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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

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Is there a distinction? Yes, that would be a copyright violation on top of everything else. Great idea though! I'm going to start selling Keanu Reeves T-Shirts using this little trick. See, I'm not using Keanu's likeness if I don't label it as Keanu. I'm just going to write Neo in a Tweet, and then say I'm just cloning Neo 's likeness. Neo is not a real person, so Keanu can't sue me! Bwahahaha

I love these takes that constantly pop up in tech circles.

There's no way "you" (the people that engage in these tactics) believe anyone is that gullible to not see what's happening. You either believe yourselves to be exceedingly clever or everyone else has the intelligence of toddler.

With the gumption some tech "leaders" display, maybe both.

If you have to say "technically it's not" 5x in a row to justify a position in a social context just short-circuit your brain and go do something else.

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

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mayb…

> I wouldn't necessarily call that damning. "Soundalikes" are very common in the ad industry. As are disclaimers that celebrity voices are impersonated when there is additional context which makes it likely that the voice would be considered something other than a mere soundalike, like direct reference to a work in which the impersonated celebrity was involved as part of the same publicity campaign. And liability for…

The most famous case of voice appropriation was Midler vs Ford, which involved Ford paying a Midler impersonator to perform a well known Midler song, creating the impression that it was actually Bette.

Where are the signs or symbols tying Scarlett to the openAI voice? I don't think a single word, contextless message on a separate platform that 99% of openAI users will not see is significant enough to form that connection in users heads.

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

#344

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

I have no special insight into what they're actually doing, but speeding up and slowing down speech have been features of SSML for a long time. If they are generating a similar markup language it's not inconceivable that it would be possible to do what you're describing.

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not a lawyer) I think the issue is not just that they sound similar, but that OpenAI sought to profit from that perceived similarity. It’s pretty clear from Sam Altman’s “her” tweet that OpenAI, at least, considers it a fairly narrow slice of the human voice space.

That's true. As I suggested, this case may well be open and shut. But what if it was Google's or Meta's voice that sounded exactly like Sky, i.e. without a history of failed negotiations? The amount of "likeness" would technically be identical. Are companies better off not even trying to negotiate to begin with?

Not sure legally. I chose the words “perceived similarity” intentionally to encompass scenarios in which the similarity is coincidental but widely recognized. Even in that case, I believe the original person should be entitled to a say.

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

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement from scarlet really changed my perspective. I use and loved the Sky voice and I did feel it sounded a little like her, but moreover it was the best of their voice offerings. I was mad when they removed it. But now I’m mad it was ever there to begin with. This timeline makes it clear that this wasn’t a coincidence and maybe not even a hiring of an impressionist (which is where things get a little more w…

[flagged]

> > "This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel things about physics. [1] Of course we can and should say that ideas are mistaken, but we can’t just call the person a heretic. We need to debate the actual idea."

> That's just a sample of the morally gross things he's said.

If a gay man is saying that he’s willing to listen to homophobes for valuable things they might have to say on unrelated topics, I don’t think that is “morally gross” at all, I think it is evidence of wisdom.

I’m not defending what he is accused of doing here re Scarlett Johansson’s voice—prima facie he appears to be in the wrong. I don’t have an opinion on other allegations against him because I haven’t investigated them in sufficient detail to form one. But this particular example of yours is labelling something as “morally gross” which many other people view as an admirable quality

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

#347
post #107

Johansson has money to hire lawyers and immediate access to media, so they backed off. Altman and OpenAI will walk over everyone here without any difficulty if they decide to take whats ours.

I often wonder why tech people think so positively about companies they idolise who are Uber-ing their way through regulations. Where do they think it stops? Why would people not want laws? The answer is so they can do the things that the laws prevent. This is POSIWID territory [0]. "The purpose of a system is what it does". Not what it repeatedly fails to live up to. What was the primary investment purpose of Uber?…

But like, Uber gave us taxis on our phones. No taxi company was going to do that without a force like Uber making them to it.

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

#348

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.

Yes, totally ethically bankrupt. But what bewilders me is that they yanked it as soon as they heard from their lawyers. I would have thought that if they made the decision to go ahead despite getting two "no"s, that they at least had a legal position they thought was defensible and worth defending. But it kind of looks like they released it knowing they couldn't defend it in court which must seem pretty bonkers to in…

> I would have thought that if they made the decision to go ahead despite getting two "no"s, that they at least had a legal position they thought was defensible and worth defending.

They likely have a legal position which is defensible.

They're much more worried that they don't have a PR position which is defensible.

What's the point of winning the (legal) battle if you lose the war (of public opinion)?

Given the rest of their product is built on apathy to copyright, they're actively being sued by creators, and the general public is sympathetic to GenAI taking human jobs...

... this isn't a great moment for OpenAI to initiate a long legal battle, against a female movie actress / celebrity, in which they're arguing how her likeness isn't actually controlled by her.

Talk about optics!

(And I'd expect they quietly care much more about their continued ability to push creative output through their copyright launderer, than get into a battle over likeness)

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

#349
post #296

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.

tts with separate channels for style would do it, no?
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