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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

#561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter. Waits v Frito Lay

That's an impersonation of a parody song in his style. This is a voice actor who has a voice that's kinda similar to ScarJo and kinda similar to Rashida Jones but not quite either one doing something different. Cases are not a spell you can cast to win arguments, especially when the facts are substantially different.

In both cases the companies are specifically trading on creating confusion of a celebrity’s likeness in an act that celebrity trades in, and with the motivation of circumventing that very celebrity’s explicit rejection of the offer for that very work.

Just because one is a singer and the other is an actor isn’t the big difference you think it is. Actors do voice over work all the time. Actors in fact get cast for their voice all the time.

Yelling, “Parody!” Isn’t some get out of jail free card, particularly where there is actual case law, even more particularly when there are actual laws to address this very act.

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

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent matters. When discovery happens and there’s a trail of messages suggesting either getting ScarJo or finding someone that sounds enough like her this isn’t going to look good with all the other events in timeline. If it goes to court, they’ll settle.

>> When discovery happens and there’s a trail of messages suggesting either getting ScarJo or finding someone that sounds enough like her this isn’t going to look good with all the other events in timeline. I'm not a lawyer, but this seems unfair to the voice actor they did use, and paid, who happens to sound like ScarJo (or vice versa!) So if I sound like a famous person, then I cant monetize my own voice? Who's to…

There isn't an unfairness to the voice actor. She did her job and got paid.

The problem here is that someone inside of OpenAI wanted to create a marketing buzz around a new product launch and capitalize on a movie. In order to do that they wanted a voice that sounded like that movie. They hired a voice actor that sounded enough like ScarJo to hedge against actually getting the actor to do it. When she declined they decided to implement their contingency plan.

If they're liable is for a jury to decide, but the case precedent that I've seen, along with the intent, wouldn't look good if I were on that jury.

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

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see any argument considering the entire context, care to explain?

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

#564
What also concerns me is the piggybacking on the entire likeness crafted by the artist responsible for the actual movie Her.

Did OpenAI pay any amount of credit to the artist responsible for the free creative direction they copied for their AI's voice? I would imagine more than the voice actor, the person responsible for casting Scarlett and writing the movie would deserve something.

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

#565
post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's kind of nitpicking, but it was never intended to be misanthropic or a psychological horror. It's a sci-fi romantic drama; I don't really see where the misanthropy or psychological horror aspects are?

I might be conflating it with Black Mirror at this point; it's been a while since I saw either (and I wasn't fond of either when they released, too). Still, I think Sam ought to see the writing on the wall regardless when people come out en-masse to say "this is kinda creepy, dude." It feels pretty obvious to me that his behavior is verging on obsessive and definitely toeing the line of technology fetishism. That's j…

So you don’t even know what any of this is referencing?

HER is not a horror movie. It’s about a very helpful AI assistant, and in the movie people fall in love with it.

It would be really cool to have ScarJo voice the AI, which is obviously why she was asked. She didn’t want to, so they just hired another, different person to do it.

ScarJos voice is not some super unique cornerstone of the product (obviously, since they didn’t even use it), and it seems like having her associated would be for marketing purposes. Imagine her presenting at their product demo, and talking to “herself”.

All of this feels like people are really reaching for reasons to hate Sama. In your case you aren’t even familiar with the movie people are talking about.

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

#566
post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question; Why in the world would one expect the more charitable scenario?

It's just a best practice that serves as a healthy counterbalance to cognitive biases, that might otherwise urge us to convict without evidence. It's not necessarily what will prove true at the end of the day but I think we owe people the presumption of innocence.

[deleted]

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

#567
post #513

Unless they can point to a voice actor that they did copy. It will be very difficult for them to prove that it wasn't trained to replicate Scarlett Johansen. Was the model trained on movies? were annotators instructed to compare to the movie "Her" - lots of ways to see this become problematic. The fact that Sam Altman was requesting a licensing deal days before launch would suggest that they had a known problem that…

That's not really how proof works. SJ needs to prove it was modeled after her. Seeing as it doesn't sound like her, this whole thing is DOA.

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

#568
post #564

What also concerns me is the piggybacking on the entire likeness crafted by the artist responsible for the actual movie Her. Did OpenAI pay any amount of credit to the artist responsible for the free creative direction they copied for their AI's voice? I would imagine more than the voice actor, the person responsible for casting Scarlett and writing the movie would deserve something.

Has Open AI paid for anything they've taken without asking? Maybe, but we wouldn't know because nothing they do has any transparency. They absolutely suck as a company.

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

#569
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The voice was called Sky and OpenAI wasn't using her likeness to promote the voice or product. She isn't that well known, I didn't even know she was in Her. There's 1 billion English speakers, there are going to be voice overlaps.

> The voice was called Sky

That the voice is called Sky is actually part of what's suspicious about this to me. They had all the world of female names to choose from for the voice that would recreate "Her" (and there's plenty of evidence that suggests that the movie was used as inspiration), and they chose one that started with the same rare consonant cluster as this actress. The only other names that Wikipedia lists with that consonant cluster are Skyler and Scarlett [0]. If they truly were trying to separate themselves from her rather than subtly cue the likeness, why Sky?

> She isn't that well known, I didn't even know she was in Her.

She's the second-highest-grossing actor (and the highest-grossing actress) of all time [1]. You might not know her (and neither do I), but that says more about you and me than it does about her.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Englis...

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_act...

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

#570
post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shows how bad it is. If you're proactively sharing a package of docs with the Washingington Post, you're toast. Altman's outreach, his tweet, and the thousands of tweets and comments talking about how similar Sky is to ScarJo is enough to win the case in California.

Then we can add this to the long list of insane lawsuits going the wrong way in California. They asked SJ, she said no. So they went to a voice actor and used her. Case closed, they didn't use SJ's voice without her permission. That doesn't violate any law to any reasonable person.

"Reasonable" is doing a ton of work here.
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