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

What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 81 posts

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#51

Post by nicce »

bgentry wrote: post #39
surfingdino wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you impersonate another actor for profit claiming to be him/her you may be facing legal action. There is a difference in selling yourself as "Scarlett Johansson" vs. "A Scarlett Johansson impersonator" vs. your own name/stage name. If it's covert and deceiving, you are in trouble, if it is overt, you are fine and that's why they world has so many Elvis impersonators. Although I see a new market opening for Kate Mo…

Do you have evidence that this voice actor was billing herself as a Scarlett Johansson impersonator or anything of that sort?

Advertising by using Her and contacting Scarlett befohand are the dooming factors. Likely not actor’s fault but instead the leads of OpenAI.

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#52

Post by jmugan »

theyinwhy wrote: post #50
jmugan wrote: post #35

Yeah, I don't get this at all. I don't have a donkey in this fight, but it seems to me that 1. They wanted to build the experience from the movie Her. 2. They wanted to use Johansson's voice because that would be a cool tie-in. 3. Johansson said no, so they went with somebody else. 4. End of story.

4. They did the childish move to let someone impersonate her 5. The lawyers told them two days before release that this is a bad idea and they should get Johansson's approval 6. They did not and did the other childish move to release it nevertheless

To me, they don't sound the same. Certainly both flirty and fun; I can't imagine getting much work done with an assistant that chatty.

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#53

Post by kelsey98765431 »

Funny how the ownership class is so strongly against technology that makes their "ownership" of something as silly as a voice at risk of losing its return on investment they will go to battle over this. This shows weakness in human voice talent, just look at this massive liability using humans introduces. Sorry honey, just because you think s voice sounds like you doesn't give you the right to throw a fit. Seems like shes salty that she didn't take their offer because when they said honestly it's fine we can do it without you, she didn't believe them. Now when they have done just as high quality of a voice without her she cannot grasp the fact they just didn't need her at all and her only value is basically vendor lock in, which is now failing. The people fighting this think a genie can go back in a bottle or something, or that you can leverage being "important" to claim the technology is unfair. NYT, this random actress, nobody cares. This is at the level of a national security breakthrough in terms of significance, trying to insert yourself into the middle of it after the fact to get the piece of the pie you already rejected just looks bad. I imagine we see more and more of these cases falling apart soon, can I sue my boss for reading my github page and getting ideas from it? Can I sue my teacher for reading harry potter to me? Can I sue youtube for hosting videos of people doing impersonations of obama?

These systems learn. Learning is legal and protected. If we could sue the people who quote books they don't own, reference TV shows they don't have a current and valid license to stream, where do we draw the line? If I can sue a computer for learning from the world, or the teacher that gave it material, why can't I sue a church for teaching nonsense? Infact, why doesn't OpenAI just become a formal religion or something?

All of this is 1.) going nowhere 2.) pointless overall 3.) a waste of energy 4.) preventing scientific progress

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#54

Post by notaustinpowers »

orangecat wrote: post #48
notaustinpowers wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They hired the Sky voice actress well before contacting SJ. Then why would they need to contact SJ 2 days before the release? If they already had the Sky voice complete? If there wouldn't be enough time to have SJ record everything for the voice? To me, it doesn't pass the sniff test. Either their talent department is just really bad at planning and had no clue it was releasing just two days later (unlikely), or th…

Then why would they need to contact SJ 2 days before the release? According to OpenAI, they wanted SJ for a separate voice ( https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho... ), possibly as a "one more thing" conclusion to the demo. You can say that they're lying, and certainly OpenAI doesn't have the highest credibility at the moment, but it's at least plausible. or they were trying to get an agreement…

> If they anticipated this would happen, why wouldn't they just ditch the Sky voice altogether?

This is my opinion so it's not factual. They already don't have any qualms making billions of dollars operating with a maybe-illegal-but-definitely-not-cool business model that hoovers up copyrighted content without compensated authors to use their works to train models to reproduce similar works, again without compensating any copyright owners. Why would they act different when it's one celebrity? Sugar Daddy Microsoft has enough money and lawyers to throw at SJ to keep her busy until she either croaks or goes broke.

