Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 1001 posts

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

#461

Post by [deleted] »

crimsoneer wrote: post #122
nickthegreek wrote: post #102

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…

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?

[deleted]

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

#462

Post by dyno12345 »

ncr100 wrote: post #246
andrewinardeer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it sounded like Jodie Foster.

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'm not sure how much you currently legally own imitations of your own voice. There's a whole market for voice actors who can imitate particular famous voices.

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

#463

Post by tpmoney »

Barrin92 wrote: post #358
brosciencecode wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sam is very clearly in the wrong here, but is your argument for why he sucks seriously that he said “we should not brand people as heretics for disagreeing with my point of view?”

we should not brand people who make qualified and substantive points as heretics, but his framing is wrong and a common abuse of the notion of the 'marketplace of ideas'. Inherent to the functioning of debate is that debates are settled , just like exchanges in a market. That's their only function. Constant debate of an ever-increasing number of talking points, by definition, renders any notion of progress impossible…

>Inherent to the functioning of debate is that debates are settled, just like exchanges in a market. That's their only function. Constant debate of an ever-increasing number of talking points, by definition, renders any notion of progress impossible.

Some debates might be settled for some time, but I don't think "settled" is inherent in the functioning of a debate, and certainly not any sense of permanence even if they are "settled" at the moment. Were that the case, we wouldn't right here and now be debating what is clearly "settled" free speech policy of "you have to allow shitty people to say shitty things" (see National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie).

Or maybe I have that wrong and the settled policy is "socialist aren't allowed to tell you to resist the draft" (see Schenck v. United States).

I imagine if we went further back in time, plenty of people thought the debate over the legal status of slaves was "settled". Similarly the divine right of kings was "settled" as well.

Or back to more modern times, I imagine the "settled" rightful disposition of say Palestine, Taiwan or the Ukraine to depends an awful lot on where you live.

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

#464

Post by muglug »

minimaxir wrote: post #265

One interesting legal caveat is that the Sky voice isn't "ScarJo", it's ScarJo as acted in the movie Her. An issue with voice actors having their voice stolen by AI models/voice cloning tech is that they have no legal standing because their performance is owned by their client, and therefore no ownership. ScarJo may not have standing, depending on the contract (I suspect hers is much different than typical VA). It mi…

IANAL either, but that's not the caveat you think it is.

Bette Midler was able to sue Ford Motor Co. for damages after they hired a sound-alike voice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co. Ford had acquired the rights to the song (which Midler didn't write).

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

#465

Post by tedivm »

chii wrote: post #457
thatoneguy wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> get people to think it’s the real thing. but did openAI make any claims about whose voice this is? Just because a voice sounds similar or familiar, doesn't mean it's fraudulent.

Just read the top post of the thread you're responding to-

> - Not receiving a response, OpenAI demos the product anyway, with Sam tweeting “her” in reference to Scarlett’s film.

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

#466

Post by 8note »

MBCook wrote: post #430
threatofrain wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They make no representation that it is her voice, and there's a really good chance that they separately made a voice that sounds similar enough to where if they could tack her name to it, it'd be good for advertising, but otherwise isn't her voice.

Voices are really hard for people to distinguish as being a certain person without priming, so really she's doing for free the advertising they were hoping she'd do for pay

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

#467

Post by WrongAssumption »

z7 wrote: post #226
stavros wrote: post #111

This 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 poste…

I mean, the first post you linked to explicitly says they do sound similar. The last one says they don’t know what Scarlets voice sounds like to begin with.

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

#468

Post by 8note »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #384
z7 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very obvious bias against OpenAI in the comments here. Possible motives: a) there's a visceral human reaction against anyone extraordinarily successful and powerful (Nietzsche wrote about this). b) resentment for OpenAI's advancements in code generation and its possible impact on the job market. I don't think much of the outrage here is motivated by altruism, it's probably more about siding with whoever opposes your…

Or maybe the prospect of theft and unpermissioned copying of an extremely personal quality (one's voice) is (correctly) being called out? People aren't as selfish/petty as you're making them out.

There's any number of people with equivalent voices that Scarlet has stolen the voices of by selling it to movies, and all of those other people who sound the same deserve compensation from her for it

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

#470

Post by adolph »

dyno12345 wrote: post #462
ncr100 wrote: post #246

Earlier 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'm not sure how much you currently legally own imitations of your own voice. There's a whole market for voice actors who can imitate particular famous voices.

Should have renamed it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi

Or

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9n44b6/til_t...

Post reply on HN