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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

#731

Post by gds44 »

trustno2 wrote: post #707
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...

Altman wants to be a part of AI regulation in the same way Bankman Fried wanted to be a part of cryptocurrency regulation.

Whats really interesting about our timeline is when you look at the history of market capture in Big Oil, Telco, Pharma, Real Estate, Banks, Tobacco etc all the lobbying, bribing, competition killing used to be done behind the scenes within elite circles.

The public hardly heard from or saw the mgmt of these firm in media until shit hit the fan.

Today it feels like managment is in the media every 3 hours trying to capture attention of prospective customers, investors, employees etc or they loose out to whoever is out there capturing more attention.

So false and condradictory signalling is easy to see. Hopefully out of all this chaos we get a better class of leaders not a better class of panderers.

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

#732

Post by surfingdino »

mbreese wrote: post #540
startupsfail wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely it was an unforced error, as there’ve been a lot of chaos with cofounders and the board revolt, easy to loose track of something really minor. Like some intern’s idea to train the voice on their favorite movie. And then they’ve decided that this is acceptable risk/reward and not a big liability, so worth it. This could be a well-planned opening move of a regulation gambit. But unlikely.

This is an unforced error, but it isn’t minor. It’s quite large and public. The general public doesn’t understand the details and nuances of training an LLM, the various data sources required, and how to get them. But the public does understand stealing someone’s voice. If you want to keep the public on your side, it’s best to not train a voice with a celebrity who hasn’t agreed to it.

I had a conversation with someone responsible for introducing LLMs into the process that involves personal information. That person rejected my concern over one person's data appearing in the report on another person. He told me that it will be possible to train AI to avoid that. The rest of the conversation convinced me that AI is seen as magic that can do anything. It seems to me that we are seeing a split between those who don't understand it and fear it and those who don't understand it, but want to align themselves with it. Those latter are those I fear the most.

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

#733

Post by coolandsmartrr »

gkanai wrote: post #656
nicklecompte wrote: post #234

From the Ars Technica story[1], this is very funny: > But OpenAI's chief technology officer, Mira Murati, has said that GPT-4o's voice modes were less inspired by Her than by studying the "really natural, rich, and interactive" aspects of human conversation, The Wall Street Journal reported. People made fun of Murati when she froze after being asked what Sora was trained on. But behavior like that indicates understan…

Bloomberg's Odd Lots Podcast had an ex-CIA officer, Phil Houston, on in April of 2024. He was promoting a new book but he had a lot of great advice for anyone to use regarding 'tells' when people are lying. Murati was clearly lying- that's obvious then and now. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-ex-cia-officer-expl...

Could you explain what "to use regarding 'tells'" means in this context?

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

#734

Post by surfingdino »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #666
nickthegreek wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement from scarlet really changed my perspective. I use and loved the Sky voice and I did feel it sounded a little like her, but moreover it was the best of their voice offerings. I was mad when they removed it. But now I’m mad it was ever there to begin with. This timeline makes it clear that this wasn’t a coincidence and maybe not even a hiring of an impressionist (which is where things get a little more w…

Everyone is so mad about them stealing a beloved celebrity’s voice. What about the millions of authors and other creators whose copyrighted works they stole to create works that resemble and replace those people? Not famous enough to generate the same outrage?

Welcome to the world where the "fuck the creatives" brigade wants everything for free.

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

#735

Post by johnnyanmac »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #286
spuz wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The damning part is that they tried to contact her and get her to reconsider their offer only 2 days before the model was demoed. That tells you that at the very least they either felt a moral or legal obligation to get her to agree with their release of the model.

Or, they wanted to be able to say, yes, that is "her" talking to you. I have no idea if they really used her voice, or it is a voice that just sounds like her to some. I'm just saying openai's behavior isn't a smoking gun.

> a reference to an object or fact that serves as conclusive evidence of a crime or similar act, just short of being caught in flagrante delicto.

If this isn't a smoking gun, I don't know what it.

I think people forget the last part of the definition, though. A Smoking gun is about as close as you get without having objective, non-doctored footage of the act. There's a small chance the gun is a red herring, but it's still suspicious.

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

#737

Post by smt88 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #610
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).

This has been settled law for 34 years. See Tom Waits v Frito-Lay. They literally hired an impersonator, and it cost them 2.5 million (~6 million today). https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-st...

That case seems completely dissimilar to what OpenAI did.

Frito-Lay copied a song by Waits (with different lyrics) and had an impersonator sing it. Witnesses testified they thought Waits had sung the song.

If OpenAI were to anonymously copy someone's voice by training AI on an imitation, you wouldn't have:

- a recognizable singing voice

- music identified with a singer

- market confusion about whose voice it is (since it's novel audio coming from a machine)

I don't think any of this is ethical and think voice-cloning should be entirely illegal, but I also don't think we have good precedents for most AI issues.

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

#739

Post by jrflowers »

prepend wrote: post #340
minimaxir wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the timeline, I’m still baffled Sam Altman tweeted “her.” That just makes plausible deniability go away for a random shitpost.

I thought it was about functionality more than the specific voice.

What part of the functionality from the movie Her did you think it meant?

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

#740

Post by charlieyu1 »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #329
charlieyu1 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? Sounds like a violation to the rights of the sound actor

Because it's meant to give the _appearance_ or _perception_ that a celebrity is involved. Their actions demonstrate they were both highly interested and had the expectation that the partnership was going to work out, with the express purpose of using the celebrity's identity for their own commercial purposes. If they had just screened a bunch of voice actors and chosen the same one no one would care (legally or other…

I guess the Trump lookalike satire guy would not want to go to California then
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