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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

#421

Post by [deleted] »

moralestapia wrote: post #301
chipweinberger wrote: post #230

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.

I honestly don't think Scarlett (the person, not her "her" character) has anything to favor their case, aside from the public's sympathy. She may have something only if it turns out that the training set for that voice is composed of some recordings of her (the person, not the movie), which I highly doubt and is, unfortunately, extremely hard to prove. Even that wouldn't be much, though, as it could be ruled a deriva…

[deleted]

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

#422

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

monroewalker wrote: post #299
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

The older formant-based (vs speech sample based) speech sythesizers like DECTalk could do this too. You could select one of a half dozen voices (some male, some female), but also select the speed, word pronunciation/intonation, get it to sing, etc, because these are all just parameters feeding into the synthesizer.

It would be interesting to hear the details, but what OpenAI seem to have done is build a neural net based speech synthesizer which is similarly flexible because it it generating the audio itself (not stitching together samples) conditioned on the voice ("Sky", etc) it is meant to be mimicking. Dialing the emotion up/down is basically affecting the prosody and intonation. The singing is mostly extending vowel sounds and adding vibrato, but it'd be interesting to hear the details. In the demo Brockman refers to the "singing voice", so not clear if they can make any of the 5 (now 4!) voices sing.

In any case, it seems the audio is being generated by some such flexible tts, not just decoded from audio tokens generated by the model (which anyways would imply there was something - basically a tts - converting text tokens to audio tokens). They also used the same 5 voices in the previous ChatGPT which wasn't claiming to be omnimodal, so maybe basically the same tts being used.

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

#423

Post by airstrike »

howbadisthat wrote: post #360
callalex wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really hard to assume in good faith that you are unfamiliar with the concept of impersonation. Just in case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impersonator There is no doubt that the hired actor was an impersonator, this was explicitly stated by scama himself.

The variance in voice is not that great. Just find someone who is very close to her voice naturally.

Doesn't matter if the intent is to make the listener think they're hearing ScarJo

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

#424

Post by ncallaway »

gibbitz wrote: post #379
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.

Are we surprised by this bankruptcy. As neat as AI is, it is only a thing because the corporate class see it as a way to reduce margins by replacing people with it. The whole concept is bankrupt.

I don’t think any said anything about being surprised by it?

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

#425

Post by sangnoir »

chromakode wrote: post #290
avarun wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So, what would they have done if she accepted? Claimed that the existing training of the Sky voice was voiced by her?

> Claimed that the existing training of the Sky voice was voiced by her?

That claim could very well be true. The letter requested information on how the voice was trained - OpenAI may not want that can of worms opened lest other celebrities start paying closer attention to the other voices.

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

#426

Post by klyrs »

JeremyNT wrote: post #362
signal11 wrote: post #110

Earlier 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...

Whether or not what they've done is currently technically illegal, they're priming the public to be pissed off at them. Making enemies of beloved figures from the broader culture is likely to not make OpenAI many friends. OpenAI has gone the "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" route, and it seemed like they might get away with that, but if this results in a lot more stories like this they'll risk running…

Problem is, they asked for permission, showing their hand multiple times. Can I say, I'm somewhat relieved to learn that Sam Altman isn't an evil genius.

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

#428

Post by dylan604 »

croes wrote: post #309
dylan604 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually the most rational thing I've heard quoted from him. You have to be willing to open the box to see what's inside to know if you can do it better/cheaper/faster/smaller. There's ways of doing that without breaking laws, or doing something unethical with the what you learn. There's also ways of doing it without destroying something or violating anyone/anything. It also allows you to hear their response to…

Those are the same people who break the laws and exploit people if they know they can't fight back. Usually those people are considered sociopaths. Maybe it's time to ask the employees of OpenAI who fought to get Altman back, How this behavior is compatible with their moral standards or whether money is the most important thing.

Is that something that needs to be asked? I thought it was pretty evident when the coup was happening.

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

#429

Post by thefourthchime »

rockemsockem wrote: post #247

This is interesting to hear and if she decides to sue there's extremely clear precedent on her side. The fact that they reached out to her multiple times and insinuated it was supposed to sound like her with Sam's "her" tweet makes a pretty clear connection to her. Without that they'd probably be fine. Bette Midler sued Ford under very similar circumstances and won. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Moto…

I'm not sure. In the case of *Midler v. Ford Motor Co.*, the advertising agency hired a singer to do an impression of Bette Midler herself, not a character she performs. The singer was instructed to sound as much like Bette Midler as possible while performing her hit song "Do You Want to Dance?" for the Ford commercial. This use of a sound-alike voice led to the lawsuit, as it mimicked Midler's distinctive voice without her permission.

Scarlett Johansson's character in the movie is not Scarlett Johansson although her voice is very similar. I wouldn't say it's identical.

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

#430

Post by MBCook »

threatofrain wrote: post #165
MBCook wrote: post #58

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.

I'm not sure she can do much since OpenAI withdrew so quickly. What damages are there?

Withdrew too quickly?

They didn’t come to an agreement to use her voice, they used her voice. And they obviously knew it was a problem because they went back to her like the night before trying to get her approval again.

The correct thing to do was NOT use her voice.

You don’t get to steal something, get all the benefit from it (the press coverage), and then say “oops never mind it was just a few hours you can’t sue us”.

Why don’t we try selling tickets to watch a Disney movie “just one time” and see how well that goes. I don’t think Disney’s lawyers will look at it and say “oh well they decided not to do it again.“

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