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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

#721

Post by TaroEld »

worstspotgain wrote: post #154

Most of the reactions here are in unison, so there's little left to contribute in agreement. I'll ask the devil's advocate / contrarian question: How big a slice of the human voice space does Scarlett lay a claim to? The evidence would be in her favor in a civil court case. OTOH, a less famous woman's claim that any given synthesized voice sounds like hers would probably fail. Contrast this with copyrighted fiction.…

My concern is that cases like this would set the precedent that synthetic voices can't be too close to the voice of a real, famous person. But where does that leave us? There's been lots of famous people since the recording age, and the number is only going to increase. It seems unlikely that you can distinguish your fake voice from every somewhat public/famous real voice in existence, especially going forward. Will this not result in a situation where the synthetic voices must either sound clearly fake and non-human to not be confused with an existing famous voice, or the companies/producers must in every case pay royalties to the owner to a famous voice that sounds similarly close, even if their intent wasn't even to copy said voice or any that are similar, to avoid them getting sued afterwards? Are we going to pay famous people for being famous?

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

#722

Post by lawn »

ben_w wrote: post #705
lawn wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think that Worldcoin would be enough proof of what he is but I guess people missed that memo.

Much as I dislike crypto, that's more of "having no sense of other people's privacy" (and hubris) than general scamminess. It's a Musk-error not an SBF-error. (Of course, I do realise many will say all three are the same, but I think it's worth separating the types of mistakes everyone makes, because everyone makes mistakes, and only two of these three also did useful things).

It's not just about privacy either.

Worldcoin is centrally controlled making it a classic "scam coin". Decentralization is the _only_ unique thing about cryptocurrencies, when you abandon decentralization all that's left is general scamminess.

(Yes, there's nuance to decentralization too but that's not what's going on with Worldcoin.)

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

#723

Post by samaltmanfried »

lawn wrote: post #633
ocodo wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Altman has proven time and again that he is little more than a huckster wrt technology, and in business he is a stone cold shark. Conman plain and simple.

You'd think that Worldcoin would be enough proof of what he is but I guess people missed that memo.

[dead]

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

#724

Post by bakuninsbart »

slg wrote: post #222
npunt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people cheat on (relatively) small things, it's usually an indication they'll cheat on big things too

Which is what makes me wonder if this might grow into a galvanizing event for the pro-creator protests against these AI models and companies. What happened here isn't particularly unique to voices or even Scarlett Johansson, it is just how these companies and their products operate in general.

I think the only way for these protests to get really tangible results is in case we reach a ceiling in LLM capabilities. The technology in its current trajectory is simply too valuable both in economic and military applications to pull out of, and "overregulation" can be easily swatted citing national security concerns in regards to China. As far as I know, China has significantly stricter data and privacy regulations than the US when it comes to the private sector, but these probably count for little when it comes to the PLA.

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

#725

Post by unraveller »

Damning would be a side by side comparison of voices to assess the claim. We have the technology.

ChatGPT using Sky voice (not 4o - original release): https://youtu.be/JmxjluHaePw?t=129

Samantha from "Her" (voiced by ScarJo): https://youtu.be/GV01B5kVsC0?t=134

Rashida Jones Talking about herself https://youtu.be/iP-sK9uAKkM

I challenge anyone to leave prejudice at the door by describing each voice in totality first and seeing if your descriptions overlap entirely with others. They each have an obvious unique whispiness and huskiness to them.

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

#726

Post by surfingdino »

beefnugs wrote: post #672
windexh8er wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

the whole technology is based on fucking over artists, who didn't expect this exact thing?

It's not just the artists, anything you do in the digital realm and anything that can be digitised is fair game. In the UK NHS GP practices refuse to register you to see a doctor even when it's urgent and tell you to use a third-party app to book an appointment. You have use your phone to take photos of the affected area and provide a personal info. I fully expect that data to be fed into some AI and sold without me knowing and without a process for removal of data should the company go bust. It is preying on the vulnerable when they need help.

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

#727

Post by mschuster91 »

smugma wrote: post #186
EasyMark wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they could have taken her to court but right now they don't want the bad publicity, especially since it would put everything else in the shadow of such a scandalous "story". Better to just back off, let S.J. win and move on and start planning on they're gonna spend all that paper money they got with announcement of a new, more advanced model. It's a financial decision and a fairly predictable one. I'm glad she w…

She also won big against Disney. They backed down even though it appeared the contract was on their side. Iger apologized. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58757748.amp

Probably (and rightfully) feared that, had Disney stuck with their position, other MCU actors would be much, much harsher in new contract negotiations - or that some would go as far and say "nope, I quit".

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

#728

Post by serial_dev »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #533
windexh8er wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

if this account is true, Sam Altman is a deeply unethical human being. Given that he doesn't bring any technical know how to building of AGI, I just don't see the reason to have such a person in charge here. The new board should act.

He must be bringing something to the table as they tried to get rid of him and failed spectacularly. Business is not only about technical know how.

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

#729

Post by dilyevsky »

unraveller wrote: post #725

Damning would be a side by side comparison of voices to assess the claim. We have the technology. ChatGPT using Sky voice (not 4o - original release): https://youtu.be/JmxjluHaePw?t=129 Samantha from "Her" (voiced by ScarJo): https://youtu.be/GV01B5kVsC0?t=134 Rashida Jones Talking about herself https://youtu.be/iP-sK9uAKkM I challenge anyone to leave prejudice at the door by describing each voice in totality first a…

First and second sample have this super noticeable voice fry that Rashida doesn’t have (as much of)

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

#730

Post by smt88 »

aseipp wrote: post #437
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).

It is not an impossible situation, courts have settled it, and what you describe is not how the law works (despite how many computer engineers think to the contrary.)

Courts have settled almost nothing related to AI. We don't even know if training AI using copyrighted works is a violating of copyright law.

Please point to a case where someone was successfully sued for sounding too much like a celebrity (while not using the celebrity's name or claiming to be them).

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