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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

#391

Post by calf »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #307
lelandfe wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Midler is actually quite similar. Midler didn't want to do a commercial, and refused an offer, so they hired a lookalike that fooled her friends. The appellate court held that Ford and its advertising agency had "misappropriated" Midler's voice. Waits v. Frito Lay, Inc was '92, and cited it. They used a Tom Waits-sounding voice on an original song, and Waits successfully sued: > Discussing the right of publicity, the…

Thank you. I didn’t know it was similar specifically for voices in commercial use. That’s annoying, but we live in a country with lots of annoying laws that we nonetheless abide by. In this case I guess OpenAI just didn’t want to risk losing a court battle. I still think legal = moral is mistaken in general, and from a moral standpoint it’s bogus that OpenAI couldn’t replicate the movie Her. It would’ve been cool. Bu…

I was born in 1983 and it is wrong to make profit off of someone else's art without their permission. It isn't strange at all. This includes using an impersonator. This excludes parody intentions.

So the overall argument isn't strange, you just disagree without having articulated exactly what biases you to disagree. It is moral disagreement ultimately.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#392

Post by kcplate »

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…

There is a distinction between the image of a celebrity and their voice. The image of a celebrity is usually pretty cut and dried, it’s them, or obviously intended to be them. If the use of their image isn’t meant to be satirical, it’s problematic. The Crispin Glover/Back to the Future 2 case is a good example of non-satirical use that was problematic. Zemeckis used previous footage of Glover, plus used facial molds of Glover to craft prosthetics for another actor.

Voices…are usually not so distinctive. However, certain voices are very distinct—Tom Waits, Miley Cyrus, James Earl Jones, Matt Berry. Those voices are pretty distinctively those people and simulating their voices it would be obvious who you are simulating. Other celebrity voices are much more generic. Scarlett fits into this with a pretty generic female voice with a faint NY/NJ accent.

Open AI screwed up by taking a generic voice and making it specific to the celebrity by reference and by actually pursuing the actor for the use of their voice.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#394

Post by rldjbpin »

keeping aside my personal opinions about the company and who is running it, i feel that this is being blown out of proportion.

as already outlined, this is a standard practice in other context for any "fast-moving" tech company. the only reason we are discussing it is due to a pop culture reference.

this is a lot of energy wasted which can be better spent on the bigger picture.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#395

Post by lelandfe »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #362
pests wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you always believe everything a corporation tells you? If so, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying

No. But in this particular case, there are two factors that make that irrelevant for me. One, I would have made their same mistake. (If I was Sam, I too would have found it a really cool idea to make GPT have the voice of Her, and I too would not have realized there was one dumb court case from the 80s standing in the way of that.) Two, it’s bogus that conceptually this isn’t allowed. I’m already anti-IP — I think th…

"This is perfectly legal!"

Actually, there's a similar court case from 1988 that creates legal precedent for her to sue.

"That's just one case! And it's from 1988! That's 36 years ago: rounded up, that's 4 decades!"

Actually, there's a court case from 1992 that built on that judgement and expanded it to define a specific kind of tort.

"That's bad law! Forget the law! I demand a moral justification."

Anyway, asking a person if you can make money off their identity, them saying no, and you going ahead and doing that anyway seems challenging to justify on moral grounds. I don't think you're willing to change your mind, your claim notwithstanding.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#396

Post by lelandfe »

dragonwriter wrote: post #377
sillysaurusx wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The case is from 1988. That’s the year I was born. Societal norms are in a constant state of flux, and this one case from 36 years ago isn’t really an indication of the current state of how case law will play out. 2. Ford explicitly hired an impersonator. OpenAI hired someone that sounded like her, and it’s her natural voice. Should movies be held to the same standard when casting their actors? This is about as ab…

> The case is from 1988. That’s the year I was born. Societal norms are in a constant state of flux, and this one case from 36 years ago isn’t really an indication of the current state of how case law will play out. Correct, while Midler presents a similar fact pattern and is a frequently taught and cited foundational case in this area, the case law has evolved since Midler, to an even stronger protection of celebrit…

Nice write up, thanks.

Unrelated, but as someone who came along into this world after Carson's Tonight Show, I had no idea that that moment from The Shining was a play on that. Today's lucky 10,000.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#397

Post by andrewflnr »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #381
andrewflnr wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't? Because if it's true that they used a sound-alike voice actress for the actual model, I don't see how any reasonable complaint about that could stand. You can't ban people from voice-acting who have similar voices to other celebrities. There needs to be something more to it.

> You can't ban people from voice-acting who have similar voices to other celebrities Actually, you probably can.[0] [0] https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc Edit: Added the context for the reply

Well that's... concerning? I'm not sure I disagree with the decision there but to apply it any more widely would be a problem.

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#398

Post by lannisterstark »

s1k3s wrote: post #35

I love how we went from questioning copyright & licensing to "GPT vs Google, which one is better". To every artist or engineer out there who contributed to the general knowledge: you lost, everything you've ever done to help other people is now part of the models and there's nothing you can do to take it back. What even happened to the copyright strikes artists were supposed to bring up against these AI companies? Th…

>there's nothing you can do to take it back

Given the fact that many, many people make their software MIT licensed (or rather, do whatever, I don't care license), I think most of us will be ok with that :)

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#399

Post by barfingclouds »

panarky wrote: post #6

Altman would have us believe it's all just an innocent misunderstanding but without actually saying so: "We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson." Is he trying to suggest the company did not try to make the voice sound like her without her permission? The statement sounds like it's written by a lawyer to be technically true while implying something that is actually false. These…

It doesn’t sound like her

Re: Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

#400

Post by llamaimperative »

andrewflnr wrote: post #397
CaptainZapp wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't ban people from voice-acting who have similar voices to other celebrities Actually, you probably can.[0] [0] https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc Edit: Added the context for the reply

Well that's... concerning? I'm not sure I disagree with the decision there but to apply it any more widely would be a problem.

It's such a huge problem that it's only brought up in the context of someone (probably) doing exactly what it's designed to prevent... By some miracle, this actually isn't used to outlaw satire or put Elvis impersonators out of work. It's used to prevent people from implying endorsement where none exists.
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