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OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

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Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#191
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you claiming that this was somehow engineered by Altman on purpose to draw attention, because all publicity is good publicity? Or engineered by his enemies to throw mud at Altman, because if you throw enough some of it will stick? Occam's Razor argues that Sam simply wanted ScarJo's voice, but couldn't get it, so they came up with a legally probably technical…

It's not a clone. What is ethically murky about it? You want Brad Pitt for your movie. He says no. You hire Benicio Del Toro because of the physical resemblence. Big deal. Having seen "Her" and many other Scarlet Johansson movies, I didn't think for a second that GPT-4o sounded like her. On the contrary, I wondered why they had chosen the voice of a middle aged woman, and whether that was about being woke. It wasn't…

If it's a sequel and Brad Pitt was in the first movie and you use trickery to make people think he's in the second movie, there's a case. See Crispin Glover, the dad from Back to the future, which was NOT the upside-down dad in BTTF2. They settled for 760k USD.

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#192

I never comment on HN I’ve just always been a long time lurker but I feel like I’m going crazy here reading comments. SJ is not the “AI” portrayed in the movie her. And AFAIK she does not in fact have all the same idiosyncrasies and tones in real life as the voice does in the movie because she was in fact directed to act like that. Not only that but the voices are not the same because there was another actress for sk…

Exactly. Lots of voices sound like other peoples’ voices. We aren’t that unique. SJ doesn’t get to own the voice rights to everyone that sounds at all like her just because she is famous.

It is not about the voice. Rather using the fame of known actress to boost the product. If your inner motive is to sound like her because she is well-known, differences in voice does not matter much.

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#193
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The voice actor involved is irrelevant. Quite the contrary, unless you believe that Scarlett Johanson owns the rights to the voice of anyone who sounds like her?

Midler v Ford

So I didn't know about this case, and indeed, it's an interesting one. I think the key difference here is that Ford hired an impersonator to sing Midler's song, so you know....the default assumption is that it's Midler singing. In OpenAI case unless they presented the voice as being the voice of Johanson, then I don't see how hiring someone who merely sounds like her would be an issue. The "her" tweet from Altman is of course problematic in this light, but I guess it will be left up to court to decide.

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if someone created a deep fake porn video of you, that wouldn't bother you either? Because, after all, you didn't do any work or anything.

Look, we're all just wearing these meat bags for a little while. I personally don't know anyone who would care if I was deep-faked in a porn, it wouldn't have any professional consequences (why would my boss, or friends for that matter, watch it in the first place?), and ultimately it's as ficticious as Lord of the Rings. Really, people get too riled up about salacious bits in the first place while we're on the subje…

So what if someone made a digital twin out of you, and started using you in other work? Suddenly you're being used in commercials, political campaigns, spam, or whatever.

I'm not buying that people here are "fine" with this. This is one of those things people might be fine with, until they find themselves in that exact spot.

Now, what kind of people will find themselves in that spot? Celebrities, obviously.

One thing is being used in material that will defame your character (spam, fraud, porn, whatever) - another thing is to be used in material that will potentially take away your livelihood.

If someone clone, say, Tom Cruise - and makes a movie with his digital twin, he sure as shit is entitled to royalties for that. People go to see the movie because they think it is Tom Cruise, not because it's some generic AI avatar of him.

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#195
post #18

The thing that worried me initially was that: - the original report by Scarlett said she was approached months ago, and then two days prior to launch of GPT-4o she was approached again Because of the above, my immediate assumption was that OpenAI definitely did her dirty. But this report from WaPo debunks at least some of it, because the records they have seen show that the voice actor was contacted months in advance…

I don't know, to me, it's just sounds like they know how to cover all their bases. To me, it sounds like they had the idea to make their AI sound like "her". For the initial version, they had a voice actor that sounds like the movie, as a proof of concept. They still liked it, so it was time to contact the real star. In the end, it's not just the voice, it would have been the brand, just imagine the buzz they would h…

> In the end, someone probably felt like it's a bit too dodgy as it resemblance was uncanny, they gave it another go, probably ready to offer more money, she still refused,

That was just a few days before launch, right? What was their plan if she said yes at that point? Continue using the "not-her" voice but say it was her? Or did they also have her voice already cloned by then and just needed to flip a switch?

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#196

I never comment on HN I’ve just always been a long time lurker but I feel like I’m going crazy here reading comments. SJ is not the “AI” portrayed in the movie her. And AFAIK she does not in fact have all the same idiosyncrasies and tones in real life as the voice does in the movie because she was in fact directed to act like that. Not only that but the voices are not the same because there was another actress for sk…

But is that the point? Here is a relevant precedence, for instance, that may or may not change your mind:

Tom Waits is a singer known for his raspy singing voice. Back in the late 1980s, Frito-Lay, Inc., the makes of Doritos, thought it was a great idea to run an ad in which the music had the atmosphere and feel of a Tom Waits song. Except the professional singer they hired for that got the job done a bit too well: the sounds of his voice in the commercial was so close to Tom Waits' work (he had for ten years sang in a band covering Tom Waits songs) that in November 1988, Waits successfully sued Frito-Lay and the advertising company Tracy-Locke Inc., for voice misappropriation under California law and false endorsement under the Lanham Act [1].

Now, when you hear Tom Waits speak in interviews, I find that his voice does not sound nearly as raspy as in his performances. But the point is that it does not matter so much whether OpenAI used the actual voice of Johansson or hired someone to imitate her performance.

Given the fact that Johansson was initially contacted by OpenAI to provide her voice and declined, we can surely assume that the selection of the particular voice actress they ended up using was no coincidence.

[1] http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications...

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#197

You can hear both voices for yourself and tell they are different, but y'all such NPCs you just believe the bullcrap the media spoon-feeds you not the literal sounds in your ears. New theory, HN is a honey pot for dumb people that Y Combinator studies how to make money from. Previous theory it was a Alzheimer's style "Fake bus stop" used to round up imposter hackers and keep them contained while the real Hackers did…

Frankly speaking, both sounds plausible!

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, except literally no one actually does this. You listen to a voice and it sounds similar in your head? That's who you picture when you hear it. Unless you're a robot I guess.

The point is that human voices are technically and verifiably unique, tangential or perhaps antithetical to your/average person's perception.

I don't see how that's relevant here - court cases about situations like these are decided on the criteria of "if you show this to an average person on the street would they be able to tell the difference" not "if you load this up in a specialized piece of software and look at the spectrograph is there a difference".

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#199
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Midler v Ford

So I didn't know about this case, and indeed, it's an interesting one. I think the key difference here is that Ford hired an impersonator to sing Midler's song, so you know....the default assumption is that it's Midler singing. In OpenAI case unless they presented the voice as being the voice of Johanson, then I don't see how hiring someone who merely sounds like her would be an issue. The "her" tweet from Altman is…

They also asked her multiple times.

Re: OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show

#200

I never comment on HN I’ve just always been a long time lurker but I feel like I’m going crazy here reading comments. SJ is not the “AI” portrayed in the movie her. And AFAIK she does not in fact have all the same idiosyncrasies and tones in real life as the voice does in the movie because she was in fact directed to act like that. Not only that but the voices are not the same because there was another actress for sk…

[flagged]

Because the guidelines say:

> Converse curiously; don't cross-examine.

> Assume good faith.

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.

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