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Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice

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

#641

Post by apantel »

jahewson wrote: post #620
apantel wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can say they had a certain thing in mind, which was to produce something like ‘Her’, and obviously Scarjo would have sold it home for them if she participated. But in lieu of the fact that she didn’t, they still went out and created what they had in mind, which was something LIKE ‘Her’. That doesn’t sound illegal.

Not illegal, because this would be a civil case. But they’re on thin ice because there’s a big difference between “creating something like Her” and “creating something like Scarlet Johansson’s performance in Her”.

Creating something like Her is creating something like Scarlet Johansson’s performance of her. The whole point is to hit the same note, which is a voice and an aesthetic and a sensibility. That’s the point! She wasn’t willing to do it. If they hit the same note without training on her voice, then I think that’s fair game.

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

#642

Post by Jayakumark »

At this level of copyright infringement, Now I 100% believe that it’s fully trained on YouTube and other copyright videos, audio, books etc. they don’t care about using any public data or paying a dime as long as they can build a model with it , they will never disclose the data used and won’t allow anyone who quit to talk about it , blackmailing them with equity.

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

#643

Post by om2 »

Last5Digits wrote: post #288
dragonwriter wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the purpose is to trade on the celebrity voice and perceived association, and its subject to California right of personality law, then, yes, we're saying that that has been established law for decades.

That's not the purpose though, clearly. If anything, you could make the argument that they're trading in on the association to the movie "Her", that's it. Neither Sky nor the new voice model sound particularly like ScarJo, unless you want to imply that her identity rights extend over 40% of all female voice types. People made the association because her voice was used in a movie that features a highly emotive voice a…

I haven’t hear the GPT-4o voice before. Comparing the video to the video of Johansson’s voice in “her”, it sounds pretty similar. Johansson’s performance there sounds pretty different from her normal speaking voice in the interview - more intentional emotional inflection, bubbliness, generally higher pitch. The GPT-4o voice sounds a lot like it.

From elsewhere in the thread, likeness rights apparently do extend to intentionally using lookalikes / soundalikes to create the appearance of endorsement or association.

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

#644

Post by pseudalopex »

prepend wrote: post #473
krisoft wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what discovery is for. If this would ever get to that phase. Someone from OpenAi hired the agency who hired the voice talent (or talents) for the voice data. They sent them a brief explaining what they are looking for, followed by a metric ton of correspondence over samples and contracts and such. If anywhere during those written communications anyone wrote “we are looking for a ScarlettJ imitator”, or words…

I recall the basics from my contracts law class that it’s not against the law to hire an impersonator as long as you don’t claim it’s the celebrity. So it’s legal to hire someone who sounds like SJ. And likely legal to create a model that sounds like her. But there will likely need to be some disclaimer saying it’s not her voice. I expect that OpenAI’s defense will be something like “We wanted SJ. She said no, so we…

Bette Midler and Tom Waits won cases where the companies didn't claim the impersonators were them.

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

#645

Post by emsign »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #616
ncallaway wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective Altruists are just shitty utilitarians that never take into account all the myriad ways that unmoderated utilitarianism has horrific failure modes. Their hubris will walk them right into federal prison for fraud if they’re not careful. If Effective Altruists want to speed the adoption of AI with the general public, they’d do well to avoid talking about it, lest the general public make a connection between E…

> When they start talking about the utility of committing crimes or other moral wrongs because the ends justify the means, I tend to start assuming they’re bad at morality and ethics. Extremely reasonable position, and I'm glad that every time some idiot brings it up in the EA forum comments section they get overwhelmingly downvoted, because most EAs aren't idiots in that particular way. I have no idea what the rest…

The speed doesn't really matter if their end goal is morally wrong. A slower speed might give them an advantage to not overshoot and get backlash or it gives artists and the public more time to fight back against EA, but it doesn't hide their ill intentions.

