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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

#821

Post by dragonwriter »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #641
freejazz wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> “Reasonable” does a lot of work throughout the entire legal system.

Yes, but here it’s not being invoked in the sense of “would a reasonable person believe based on this evidence that the facts which would violate the actual law exist” but “would a ‘reasonable’ person believe the law is what the law, indisputably, actually is”.

It’s being invoked to question the reality of the law itself, based on its subjective undesirability to the speaker.

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

#822

Post by mcphage »

kstrauser wrote: post #773
summerlight wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess: Sam wanted to imitate the voice from Her and became aware of Midler v. Ford cases so reached out to SJ. He probably didn't expect her decline. Anyway, this prior case tells that you cannot mimic other's voice without their permission and the overall timeline indicates OpenAI's "intention" of imitation. It does not matter if they used SJ's voice in the training set or not. Their intention matters.

Please don't take this as me defending OpenAI's clearly sketchy process. I'm writing this to help myself think through it. If it weren't for their attempt to link the voice to SJ (i.e. with the "her" tweet), would that be OK? - It's fine to hire a voice actor. - It's fine to train a system to sound like that voice actor. - It's fine to hire a voice actor who sounds like someone else. - It's probably fine to go out of…

> It's fine to hire a voice actor who sounds like someone else.

Not necessarily, when you're hiring them because they like someone else—especially someone else who has said that they don't want to work with you. OpenAI took enough steps to show they wanted someone who sounded like SJ.

> Surely it's OK to hire an English actor who sounds a lot like him, so long as I don't use Sir Patrick's name in the advertising.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co. and also Tom Waits vs. Frito-Lay.

> as long as they didn't mention SJ

Or tried to hire SJ repeatedly, even as late as 2 days before the launch.

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

#823

Post by freejazz »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #641
freejazz wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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

Yet it never becomes anywhere near the significant fulcrum you made it out to be here, filtering between the laws you think are good and the laws you think are bad. Further, you seem to mistake attorneys with legislators. I'd be surprised if a reasonable person thinks it is okay to profit off the likeness of others without their permission. But I guess you don't think that's reasonable. What a valuable conversation we're having.

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

#824

Post by sowbug »

buu700 wrote: post #754
sowbug wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fired actor would have already signed away any claim to the character's likeness. The likeness the company cares about is that of the character, not of the actor portraying the character. The actor never owned the character, so the actor shouldn't be miffed that someone else gets the part for future performances.

That's probably the case. Having said that, there are also a lot of one-off side characters which use Justin's distinctive voice style, although I can't remember specifically whether that was the case in the latest season, and I'm not aware that detailed information about their internal agreements is public knowledge either way. I was speaking more about the general principle, not strictly that particular situation.…

Yes, I can see a plausible argument that a character is so intertwined with a well-known real-life persona that a company can't replicate a character without borrowing some of the persona's value. One might also make the case that the actor developed so much depth in an initially thin character that they deserve more credit than just acting the part.

I don't personally subscribe to the notion that the recent legal invention of intellectual property is a moral right. Capitalism has been doing just fine as a productivity motivator. We don't need to capitalize expression of ideas, let alone pure ideas. I accept the tradeoff of the temporary monopolies of copyright and patent, and I appreciate that trademark and trade secrets disincentivize bad behavior. But I have no desire to try to find new boxes to store new kinds of intellectual property, like Scarlett Johansson's right to monopolize performances of a character in an app that remind people of her performance of a character in a movie. Such a kind of property right is not necessary.

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

#825

Post by mwigdahl »

modeless wrote: post #33

> an actress was hired to create the Sky voice months before Altman contacted Johansson > the actress confirmed that neither Johansson nor the movie “Her” were ever mentioned by OpenAI. The actress’s natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice, based on brief recordings Given this I don't think anyone at OpenAI did anything wrong in this instance except Sam Altman. After getting explicitly rejected b…

> definitely should not have referenced her character in that tweet.

Did he, though? The character's name was Samantha. The name of the _movie_ was Her.

