I enjoyed this comment [1] on the Reg's article on this story:
Hurray, OpenAI has found a new lucrative market. Horny incels.
[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/05/21/scarlett...
Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
811–820 of 1001 posts
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#812Earlier 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 is a known conman. Surely you are aware of Yishan Wong describing how Sam Altman and the Reddit founders conned Conde Nast https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_bes...
Wow, Altman in the replies there:
> Cool story bro.
> Except I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot :)
> Other than that, child's play for me.
>Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#813Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, absolutely illegal. You don't need to copyright anything, you simply own the rights your own likeness -- your visual appearance and your voice. A company can't take a photo from your Facebook and plaster it across an advertisement for their product without you giving them the rights to do that. And if you're a known public figure, this includes lookalikes and soundalikes as well. You can't hire a ScarJo imperson…
Scarlet owns the voice of a stranger that happens to sound like her? That seems absurd. Just find someone who sounds like her, then hire them for the rights to their voice.
Impersonating is defined by intent. "Just find someone who sounds like her" implies intent.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#814Earlier quoted context omitted.
The man is literally lobbying congress to obtain an artificial monopoly on AI in the name of "safety". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO0J2Yw7usM
It would be helpful if you linked to something more specific (even a timestamp). I’m not going to watch this nearly 3-hour video to decide whether it supports your statement or not.
If you want to discover truths, 3 hours research seems like a good deal. Anyways, I got you covered. Altman has had a plan for this from the get go: https://www.techemails.com/p/sam-altman-emails-elon-musk
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#815Again, I must recommend everyone read Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns The Future".
It's an excellent book, and so so many of the issues raised in it are playing out blow-by-blow.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#816Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention that it matches up pretty much exactly with the Bette Midler and Tom Waits cases, where courts ruled against companies using soundalikes after the person they really wanted turned them down. Doesn't matter if they hired a soundalike actress rather than clone her voice, it still violates her rights.
I am guessing this is only because they first tried to hire the originals before hiring sound-alikes... otherwise, would it mean that if your voice sounds similar to someone else, you can't do voice work?
It's only really about the intent of the voice to sound like the original. Reaching out to the originals first implies intent, so it makes the case easier.
It would be harder to find a case if they simply just hired someone that sounds similar, but if they did that with the intention to sound like the original that's still impersonation, only it's harder to prove.
If they just happened to hire someone that sounded like the original, then that's fair game IMO.
IANAL
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#817Earlier 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 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.
Aspiring technofeudalist.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#818Altman often uses tactical charisma to trap gullible people, government entities, and any unsuspecting powerful person for his ends. He will not bat an eyelid to take whatever unethical route if that gives him "moat". He relentlessly talks as if "near-term AGI" is straining to get out of the bottle in his ClosedAI basement. He will tell you with great concern about how "nervous" or "scared" (he said this to the US Co…
"Tactical charisma" is a good one.
Honestly though, if you actually listen to him and read his words he seems to be even more devoid of basic empathetic human traits than even Zuckerberg who gets widely lampooned as a robot or a lizard.
He is a grifter through-and-through.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#819I found the whole ChatGPT-4o demo to be cringe inducing. The fact that Altman was explicitly, and desperately, trying to copy "her" at least makes it understandable why he didn't veto the bimbo persona - it's actually what he wanted. Great call by Scarlett Johansson in not wanting to be any part of it. One thing these trained voices make clear is that it's a tts engine generating ChatGPT-4o's speech, same as before.…
I wouldn’t go as far as your last statement. While shocking, it’s not inconceivable that there’s native token I/O for audio. In fact tokenizing audio directly actually seems more efficient since the tokenization could be local. Nevertheless. This is still incredibly embarrassing for OpenAI. And totally hurts the company’s aspiration to be good for humanity.
> company’s aspiration to be good for humanity
Seems like they abandoned it pretty early - if it was real in the first place.
Re: Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice
#820Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe the prospect of theft and unpermissioned copying of an extremely personal quality (one's voice) is (correctly) being called out? People aren't as selfish/petty as you're making them out.
Most people aren’t that selfish or petty. But there are some people who are—and by an unfortunate quirk of human nature, they tend to believe everyone else is just like them.
So your response is ... "No I'm not, you are."
Well. This reaction invites further psychological interpretations, lol.