Also, why would MS or OpenAI lose out on a billion dollars in stock growth with the release of ChatGPT4.o when, for a few million dollars, you can do whatever you want.

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#55

Post by tedunangst »

Is there any particular reason we need to speculate instead of simply letting the case happen and seeing what it looks like? This is basically fanfic masquerading as reporting? I assume the parties involved will not be forming their legal strategy by reading wired.

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#56

Post by fxd123 »

justin66 wrote: post #28
jmclnx wrote: post #3

If it goes to court, it will be an interesting case and may have big ramifications. I believe the person used was selected because she sounded like Scarlett. If guilty, will it be illegal for people sounding like famous people get voice work ? I have heard ads with people sounding like various US Presidents over the years, could doing that be illegal ?

> If guilty, will it be illegal for people sounding like famous people get voice work ? The question implies that you believe a professional voice actor has a single voice they can use. That is a silly thing to believe.

OpenAI's claim is that they used the voice actors' natural voice

> That is a silly thing to believe.

I think it's silly to believe that celebrities should own voices

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#57

Post by surfingdino »

bgentry wrote: post #39
surfingdino wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you impersonate another actor for profit claiming to be him/her you may be facing legal action. There is a difference in selling yourself as "Scarlett Johansson" vs. "A Scarlett Johansson impersonator" vs. your own name/stage name. If it's covert and deceiving, you are in trouble, if it is overt, you are fine and that's why they world has so many Elvis impersonators. Although I see a new market opening for Kate Mo…

Do you have evidence that this voice actor was billing herself as a Scarlett Johansson impersonator or anything of that sort?

You were asking about a hypothetical situation in which you may find yourself. That's what I addressed in my reply. The person whose voice was used does not pretend to be SJ afaik. It's the communications between OpenAI and SJ and Altman's tweets that created an ambiguous situation similar to someone trying to ask an attractive person out, being told it's not going to happen, but publicly winking and suggesting that there is something going on. It backfired. OpenAI and Altman are trying to get out of it, but their time of being the darlings of the media is over. There will be more scrutiny of their actions.

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#58

Post by CRConrad »

snapcaster wrote: post #41
soperj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'd need a long standing campaign ala Bill Gates from the 2000s. It seems like the truth shines through eventually though.

How do you know what the truth is? I'm confused whether you're referencing Epstein connections or just ignoring them

Whose Epstein connections are you talking about – Gates or Altman?

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#59

Post by surfingdino »

freejazz wrote: post #5
jmclnx wrote: post #3

If it goes to court, it will be an interesting case and may have big ramifications. I believe the person used was selected because she sounded like Scarlett. If guilty, will it be illegal for people sounding like famous people get voice work ? I have heard ads with people sounding like various US Presidents over the years, could doing that be illegal ?

> If guilty, will it be illegal for people sounding like famous people get voice work ? It continues to baffle me that people formulate this issue as it just being about the similar voices as opposed to OpenAI's efforts to capitalize on ScarJo's likeness by making explicit references to ScarJo and her work, in combination with using a similar voice. Obviously, it is not against the law to have a similar voice as some…

Because women's objections are ignored and women are expected to provide more proof than men. Scarlett Johansson is the third woman so far who made it clear that she is not happy with Altman's/OpenAI's conduct, but they all are being asked to provide more proof of harm done. In case you missed it--his sister made serious allegations and was ignored; then a female board member went public with her reasons for resigning and people say its sour grapes; and now Scarlett Johansson is objecting to Altman suggesting that it was her voice even after he was told that she is not interested in working with OpenAI.

Re: What Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI Could Look Like in Court

#60

Post by CRConrad »

quasse wrote: post #14
delecti wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and a case with a lot of similarity too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co .

This is interesting because the district court seems to initially have decided the opposite of Tom Waits vs Frito Lay ( http://tomwaitslibrary.info/biography/copyright/frito-lay/ ). Looks like the appellate court came to the same conclusion though, a famous person's voice is distinctive to their identity and intentionally imitating it is a type of false association claim.

Yes, AIUI from discussion here last week, Waits used the final Midler verdict as precedent.
Post reply on HN