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

washingtonpost.com

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

#881

Post by throwawaymaths »

dragonwriter wrote: post #830
throwawaymaths wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In the United States, no federal statute or case law recognizes the right of publicity, although federal unfair competition law recognizes a related statutory right to protection against false endorsement, association, or affiliation

https://www.inta.org/topics/right-of-publicity/#:~:text=In%2....

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

#882

Post by goatlover »

ein0p wrote: post #877
goatlover wrote: post #862

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was what Elizabeth Holmes claimed as well, however, we know that some people who try to achieve greatness are grifters. A pithy saying doesn’t change that reality.

You can’t seriously claim there’s any equivalence between Altman/Musk and Holmes. The former two have something to show for their ambition, Holmes was basically a fraud with no substance behind her whatsoever

I'm not comparing the products, I'm criticizing the statement that people are just jealously trying to bring down those who attempt to achieve greatness. Also, you can have a great product and still do ethically and legally questionable things that people will criticize.

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

#883

Post by htrp »

> One thing the artificial intelligence company didn’t request, according to interviews with multiple people involved in the process and documents shared by OpenAI in response to questions from The Washington Post: a clone of actress Scarlett Johansson.

Open AI found records to show they did nothing wrong in response to questions from WaPo

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

#884

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

bnralt wrote: post #740
TeMPOraL wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but then again, I totally expected this opening the comment threads. Same happened with RMS debacle, same happened with similar events earlier, same happened on many a Musk stories. It seems that a neat narrative with clear person/object to hate, once established, is extremely resilient to facts that disprove it.

Right. Even if you think OpenAI isn’t a good place, this is an investigation by an established newspaper that refuted some of the more serious accusations (that OpenAI got a Johannson impersonator - they didn’t, that they modified the voice to sound like Johansson - evidence suggests this didn’t happen). When the reaction is “I don’t care that an investigation refuted some of the accusations”, it demonstrates someone…

OpenAI allowed the reporter to hear some snippets from the audition tape. Not exactly my idea of an "investigation".

There are multiple parts to the voice performance of ChatGPT - the voice (vocal traits including baseline pronunciation) plus the dynamic manipulation of synthesized intonation/prosody for emotion/etc, plus the flirty persona (outside of vocal performance) they gave the assistant.

The fact that the baseline speaking voice of the audition tape matches baseline of ChatGPT-4o only shows that the underlying voice was (at least in part, maybe in whole) from the actress. However, the legal case is that OpenAI deliberately tried to copy SJ's "her" performance, and given her own close friends noting the similarity, they seem to have succeeded, regardless of how much of that is due to having chosen a baseline sound-alike (or not!) voice actress.

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

#885

Post by standardly »

paulddraper wrote: post #843
kopecs wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's an SJ lookalike or soundalike (and you don't claim otherwise), there's no problem. This isn't true. At least with respect to "soundalike" see, e.g., Waits v. Frito-Lay 978 F.2d 1093 and Midler v. Ford Motor Co. 849 F.2d 460.

Lol what a joke. The famous person "owns" the sound of their voice, and the non-famous person does not. Get wrecked peasants.

Imagine being sued by a celebrity for looking or sounding like them. Should've not chosen to born with a similar voice.

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

#886

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

tptacek wrote: post #863
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.

A random person's normal speaking voice is nobody's intellectual property. The burden would have been on SJ to prove that the voice actor they hired was "impersonating" SJ. She was not: the Washington Post got her to record a voice sample to illustrate that she wasn't doing an impersonation. Unless & until some 3rd other shoe drops, what we know now strongly --- overwhelmingly, really --- suggests that there was simp…

> the Washington Post got her to record a voice sample

Actually it only says they reviewed "brief recordings of her initial voice test", which I assume refers to the voice test she did for OpenAI.

The "impersonating SJ" thing seems a straw man someone made up. The OpenAI talent call was for "warm, engaging, charismatic" voices sounding like 25-45 yr old (I assume SJ would have qualified, given that Altman specifically wanted her). They reviewed 400 applicants meeting this filtering criteria, and it seems threw away 395 of the ones that didn't remind Altman of SJ. It's a bit like natural selection and survival of the fittest. Take 400 giraffes, kill the 395 shortest ones, and the rest will all be tall. Go figure.

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

#888

Post by skybrian »

sanderjd wrote: post #800
skybrian wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it could have happened, but it seems we don’t have evidence either way. Tweeting “her” months later doesn’t prove anything. That Tweet might superficially look like evidence of intent, but if you think about it, it’s not.

Counterpoint: if you think about it, yes it is.

To spell it out, based on the date, it's very weak evidence for something that happened many months before.

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

#889

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Alupis wrote: post #747
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.

I cannot read the article because of it's paywall - is there actual proof OpenAI reached out to Johansson - or is it just being alleged by her lawyers? It seems she has every reason to benefit from claiming Sky sounded like her even if it was a coincidence. "Go away" payments are very common, even for celebrities - and OpenAI has deep pockets... Even so, if they got a voice actor to impersonate or sound similar to Jo…

Johansson is a super successful actress and no doubt rejects 95% of roles offered to her, just as she rejected Altman's request to be the voice of ChatGPT.

She doesn't need "go away" payments, and in any case that is not what we're looking at here. OpenAI offered her money to take the part, and she said no.

According to celebrity net worth website, SJ is worth $165M.

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

#890

Post by Manabu-eo »

giobox wrote: post #750
TeMPOraL wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its inconceivable the majority of the team at OpenAI haven't at least seen part of the film that almost defined their industry Let's not exaggerate. It was a somewhat popular movie, yes, but not really defining and far from the first example of conversational AI speaking woman's voice. There are plenty of examples in movies and TV shows. If anything, the seminal work in this space is Star Trek casting Majel Barrett…

If "her" wasn't the canonical example of a near-future AI assistant in a film, why then does Sam bother to tweet the single word "her" following launch? I think that film is far more influential than you give it credit for here. Everyone in tech who saw that tweet knew what it meant - a single word. The tweet doesn't even require additional context or explanation to almost anyone in this industry. There is also a cle…

Just anecdotally, I personally didn't know about the existence of that movie before this whole drama began. Sam tweeting that probably knew however.
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