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Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

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Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#261

Post by czl »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #155
miohtama wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of people with similar voices. If any voice actor can pull the same accent than Ms. Johansson, it should be fair game, as long it was the original training material? Voices cannot be copyrighted or be exclusive, although I am sure Hollywood will try to copyright them in some point.

> There are hundreds of people with similar voices. Voice *actors* act. It is in the name. The voice they perform in is not their usual voice. A good voice actor can do dozens of different characters. If you hire a voice actor to impersonate someone else's voice, that is infringement. Bette Midler vs Ford, Tom Waits vs Frito Lay are the two big examples of court cases where a company hired voice actors to impersonate…

So when a cartoon show hires a sound alike replacement voice actor so that the switch is hard to tell the former actor has a case against the show? Perhaps instead the show has a case against the former voice actor using that same character voice elsewhere such as in radio advertising to impersonate cartoon characters that are not licenced?

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#262

Post by pseudalopex »

px43 wrote: post #187
afavour wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He kind of ruined that argument when he tweeted “Her” alongside the video. Pretty clearly drawing a line between the voice and Johansson’s portrayal in the movie. Incredible, really. It would have been so easy to just… not do that.

Her was a movie with an AI assistant who talked like a normal human rather than an intentionally clunky "bleep blorp" dialect that lots of other movies go with. They even make fun of this in the movie when he asks her to read an email using a classic voice prompt, and she responds pretending to be a classic AI assistant. The new voice2voice from OpenAI allows for a conversational dialect, most prominently demonstrate…

> Sky's voice has been the default voice in voice2voice for almost a year now, and no one has made a connection to the Her voice until it started acting more conversational.

No.[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_r...

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#263

Post by NickC25 »

Based off his accomplishments, Sam Altman is a good technologist, and probably a good steward of investment capital if one is to invest into one of his ventures.

Based off his words and actions, Sam Altman is not a bastion of ethics or good morals.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#264

Post by lelandfe »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #238
pests wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actors get a lot of rights to their likeness. So, yes maybe?

Hmm. Being able to say "thou shalt not make a character similar to Her" is a lot like saying "thou shalt not make a video game character similar to any other." It’s not an explicit copy, and their name for Sky was different. That’s the bar for the videogame industry; why should it be different for actors? Especially one that didn’t show her face. This whole thing is reminiscent of Valve threatening to sue S2 for alle…

You've really contorted the facts here. This isn't a character, it's a voice.

The voice sounds remarkably like Scarlett Johansson's.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#265

Post by czl »

WheatMillington wrote: post #172
miohtama wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of people with similar voices. If any voice actor can pull the same accent than Ms. Johansson, it should be fair game, as long it was the original training material? Voices cannot be copyrighted or be exclusive, although I am sure Hollywood will try to copyright them in some point.

Looking like a celebrity is obviously not an issue. A lookalike being passed off as a celebrity is an issue.

Was OpenAI was passing off their AI model as Johansson? Obviously not.

If anything OpenAI tried to mimic the AI from the film Her and owners of that film may try to seek compensation. I hope that fails but they can try.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#266

Post by sillysaurusx »

minimaxir wrote: post #258
sillysaurusx wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thread is rightly being knocked off by the mods because there’s zero substance here. It’s a follow-on thread (knock one) to a public uproar (knock two) about something that isn’t representative of a new phenomenon (knock three). This isn’t what HN is for.

It's likely getting flagged organically (and due to the ratio of comments to upvotes, getting penalized by the flame war detector), but not due to a vast YC conspiracy.

Hm? You and I agree. There’s no conspiracy here. This is "bog standard moderation", as Dan would say.

Look at it this way: if the community didn’t flag it, it would be the mods’ duty to get this one off the front page. So whether it was the community or the mods is incidental.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#267

Post by sillysaurusx »

lelandfe wrote: post #264
sillysaurusx wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Being able to say "thou shalt not make a character similar to Her" is a lot like saying "thou shalt not make a video game character similar to any other." It’s not an explicit copy, and their name for Sky was different. That’s the bar for the videogame industry; why should it be different for actors? Especially one that didn’t show her face. This whole thing is reminiscent of Valve threatening to sue S2 for alle…

You've really contorted the facts here. This isn't a character, it's a voice. The voice sounds remarkably like Scarlett Johansson's.

It’s the other way around. The contortionists are on the other side of the issue. We’re talking about OpenAI hiring someone to use their natural speaking voice. As movies say, any similarity to existing people is completely coincidental from a legal perspective.

From a moral perspective, I can’t believe that people are trying to argue that someone’s voice should be protected under law. But that’s a personal opinion.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#268

Post by couchdb_ouchdb »

Does anyone else think this whole affair is wildly overblown? I'm absolutely perplexed by the blow back from the tech industry on this issue.

Sam Altman tried something. ScarJo filed a lawsuit. ChatGPT took down the voice. That's it guys. The system worked like it should. But to suggest that he's a terrible person because of it is just beyond me. This is hardly a #MeToo type situation. She's a rich and famous Hollywood actor. She's OK.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#269

Post by afavour »

btilly wrote: post #182
afavour wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He kind of ruined that argument when he tweeted “Her” alongside the video. Pretty clearly drawing a line between the voice and Johansson’s portrayal in the movie. Incredible, really. It would have been so easy to just… not do that.

Let's take a parallel situation from around 20 years ago, and see how you feel about it. I'm going back that far as a reminder of what was long considered OK, before AI. In the movie The Seed of Chucky , Britney Spears gets killed. You can watch the clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3kCg5o0cHA . It is very clearly Britney Spears. Except Britney Spears was not hired for the role. They hired a Britney Spears imp…

> Seed of Chucky, the off-the-wall fifth installment of Don Mancini's Child's Play franchise, was forced to include a special disclaimer about pop superstar Britney Spears

> This scene was included in promotional spots for the film, most specifically Seed of Chucky's trailer, but the distributing company associated with the film, Focus Features, made the decision to significantly cut the scene down and add a disclaimer. The disclaimer that ran with the promotional spot, which was altered to only show a brief glimpse of Ariqat as Spears, stated: "Britney Spears does not appear in this film."

https://screenrant.com/seed-of-chucky-movie-promos-britney-s...

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#270

Post by vunderba »

staunch wrote: post #54
lenerdenator wrote: post #2

This feels like someone trying to do something they thought Steve Jobs would do.

Steve Jobs was a superficial asshole but was fundamentally a good and ethical person. There's only one major ethical mistake documented in his entire life (being an absentee father while his first daughter was young), which he spent decades making amends for. The people that emulate Steve Jobs poorly are usually real assholes with a long list of ethical mistakes.

By all accounts, he was an incredible bully not just to his employees but also to his family as well.

He refused to recognize his daughter even after a paternity test, and despite being a multi millionaire 1000 times over only paid child support when forced to by the courts.

Does that sound like the behavior of a good and ethical person?

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