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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

#641

Post by Turing_Machine »

freejazz wrote: post #570
pc86 wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Reasonable" does a lot of work throughout the entire legal system.

If there's one constant that can be relied upon, it's that "things that are reasonable to a lawyer" and "things that are reasonable to a normal human being" are essentially disjoint sets.

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

#642

Post by TuringNYC »

freejazz wrote: post #633
TuringNYC wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

How is it unfair to the voice actor? Is she getting sued? Is she paying damages? Is she being prevented from doing her work? No. > Who's to say it isnt the other way around, perhaps it is ScarJo that sounds like me and i'm owed money? It seems like you don't get the fundamental principal underlying "right of publicity" laws if you are asking this question.

>> How is it unfair to the voice actor? Is she getting sued? Is she paying damages? Is she being prevented from doing her work? No.

Seems she is prevented from doing work, if companies can get sued for hiring/using voice actors who sounds like ScarJo, then any voice actor who sounds like ScarJo has effectively been de-platformed. Similarly, imagine I look very much like George Clooney -- if George Clooney can sue magazines for featuring my handsome photos, then I lose all ability to model for pay. (Strictly hypothetical, I am a developer, not a fashion model.)

>> It seems like you don't get the fundamental principal underlying "right of publicity" laws if you are asking this question.

Totally, i have no idea of the laws here, but very curious to understand what OpenAI did wrong here.

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

#643

Post by z7 »

visarga wrote: post #122
gnicholas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed — seems like they had a plan, and probably talked extensively with Legal about how to develop and execute the plan to give themselves plausible deniability. The tweet was inadvisable, and undoubtedly not part of the actual plan (unless it was to get PR).

I am sure it was for free PR. Streisand effect trap for ScarJo.

They removed ChatGPT's most popular voice in response, causing anger among many of their customers... for PR?

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

#644

Post by qarl »

93po wrote: post #639
jmull wrote: post #631

Well, here are some things that aren't really being disputed: * OpenAI wanted an AI voice that sounds like SJ * SJ declined * OpenAI got an AI voice that sounds like SJ anyway I guess they want us to believe this happened without shenanigans, but it's bit hard to. The headline of the article is a little funny, because records can't really show they weren't looking for an SJ sound-alike. They can just show that those…

The article clearly disputes this. They hired and worked with the voice actor for Sky months before the first time SJ was contacted, and the voice actor used for Sky never had the movie Her or SJ's name mentioned to her a single time

Right. And that's extremely hard to believe. A discovery search of the internal emails should give us a definitive answer.

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

#645

Post by Tobu »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #251
jorvi wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end, someone probably felt like it's a bit too dodgy as it resemblance was uncanny What if it wasn’t a computer voice model but rather a real-life voice actress that you could pay a few cents to try to imitate Scarlett Johansson’s voice as best as she could? That’s effectively what’s happening here, and it isn’t illegal. It guess it also leads to the bigger question: do celebrities own their particular frequ…

>guess it also leads to the bigger question people are allowed to sound like other people. But if you go to actor 1 and say we want to use your voice for our product, and then they say no, and then you go to actor 2 and tell them I want you to sound like actor 1 for our product, and then you release a statement hey you know that popular movie by actor 1 that just used their voice in a context extremely reminiscent of…

The other actress wasn't the only one involved in the production; she provided input but OpenAI building a voice model would involve a lot of data and input. They had to have a model of her ready to go when they asked her for permission immediately before launching; possibly they had one that had been built from her, and another legal-approved that they had converged to be close to the first one but that didn't include her as a direct source.

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

#646

Post by freejazz »

Pedro_Ribeiro wrote: post #206
mondrian wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well as the article states, there’s legal precedent protecting actors from having their voices “impersonated” by other actors. The fact that Altman tweeted “her” and contacted Johansson can make the case for the intent to impersonate.

What if that's just the VA's natural voice? Must she stop doing VA?

She isn't the issue, she isn't being sued.

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

#647

Post by jerojero »

lairv wrote: post #634
m_ke wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The sky voice currently available in the app is a different model from the one they presented (one is pure TTS, the new one in GPT-4o is a proper multi modal model that can do speech in and out end to end) 2. Look at these images and tell me they didn't intend to replicate "Her": https://x.com/michalwols/status/1792709377528647995

Genuine question, what's wrong with trying to replicate in real life an idea from a SciFi movie ? I understand that it could be problematic if OpenAI did one of two things: - imitated Scarlett Johansson's voice to impersonate her - misled people into believing that GPT-4o is an official by-product of the film Her, like calling it “the official Her AI” The first point is still unclear, and that's precisely the point o…

Pretty sure the CEO of OpenAI tweeted "Her." after the reveal of the voice.

Isn't that a suggestion that what they're doing is similar to "the Her AI"?

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

#648

Post by Turing_Machine »

zug_zug wrote: post #592
pc86 wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have no idea what they did, unless you work there. All you know is that somebody being sued for multi-millions of dollars (and who's trustworthiness is pretty much shot) is claiming what they did. And frankly given the frequency and ease of voice cloning, there are very few people who can say with confidence that they know 100% that nobody at the company did anything to that effect. What employee, if any, could s…

It's not (or shouldn't be) about things that have some finite probability (no matter how small) of being true, but rather about what can be proven to be true.

There's no doubt a very small (but finite) probability that the voice sounds like a grey alien from Zeta Reticuli.

That doesn't mean the alien is gonna win in court.

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

#649

Post by TuringNYC »

johnbellone wrote: post #562
TuringNYC wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 d…

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

If her customers can get sued for using her voice, then this voice actor can never get another job and can never get paid again -- all because she happens to sound like ScarJo. That seems unfair to the voice actor.

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

#650

Post by tptacek »

qarl wrote: post #644
93po wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article clearly disputes this. They hired and worked with the voice actor for Sky months before the first time SJ was contacted, and the voice actor used for Sky never had the movie Her or SJ's name mentioned to her a single time

Right. And that's extremely hard to believe. A discovery search of the internal emails should give us a definitive answer.

To find this "extremely hard to believe", you have to argue that this story, which has multiple sources unaffiliated with OpenAI, contemporaneous documentary evidence, and is written by a reporter with every incentive in the world to roast OpenAI, is directly wrong about facts plainly reported in the story.

I think you have to want this story to be wrong to think it's wrong. It's a tough beat! Everyone was super sure OpenAI did this bad thing just a couple days ago, and now they're feeling sheepish about it.

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