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

#646

Post by rvz »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #393
chipweinberger wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are not trying to trick people into believing xyz person did the voice acting, and instead are going for a certain style, I think they would be protected by freedom of expression. Think of how authors of books describe voices in great detail. i.e. intent matters. In this case, since the other voice actor has a clearly different voice than SJ, it seems like their intent is to just copy the general 'style' of t…

> In this case, since the other voice actor has a clearly different voice than SJ, it seems like their intent is to just copy the general 'style' of the voice, and not SJ's voice itself. How can you say that when they literally approached SJ for her voice, and then asked the voice actor to reproduce SJ's voice?!

Exactly this.

The fact Johansson did not give permission to OpenAI to use their voice, they then hired a voice actor to similarly copy her voice likeliness with Altman tweeting a reference to the film ‘Her’ which Johansson was the starring voice actor in that film, tells you that OpenAI intended to clone and use her voice even without permission.

OpenAI HAD to pull the voice down to not risk yet another lawsuit.

The parent comment clearly has the weakest defense I have seen on this discussion.

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

#647

Post by cycomanic »

XorNot wrote: post #587
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).

If OpenAI commissioned a voice actor to lend their voice to the Sky model, and cast on the basis of trying to get someone who is similar sounding to the Scarlett Johannson, but then did not advertise or otherwise use the voice model created to claim it was Scarlett Johannson - then they're completely in the clear. Because then the actual case would be fairly bizarre: an entirely separate person, selling the rights to…

That's confidently incorrect. Many others already posted that this has been settled case law for many years. I mean would you argue that if someone build a macbook lookalike, but not using the same components would be completely clear?

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

#648

Post by emsign »

spuz wrote: post #306
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…

It's also worth noting that Sam Altman admitted that he had only used GPT4o for one week before it was released. It's possible that in the rush to release before Google's IO event, they made the realisation of the likeness of the voice to Scarlett Johansen way too late hence the last minute contact with her agent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMtbrKhXMWc

Then asking Johansson for permission months before was pure coincidence?

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

#649

Post by kuboble »

foobarian wrote: post #456
ants_everywhere wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, totally ethically bankrupt. But what bewilders me is that they yanked it as soon as they heard from their lawyers. I would have thought that if they made the decision to go ahead despite getting two "no"s, that they at least had a legal position they thought was defensible and worth defending. But it kind of looks like they released it knowing they couldn't defend it in court which must seem pretty bonkers to in…

> But it kind of looks like they released it knowing they couldn't defend it in court which must seem pretty bonkers to investors. That actually seems like there may be a few people involved and one of them is a cowboy PM who said fuck it, ship it to make the demo. And then damage control came in later. Possibly the PM didn't even know about the asks for permission?

> a cowboy PM who said fuck it, ship it to make the demo.

Given the timeline it sounds like the PM was told "just go ahead with it, I'll get the permission".

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

#650

Post by crznp »

benreesman wrote: post #612
crznp wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn't sound like a "mid-level exceeding their mandate". It sounds like Altman was personally involved in recruiting her. She said no and they took what they wanted anyway.

It feels weird to be defending Altman, but those of us who go hard on the legitimately serious shit are held to a high standard on being fair and while multiple sources have independently corroborated e.g. the plainly unethical and dubiously legal NDA shit Vox just reported on, his links to this incident seem thinly substantiated. I’m not writing the guy a pass, he’s already been fired for what amount to ethics breac…

If this isn't the thing that makes your blood boil, that's fine. The world could probably do with less boiling blood, and it is still early, more evidence may come out. However, she indicated in her statement that Altman asked her, not OpenAI. It seems credible that he would want to be involved.

Both sides of the story feel like we're slowly being brought to a boil: Sutskever's leaving feels like it was just a matter of time. His leaving causing a mess seems predictable. Perhaps I am numb to that story.

But stealing a large part of someone's identity after being explicitly told not to? This one act is not the end of the world, but feels like an acceleration down a path that I would rather avoid.

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