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

#826

Post by leovander »

leovander wrote: post #710

A lot of comments seem to forget that she was reached out to two years before, ignoring that and going straight to the line about working with a voice actor for months then them asking SJ one more time. Additionally, glad no one here is a lawyer and should stick in their lane.

Sorry, 7 months* before.

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

#827

Post by dragonwriter »

Aunche wrote: post #507
zug_zug wrote: post #481

When I first used ChatGPT's voice assistant's I was like "Wow, this one is clearly Scarlett Johansson from Her, they even copy her mannerisms." No amount of unverifiable "records" (just pieces of paper provided by somebody who has a multimillion dollar incentive to show one outcome) will change my mind. But if they can produce the actual voice artist I'd be more open-minded.

I don't think the mannerisms of a performance something that's copyrightable though. It sounded like they used a voice actor who was instructed to speak with a similar intonation as Her, but Scarlet Johansson's voice is more raspy, whereas Sky just sounds like a generic valley girl.

> I don’t think the mannerisms of a performance something that’s copyrightable though.

Yes, this discussion is about right of publicity, not copyright.

Copyright is not the whole of the law.

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

#828

Post by freejazz »

stale2002 wrote: post #743
freejazz wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

She absolutely is being deplatformed and her rights are violated. If every customer who hires her gets sued, that is basically the same as making it illegal for her to be a VA.

I don't know what it is about this website that makes discussion of legal issues so frequently poor as it is here right now.

>She absolutely is being deplatformed and her rights are violated.

No. And 'deplatforming' isn't illegal last I checked, whatever you mean it to be.

>If every customer who hires her gets sued, that is basically the same as making it illegal for her to be a VA.

They aren't getting sued because she sounds like ScarJo. In fact, its not clear they are being sued at all. What is illegal, that you do not seem to appreciate, is that regardless of whatever a particular individual looks or sounds like, it does not create a right in others to profit over this similarity in likeness. You cannot hire a Harrison Ford impersonator, to pretend to be Harrison Ford and promote your products. That you re-contextualize this as to Harrison Ford look-alikes being deprived work is just your own sad confusion.

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

#829

Post by gs17 »

BillTthree wrote: post #677
rst wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a case to the contrary: Midler v. Ford -- a case in which Ford hired one of Bette Midler's ex-backup singers to duplicate one of her performances for an ad (after trying and failing to get Midler herself). Ford never said this was actually Midler -- and it wasn't -- but Midler still sued and won. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/849...

Ford gave explicit instructions to imitate a copyrighted performance. Because that specific recording as owned by a record studio. If you can describe a woman's voice and mannerisms and the result sounds similar to a copyrighted performance, that is natural circumstance. If you want an example of purposefully imitating something with a copyright, look at GNU. Anyone who looked at the UNIX code was realistically preve…

> Ford gave explicit instructions to imitate a copyrighted performance.

That case isn't copyright law, Ford had obtained rights to use the song itself.

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

#830

Post by dragonwriter »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #560
Uehreka wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? This kind of thing is already illegal. If I’m producing a commercial for Joe’s Hot Dogs, and I hire a voice actor who sounds like Morgan Freeman, and he never says “I’m Morgan Freeman” but he’s the main voice in the commercial and the cartoon character he’s voicing looks like Morgan Freeman… well, many consumers will be confused into thinking Morgan Freeman likes Joe’s Hot Dogs, and that’s a violation of Morgan…

no, that's definitely not illegal. Voices are not trademarkable, only jingles (melody, words + tone), and of course specific recordings of voices are copyrighted. The ONLY way they get in trouble is if they claim to be Morgan Freeman.

> Voices are not trademarkable

But they are subject to right of publicity in many US jurisdictions.

Which, while more like trademark than copyright (the other thing that keeps getting raised as if it should dispose of this issue), is its own area of law, distinct from either trademark or copyright.

> The ONLY way they get in trouble is if they claim to be Morgan Freeman.

That’s…not true. Though such an explicit claim would definitely be a way that they could get in trouble.

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