Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 1001 posts

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#491

Post by ncallaway »

avarun wrote: post #225
ncallaway wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are we seriously saying we can't make voices that are similar to celebrities, when not using their actual voice? They clearly thought it was close enough that they asked for permission, twice. And got two no’s. Going forward with it at that point was super fucked up. It’s very bad to not ask permission when you should. It’s far worse to ask for permission and then ignore the response. Totally ethically bankrupt.

> They clearly thought it was close enough that they asked for permission, twice. You seem to be misunderstanding the situation here. They wanted ScarJo to voice their voice assistant, and she refused twice. They also independently created a voice assistant which sounds very similar to her. That doesn't mean they thought they had to ask permission for the similar voice assistant.

> You seem to be misunderstanding the situation here. They wanted ScarJo to voice their voice assistant, and she refused twice. They also independently created a voice assistant which sounds very similar to her.

And promoted it using a tweet naming the movie that Johansson performed in, for the role that prompted them to ask her in the first place.

You have to be almost deliberately naive to not see that the were attempting to use her vocal likeness in this situation. There’s a reason they immediately walked it back after the situation was revealed.

Neither a judge, nor a jury, would be so willingly naive.

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#492

Post by morkalork »

justin66 wrote: post #448
callalex wrote: post #264

I think we should all strive to meet the standards of “Weird” Al Yankovic. He set out to do something that was widely hated by a very powerful and litigious sector, and yet after a full career he is widely revered by both the public and the industry. He masterfully sidestepped any problems by adhering to the basic concept of consent while still getting what he wanted 99% of the time.

Did anyone say no to him other than Prince?

Coolio didn't say yes to Amish paradise but the record label that had the rights agreed to the deal without him (which certainly shows who's in charge in that industry eh?). Many years later, Coolio admitted that he was wrong about the whole thing though.

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#493

Post by meowface »

ml-anon wrote: post #135

Combined with Murati’s reaction when asked if they trained Sora on YouTube videos, it’s obvious that OpenAI has trained their TTS systems on a whole bunch of copyrighted content including the output of professional actors and voice actors who definitely weren’t compensated for their work. Altman and Murati are world-class grifters but until now they were stealing from print media and digital artists. Now they’re clas…

You claim to work for either Anthropic or DeepMind (almost certainly DeepMind). I'm doubtful their AI products don't use people's works in similar ways.

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#494

Post by MBCook »

rockemsockem wrote: post #455
MBCook wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. If what they’re doing is so incredibly valuable, just pay for the resources you’re using. If your business model only works if you steal stuff from other people you don’t have a business.

Not commenting on open AI specifically, but I feel like actually acquiring the data is borderline impossible if you only follow legal channels. Where can I insert my money to buy every penguin random house book? How do I pay every deviant art artist whatever amount they're owed?

You could go to Penguin directly. Or perhaps the Authors Guild would help you set something up across publishers.

All of deviant art? Probably not. But do you need to train on all of that? You could certainly run ads telling people you’d be willing to pay a small amount to train on their art and let them choose.

Would it be legal to train against the national archives?

Options exist. No you won’t get as much stuff as you do by taking whatever you want, but people are being compensated for their work or at least being given the choice to opt in.

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#495

Post by parineum »

ncr100 wrote: post #246
andrewinardeer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it sounded like Jodie Foster.

Scar Jo thought it sounded like herself, and so did people who knew her personally. That is what matters. OWNERSHIP over her contributions to the world.

She doesn't own most (all probably) of her contributions to the world.

If the voice was only trained on the voice of the character she played in Her, would she have any standing in claiming some kind of infringement?

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#497

Post by windexh8er »

nickthegreek wrote: post #102
anon373839 wrote: post #62

Well, that statement lays out a damning timeline: - OpenAI approached Scarlett last fall, and she refused. - Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted her agent and asked that she reconsider. (Two days! This means they already had everything they needed to ship the product with Scarlett’s cloned voice.) - Not receiving a response, OpenAI demos the product anyway, with Sam tweeting “her” in reference to Scarle…

This statement from scarlet really changed my perspective. I use and loved the Sky voice and I did feel it sounded a little like her, but moreover it was the best of their voice offerings. I was mad when they removed it. But now I’m mad it was ever there to begin with. This timeline makes it clear that this wasn’t a coincidence and maybe not even a hiring of an impressionist (which is where things get a little more w…

The thing about the situation is that Altman is willing to lie and steal a celebrity's voice for use in ChatGPT. What he did, the timeline, everything - is sleazy if, in fact, that's the story.

The really concerning part here is that Altman is, and wants to be, a large part of AI regulation [0]. Quite the public contradiction.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-artificial...

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#498

Post by parineum »

dv_dt wrote: post #445
smt88 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you, but I actually don't think it matters if it sounded exactly like her or not. The crime is in the training: did they use her voice or not? If someone licenses an impersonator's voice and it gets very close to the real thing, that feels like an impossible situation for a court to settle and it should probably just be legal (if repugnant).

As I understand it (though I may be wrong) in music sampling cases, it doesn’t matter if the “sample” is using an actual clip from a recording or if were recreated from scratch using a new media (e.g. direct midi sequence), if a song sampling another song is recognizable it is still infringing.

Sampling is not the same as duplication. Sampling is allowed as it's a derivitive work as long as it's substantially different from the original.

It's a "I know it when I see it" situation so it's not clear cut.

Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

#500

Post by Animats »

Animats wrote: post #31
mxstbr wrote: post #13

There is no source; black text on a white background. How do we know this is real?

Variety has a story.[1] It doesn't yet mention an direct statement from Johannson. But watch that space. Variety is well connected in Hollywood and will check with her agent to confirm or deny. [1] https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/openai-pulls-scarlett-...

Variety article updated: [UPDATE: Johansson released a statement saying Altman had reached out to ask her to lend her voice to ChatGPT but she declined; when she heard the demo, “I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine.”]
Post reply on HN