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#300

Post by throwway120385 »

nicklecompte wrote: post #183
threatofrain wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this different from the various videos of the Harry Potter actors doing comedic high fashion ads? Because those were very well received. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipuqLy87-3A

I think anti-deepfake legislation needs to consider fair use, especially when it comes to parody or other commentary on public figures. OpenAI's actions do not qualify as fair use.

The problem with that idea is that I can hide behind it while making videos of famous politicians doing really morally questionable things and distributing them on YouTube. The reason Fair Use works with regular parodies in my opinion is that everyone can tell that it is obviously fake. For example, Saturday Night Live routinely makes joking parody videos of elected officials doing things we think might be consistent with their character. And in those cases it's obvious that it's being portrayed by an actor and therefore a parody. If you use someone's likeness directly I think that it must never be fair use or we will quickly end up in a world where no video can be trusted.
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