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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

#471

Post by eggy »

Scarlett Johansson will forever be associated with this voice named, "Sky", the official voice of "Skynet" that will wipe us all off the face of the earth! In comparison, the unfolding of "her" the movie would be like a walk in the park compared to armies of Terminators.

It sounds too close to Scarlett for me to believe this was not the goal whether they hired somebody else or not, and if they try and prove beyond a doubt no audio post processing was done. Just listen to famous musicians doing acoustic or no processing versions of their songs to see how much you can craft a voice or sound.

[Edit]

  1. A movie that features an AI voice of a female voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

  2. A real-life AI company, OpenAI, is trying to put a distinct voice to their AI product vs. a canned voice.

  3. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, contacting SJ to ask her to be the AI voice.

  4. SJ refuses.

  5. CEO of OpenAI tweets "her" the title of the movie in #1 above.
Audio processing with DSP methods and current audio engineering craft or training AI to make it sound like SJ would be the thing to prove. Get raw audio of actress and finished sound and compare how they steered it to the final product and compare a spectrograph of SJ if you can get the same words.

My common sense and the above facts says OpenAI did whatever they did to get close enough to SJ's voice. SA pursued it a few times, no? It definitely sounds like her enough to me.

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

#472

Post by queuebert »

slibhb wrote: post #426

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 th…

I don't find any of the OpenAI voices sexy or deferential. They sound fake happy to me, like a customer service phone menu or an elementary school teacher, and reek of Bay area vocal fry [1] and lilt. I wish there was a greater diversity of accents and speaking patterns available, such as can be seen on the Speech Accent Archive [2].

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0yL2GezneU

2. https://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=find&lan...

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

#473

Post by zemo »

flexie wrote: post #175
resolutebat wrote: post #153

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…

> I wondered why they had chosen the voice of a middle aged woman, and whether that was about being woke

really weird line of reasoning. Siri, Alexa, Google Home… etc.

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

#474

Post by bradley13 »

menacingly wrote: post #461

I don't really care either way, but one thing that seems odd to me is how unlikable people seem to find the other voices (myself included) If this were the massive creative effort they make it out to be, it seems like they'd have netted another solid result or two

I also dislike the voices. They sound great, but the are very overenthusiastic. "Awesome!" "Thar's great!" I don't want my computer to talk like a California valley girl.

How about concise and factual? It shouldn't be wooden and emotionless, of course, but it shouldn't sound like a floofy-brain.

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

#475

Post by weinzierl »

brvsft wrote: post #419
weinzierl wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably a number of other cases. The one I remember is when Sega asked Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite fame to use her public image for a game. Nothing come out of it but Sega made the character Ulala [1] anyway. If you grew up in the 90s the characters name was strongly connected to Lady Miss Kier's catch phrase, but unfortunately she lost the suit and had to pay more than half a million. [1] https://en.m.wik…

> Lady Miss Kier's catch phrase Not to over-analyze your use of language, but using the possessive here makes it seem like she personally owned that phrase or its use was associated with her . First, I don't know if that's true. Did she say, "Ooh la la," constantly, or is it just something she said at the beginning of the music video (and possibly studio recording) of the one hit from Deee-Lite, Groove Is In The Hear…

Not a native speaker, so "catch phrase" is maybe not the right term or too strong.

Prompted by your comment I read up about the case and from what I understand Sega wanted to use the song in a promotion and not (what I remembered) her likeness.

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

#476

Post by menacingly »

bradley13 wrote: post #474
menacingly wrote: post #461

I don't really care either way, but one thing that seems odd to me is how unlikable people seem to find the other voices (myself included) If this were the massive creative effort they make it out to be, it seems like they'd have netted another solid result or two

I also dislike the voices. They sound great, but the are very overenthusiastic. "Awesome!" "Thar's great!" I don't want my computer to talk like a California valley girl. How about concise and factual? It shouldn't be wooden and emotionless, of course, but it shouldn't sound like a floofy-brain.

Yeah, I just think it should make use of the nonverbal channel we use to communicate, otherwise we get frustrated at the inefficiency

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

#477

Post by bee_rider »

naasking wrote: post #364
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> later go to a famous actress known for one time playing a chatbot in a movie, and are declined, you are in a much better position But they asked her first!: "Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel co…

> So its: ask Johansson, get declined, ask casting directors for the type of voice actors they are interested in, listened to 400 voices, choose one that sounds like the actor Except it doesn't sound like Johansson, I don't know why people keep saying this. At best, the voice has a couple of similar characteristics, but I didn't think for one second that it was her. Can James Earl Jones sue if someone uses a voice ac…

I was confused because it doesn’t really sound much like her normal voice, and I didn’t see Her. So I looked it up—it sounds a little bit more like her voice in her… the movie where she’s adding some AI-like affectations to her voice.

I guess they decided to remove it for PR reasons or something.

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

#478

Post by tmaly »

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…

Why would they have taken down the voice if they were operating on a level of truth in their favor?

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

#479

Post by senorrib »

theultdev wrote: post #457
krisoft wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s effectively what’s happening here, and it isn’t illegal. It is more complicated than that. Check out Midler v. Ford Motor Co, or Waits V. Frito Lay.

Ford hired impersonators, she's not an impersonator, that's her real voice. She's allowed to be a voice actor using her real voice. Your can point to the "Her" tweet, but it's a pretty flimsy argument.

Whether the actor was an impersonator or not is still up to debate. I can see an argument being made when you consider the entire context.
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