i’m confused about the timeline, it is still available to me? did they decide to reactivate?
Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
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Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#432Earlier 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.
Effective altruism would posit that it is worth one voice theft to help speed the rate of life saving ai technology in the hands of everyone.
It didn't require voice theft, they could have easily found a volunteer or paid for someone else.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scarlet owns the voice of a stranger that happens to sound like her? That seems absurd. Just find someone who sounds like her, then hire them for the rights to their voice.
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.
I missed that; where did he say that?
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scar Jo thought it sounded like herself, and so did people who knew her personally. That is what matters. OWNERSHIP over her contributions to the world.
I mostly agree with you, but I actually don't think it matters if it sounded exactly like her or not. The crime is in the training: did they use her voice or not? If someone licenses an impersonator's voice and it gets very close to the real thing, that feels like an impossible situation for a court to settle and it should probably just be legal (if repugnant).
> If someone licenses an impersonator's voice and it gets very close to the real thing, that feels like an impossible situation for a court to settle and it should probably just be legal (if repugnant).
Does that mean if cosplayers dress up like some other character, they can use that version of the character in their games/media? I think it should be equally simple to settle. It's different if it's their natural voice. Even then, it brings into question whether they can use "doppelgangers" legally.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you have an issue with them taking someone's likeness to use in their product but not with them taking someone's work to use in their product?
Because this isn't training an audio model along with a million other voices to understand English, etc. It's clearly meant to sound exactly like that one celebrity. I suspect a video avatar service that looked exactly like her would fall afoul of fair use as well. Though an image gen that used some images of her (and many others) to train and spit out generic "attractive blonde woman" is fair use in my opinion.
Chances are this is. Basically same as LoRA. One of go-to tools for these literally uses Diffusion model and work on spectrograms as images.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#436Well, 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…
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…
At least in past court cases I’m familiar, you can’t use an impersonator and get people to think it’s the real thing.
It’s not like Tom Waits ever wanted to hock chips
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-st...
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scar Jo thought it sounded like herself, and so did people who knew her personally. That is what matters. OWNERSHIP over her contributions to the world.
I mostly agree with you, but I actually don't think it matters if it sounded exactly like her or not. The crime is in the training: did they use her voice or not? If someone licenses an impersonator's voice and it gets very close to the real thing, that feels like an impossible situation for a court to settle and it should probably just be legal (if repugnant).
It is not an impossible situation, courts have settled it, and what you describe is not how the law works (despite how many computer engineers think to the contrary.)
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#438I 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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They stole someone’s voice after being told not to?
They unleashed a massive new wave of spam and scams and garbage onto the Internet?
Because they’re stealing every single bit of content on the Internet and everywhere else they can get their hands on without paying anything for it and then expect to sell it back to us in chewed up garbage form?
They help single-handedly cause MS to blast past their carbon commitments by 30%? And got everyone else into a big race for how many resources they could waste to power AI nonsense that doesn’t even actually work that well for what people want to use it for?
Perhaps the fact that they don’t seem to care one bit about any of the consequences, legal/moral/ethical/economical/etc. caused by what they’ve done as long as they make money?
I don’t have a grudge against open AI. I have a grudge against the AI industry and the way these kind of SV golden boys seem to think they’re immune from criticism.
Why do you think stealing a professional actor’s voice should be OK and immune from criticism? This is horrible.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's meant to give the _appearance_ or _perception_ that a celebrity is involved. Their actions demonstrate they were both highly interested and had the expectation that the partnership was going to work out, with the express purpose of using the celebrity's identity for their own commercial purposes. If they had just screened a bunch of voice actors and chosen the same one no one would care (legally or other…
Sounds like one of those situations you'd have to prove intent. (and given the timeline ScarJo laid out in her Twitter feed, I'd be inclined to vote to convict at the present moment)
> Sounds like one of those situations you'd have to prove intent.
The discovery process may help figuring the intent - especially any internal communication before and after the two(!) failed attempts to get her sign-off, as well as any notes shared with the people responsible for casting.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
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it could make life better for a lot of people, but training their models on copyright material, which makes life worse for another set of people.
Right. If what they’re doing is so incredibly valuable, just pay for the resources you’re using.
If your business model only works if you steal stuff from other people you don’t have a business.