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A voice cannot be copyrighted. Altman was being courteous and professional by trying to sign a deal with her. But, he didn't have to and could have used a variation of her voice. >The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson's, and it was never intended to resemble hers,” Altman told Forbes in a statement. “We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. >Days before OpenAI demonstrated…
Huh. Never sounded like her to me but whatever. Maybe OpenAI should hire a relative nobody like Apple did with Siri.
But OpenAI didn't. The voice sounds closer to many other celebrities than Scarlett Johansson.
In addition to being unaware of case law related to lookalikes/soundalikes (midler, waits), AI bros are showing themselves having ear deafness (like face blindness) claiming to hear no similarities to scarjo.
No such claim was reported in this article.
I suspect no such claim was made.
I don't actually see an ethical issue with this situation, unless the voice was specifically trained using clips of Scarlett Johansson's actual voice. I should have some say over how my actual voice is used. If I am a public figure, ala Donald Trump, and there are a lot of people out there who do a great impression of me, those voices belong to the people actually creating them, not me. If it turns out that there are…
" The appellate court ruled that the voice of someone famous as a singer is distinctive to their person and image and therefore, as a part of their identity, it is unlawful to imitate their voice without express consent and approval." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co .
I would not be surprised to see that precedent overturned at some point because its outcome seems to deny individuals the right to profit from their own abilities, just because they happen to sound like a famous person.
What if this was just regulatory capture of the licensed voice cloning industry in disguise? Just deliberately make a point to regulators on how unlicensed AI voice cloners are cloning actors voices without their permission an scare Hollywood to introduce regulations to wipe out unlicensed voice cloners from the market. I’m convinced that is what this looks like. What’s next is that OpenAI will settle and the rules w…
Neither this article nor SJ's statement claims this is cloning.
However, the lady doth protest too much.
Actors and big media companies are doing their damnedest to prevent any progress, because technology is encroaching on their craft. It seems that entirely AI generated media at Hollywood blockbuster levels of audiovisual quality are a matter of engineering at this point.
Let's not impede progress so that we can play a pretend game that we need humans to do work that AI or software can do at the same level of quality.
Actors like Scarlett shouldn't be able to license or protect their voices or appearance, regardless of how distinctive. Someone's doppleganger shouldn't be limited in their own rights based on what they decide with regards to appearance in media. Someone that looks like Scarlett Johansson shouldn't be able to decide for her that they don't want to appear in any video.
If Scarlett decides to get plastic surgery and radically alters her face or body, should she retain any rights over how she used to appear? What about twins separated at birth? Can I get plastic surgery to appear like 1980s Tom Cruise and start an acting career?
What if I want to copy Bradley Cooper's nose from Maestro, Scarlett's eyebrows from Asteroid City, and Legolas' ears from Lord of the Rings? Should I have to pay royalties for visual styles of individual components of a look? What about shades of hair - Demi Moore's hair is the same color as my own. Should she pay me royalties for copying "my" style?
This is absurdist territory, and the entitlement is raw and kind of disgusting. I can get on board with protecting someone's creative work, allowing copyright that ensures a clean protection of that individual's ability to profit from their own efforts. Recordings of music or performances, copies of scripts or writings, those things are clear work product.
Granting someone any rights or protections based on the sound of their voice, or the shape of their face, or the color of their skin, or any other integral feature, regardless of how engineered or refined it might be, is crazy. They didn't earn and don't own the features they were born with. Don't validate the entitled assumptions and crazy rent seeking schemes of Hollywood middlemen.
As long as OpenAI didn't claim any association with work product, they'd have been OK. By Tweeting "Her," Altman potentially infringed on work product by trying to use the movie to hype his own product. There might have been a fair use argument, if there was more nuance. Altman wanted to associate ChatGPT with Her, however, and didn't necessarily have the legal right to do that, especially in a commercial context. With it being free, however, maybe not profiting from the potential infringement will mean they get a slap on the wrist and a little embarrassed?
There are some deep and convoluted discussions ahead with regards to licensing and copyright issues. We should steer clear of granting individuals rights to things they did not earn and that may be shared with others - people shouldn't be granted extra rights because they're pretty and famous, nor should pretty and famous people be limited by the rights of some doppleganger.
If some Harrison Ford lookalike wants to license their appearance, then they should be perfectly free to do so as long as they don't infringe on any of the real Ford's work product. Same deal for voices or any other output by any individual where there's a reasonable possibility of mistaken identity. That probably means deepfake porn will end up being legal, so long as the underlying work product or identity isn't infringed on.
OpenAI should be free to use any voice they want. The ethical thing is definitely to approach the individuals with voices they want to emulate, but as long as they don't infringe on protected work product or claim association with the original voice, there shouldn't be any limitation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
" The appellate court ruled that the voice of someone famous as a singer is distinctive to their person and image and therefore, as a part of their identity, it is unlawful to imitate their voice without express consent and approval." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co .
Thanks for sharing. I completely disagree with their rationale and decision but it’s good to know about the precedent here. I’d be completely on Ford’s side here too! I would not be surprised to see that precedent overturned at some point because its outcome seems to deny individuals the right to profit from their own abilities, just because they happen to sound like a famous person.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-st...
Tom Waits Wins $2 1/2 Million in Voice-Theft Suit
In a novel case of voice theft, a Los Angeles federal court jury Tuesday awarded gravel-throated recording artist Tom Waits $2.475 million in damages from Frito-Lay Inc. and its advertising agency.
The U.S. District Court jury found that the corn chip giant unlawfully appropriated Waits’ distinctive voice, tarring his reputation by employing an impersonator to record a radio ad for a new brand of spicy Doritos corn chips.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing. I completely disagree with their rationale and decision but it’s good to know about the precedent here. I’d be completely on Ford’s side here too! I would not be surprised to see that precedent overturned at some point because its outcome seems to deny individuals the right to profit from their own abilities, just because they happen to sound like a famous person.
Overturned? Hmm... https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-st... Tom Waits Wins $2 1/2 Million in Voice-Theft Suit In a novel case of voice theft, a Los Angeles federal court jury Tuesday awarded gravel-throated recording artist Tom Waits $2.475 million in damages from Frito-Lay Inc. and its advertising agency. The U.S. District Court jury found that the corn chip giant unlawfully appropriated Waits…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest problem is that they were making insinuations that it was intentionally similar to her role in the movie Her (and even contacted her directly to do it). There are laws for unauthorized use of likeness that could possibly apply here.
I'm not familiar with the specific laws that are relevant here, but I have trouble buying the argument that this constitutes a "likeness" when Johansson was in no way involved in its creation, other than by providing inspiration. So they asked her and she turned them down. But guess what, they can get a pretty good result without even involving her. It turns out that her "talent" for the voice from the movie Her is i…
The laws around this aren't strong (which is why her response pointed out the need for legislation), and as I mentioned OpenAI would have been in a much stronger position if they didn't directly reference the film publicly several times. One could argue that they were using the film and her role to promote their product.