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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

#421

Post by scotty79 »

omnicognate wrote: post #171

Comments full of people reading the headline and assuming that what OpenAI did here is fine because it's a different actress, but that's not how "Right of publicity" (*) laws work. The article itself explains that there is significant legal risk here: > Mitch Glazier, the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, said that Johansson may have a strong case against OpenAI if she brings forth a l…

I don't get it. He was looking for specific voice. Scarlett Johansson is one of the people who has the voice of this kind. She wasn't interested. It's only logical to approach a different person with the same kind of voice.

It's kinda nasty for one person to monopolize work for all actors that have similar voice to them just because she's most famous of all of them.

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

#422

Post by NateEag »

grugagag wrote: post #299
walterbell wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of legal outcome, there now exists a corpus of public text from news coverage of this incident, upon which OpenAI will be trained, which correlates SJ's name to reporting on a 2024 OpenAI voice .

And what does this imply?

Imagine what GPT-5 might say in the future, once it's been trained on a snapshot of the Internet including these articles:

> whose voice do you use?

> It's based on Scarlett Johannson's performance in "Her."

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

#423

Post by throwaway4aday »

itsoktocry wrote: post #347
Ukv wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The actress did impersonate Her though. Did she? The article claims that: 1. Multiple people agree that the casting call mentioned nothing about SJ/her 2. The voice actress claims she was not given instructions to imitate SJ/her 3. The actress's natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice I don't personally think it's anywhere near "identical" to SJ's voice. It seems most likely to me that they not…

> I don't personally think it's anywhere near "identical" to SJ's voice. It seems most likely to me that they noticed the similarity in concept afterwards and wanted to try to capitalize on it (hence later contacting SJ), opposed to the other way around. So your theory is that this was completely coincidental. But after the voice was recorded, they thought, "Wow, it sounds just like the voice of the computer in Her!…

Listen to the side by side comparisons. Sky has a deeper voice overall, in the gpt4o demo Sky displays a wider pitch range because the omni model is capable of emotional intonation. Her voice slides quite a bit while emoting but notably doesn't break and when she returns to her normal speaking voice you can hear a very distinct rhotic sound, almost an over-pronounced American accent and she has a tendency towards deepening into vocal fry especially before pauses. I'd describe her voice as mostly in her chest when speaking clearly.

Now listen to SJ's Samantha in Her and the first thing you'll notice are the voice breaks and that they break to a higher register with a distinct breathy sound, it's clearly falsetto. SJ seems to have this habit in her normal speaking voice as well but it's not as exaggerated and seems more accidental. Her voice is very much in her head or mask. The biggest commonality I can hear is that they both have a sibilant S and their regional accents are pretty close.

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

#424

Post by persnickety »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #255
persnickety wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes a likeness a likeness? A measure of similarity? Then I demand all people sounding like me to license their voice from me. A claim that the voice originates from a certain person? Then you don't need any licensing in this case.

> What makes a likeness a likeness? I'm not sure. Precedented personality rights would be a good place to start [1]. I'd argue for a higher standard of evidence for human-produced voices, Middler v. Ford Motor Co. seems good as any [2]. But a lower burden for synthesised voices, given the difficulty in proving intent and mass producibility of them. > A claim that the voice originates from a certain person? Then you d…

Oh, I wasn't aware of the last bit (brokenwall). Now we're entering gray area, depending on what was said exactly, and how much of a contribution voice actors made their characters.

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

#426

Post by slibhb »

I never made the connection between the Sky voice and Scarlett Johansson's. I've seen many of her movies. She has an extremely distinctive voice that has a certain huskiness to it and the Sky voice totally lacks that.

Some voices are sexy and both of them fall into that category -- but that's beside the point.

That aside, it is genuinely pleasant to have a conversation with chatGPTo and some of that has to do with the voices. There's a kind of irony here because people generally imagined that AI would be cold, logical, unempathetic, etc. But LLMs are the opposite; they're extremely polite and deferential. Meanwhile they aren't that good at logic!

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

#427

Post by criddell »

czl wrote: post #245
gnicholas wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only similarity between the voice and Johansson’s is that it’s female, so by your logic half of California has a case. My understanding was that the voices sound quite similar. I haven't heard the original Sky voice so don't know. Are there any samples online?

Listen to the voices side by side: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal_comp... And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA If you click through and listen please reply and answer these questions: which actress do you think is similar to the openAI sky voice? And what does that tell you about likely court result for Johansson? And having reach…

You might be right, but still if it goes to court, OpenAI knows they have an uphill battle. Any jury is going to love Johansson.

The voice doesn't need to sound the same for OpenAI to lose.

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

#428

Post by iamleppert »

Hollywood elites know they are cooked. It’s only a matter of time before corporations like OpenAI and Microsoft make celebrities and actors as valuable and useful as the next rank and file employee.

I personally want an AI Taylor Swift that can sing to me whatever song I want, and I would like it to be cheap and owned by a corporation.

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

#430

Post by bengale »

serial_dev wrote: post #34
skilled wrote: 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…

A more charitable scenario might be that they hire the voice actor and it sounds a bit like her. Someone suggests why don't we just get Scarlett to do it properly, wouldn't that be cooler? They reach out and she says no. They decide to continue with the one that sounds a bit like her.
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