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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

#891

Post by gnicholas »

visarga wrote: post #698
z7 wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They removed ChatGPT's most popular voice in response, causing anger among many of their customers... for PR?

I can't say much about that particular voice because I almost never used chatGPT's voices. They are too slow. I need 1.5x speeds even if I have to use a worse voice. I am a TTS power user, listening to all online text since 2010s. Maybe GPT-4o has a more flexible voice, perhaps you can just ask it to speak faster.

They also need to have a terse mode, to avoid all the throat-clearing that I've seen in videos.

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

#892

Post by joshjob42 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #786
jackothy wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not necessarily saying that was the goal from the start. All he is admitting with that tweet is that it is indeed (he finds it to be) reminiscent of "Her".

Well, from the start, Altman wanted SJ to do the voice. Perhaps he'd never seen or heard of the movie "her", and the association is just coincidental? After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. I guess that's just the kind of voice he likes. So, Altman has forgotten about SJ, has 5 voice talents in the bag, and is good to go, right? But then, 2 days(!…

Sky has been in the app for many months, the release last week didn't add the voice, it merely is for a mode which allows a much more natural back and forth and interaction via voice, which is, indeed, fairly reminiscent of the voice interface in "her".

He probably just really wants to actually have SJ's voice from the film. But SJ doesn't really have a right to arbitrary west coast vocal fry female voices. Without the "disembodied voice of an AI" element, I don't think most people would note "Oh she sounds like SJ". In fact, that's what the voice actress herself has said -- she hadn't gotten compared to SJ before this.

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

#893

Post by bengale »

jrm4 wrote: post #485
bengale wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more charitable scenario might be that they hire the voice actor and it sounds a bit like her. Someone suggests why don't we just get Scarlett to do it properly, wouldn't that be cooler? They reach out and she says no. They decide to continue with the one that sounds a bit like her.

Genuine question; Why in the world would one expect the more charitable scenario?

Until proven otherwise I try not to assume malice in every action.

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

#894

Post by johnnyanmac »

tptacek wrote: post #670
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly an SJ voice was the goal, given that Altman asked her to do it, asked her a second time just two days before the ChatGPT-4o release, and then tweeted "her" on the release day. The next day Karpathy, recently ex-OpenAI, then tweets "The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson". Altman appears to be an habitual liar. Note his recent claim not to be aware of the non-disparagement and claw-back terms he had depa…

They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ . The reaction on this site to the news that this story was false is kind of mindbending.

Tbf here Altman really screwed this over with that tweet and very sudden contacting. There probably wouldn't be much of a case otherwise.

If I had to guess the best faith order of events (more than what OpenAi deserves):

- someone liked Her (clearly)

- they got a voice that sounded like Her, subconsciously (this is fine)

- someone high up hears it and thinks "wow this sounds like SJ!" (again, fine)

- they think "hey, we have money. Why not get THE SJ?!"

- they contact SJ, she refuses and they realize money's isn't enough (still fine. But this is definitely some schadenfreude here)

- marketing starts semi-indepenently, and they make references to Her, becsuse famous AI voice (here's where the cracks start to form. Sadly the marketer may not have even realized what talks went on).

- someone at OpenAi makes one last hail Mary before the release and contacts SJ again (this is where the trouble starts. MAYBE they didn't know about SJ refusing, but someone in the pipeline should have)

- Altman, who definitely should have been aware of these contacts, makes that tweet. Maybe they forgot, maybe they didn't realize the implications. But the lawyer's room is now on fire

So yeah, hanlon's razor. Thus could he a good faith mistake, but OpenAi's done a good job before this PR disaster ruining their goodwill. Again, sweet Schadenfreude even if we are assuming none of this was intentional.

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

#895

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>If it weren't for their attempt to link the voice to SJ (i.e. with the "her" tweet), would that be OK?

Taking the recent screwup out of account... It's tough. A commercial product shouldn't try to assossiate with another brand. But if we're being realistic: "Her" is nearly uncopyrightable.

Since Her isn't a tech branch it would be hard to get in trouble based on that association alone for some future company. Kind of like how Skynet in theory could have been taken by a legitimate tech company and how the Terminator IP owner would struggle to seek reparations (to satisfy curiosity, Skynet is a US govt. Program. So that's already taken care of).

As long as you don't leave a trail, you can probably get away with copying Stewart. But if you start making Star trek references (even if you never contacted Stewart), you're stepping in hit water.

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

#896

Post by johnnyanmac »

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

So it's okay to commit fradulous acts if "you have something to show for it"?

Even if Altman was a good person, they are the face of a company that is doing some very suspicious actions. Actions that got the company cooked in litigation. So those consequences will assossiate with that face, consequences for not following robots.txt, for trying to ask forgiveness over permission against other large companies, and now this whole kerfuffle.

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

#897

Post by johnnyanmac »

throwup238 wrote: post #701
spiralk wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sky does not really sound like SJ though if you listen side by side. According to OAI's timeline, they intended to have Sky in addition to SJ. OAIs voice models including Sky predate the GPT4o voice assistant. Also: "In a statement from the Sky actress provided by her agent, she wrote that at times the backlash “feels personal being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who…

> It seems like the issue is being blown out of proportion. It kinda feels like its on purpose. Someone in a previous thread mentioned that this might have been a cynical marketing ploy and I'm warming up to the theory. After they recorded the Sky VA, they figured out a whole marketing campaign with SJ to promote the voice feature. After she turned them down (twice), they released with just enough crumbs referencing…

Are we really at a point where tech companies will bait lawsuits just to get more PR? Clearly they need to be smited down to remember why old school companies go out of their way to avoid such possibilities of lawsuits

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

#898

Post by tangentstar »

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…

You’re right that a random person’s voice is not IP, but SJ is not a random person. She’s much more like Mr. Waits or Ms. Milder than you or I.

I don’t believe the burden would be to prove that the voice actor was impersonating, but that she was misappropriating. Walking down the street sounding like Bette Midler isn’t a problem but covering her song with an approximation of her voice is.

You are dead right that the order of operations recently uncovered precludes misappropriation. But it’s an interesting situation otherwise, hypothetically, to wonder if using SJ’s voice to “cover” her performance as the AI in the movie would be misappropriation.

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

#900

Post by jasonlotito »

m_ke wrote: post #535
stavros wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one are we saying sounds like Johansson? I'm talking about the TTS voice in the app, is everyone else talking about the multimodal voice from the 4o demos? Also, whether they *intended* to replicate Her and whether they *did* in the end are very different.

This one: https://youtu.be/vgYi3Wr7v_g?feature=shared&t=22 compare it to: https://youtu.be/GV01B5kVsC0?feature=shared&t=125

The OpenAI one is recording the audio from a phone, where as the movie version is into a mic directly. They will sound different, but there are elements that are the same. Anyone using these to compare though and saying they don't hear the difference isn't comparing apples to apples.

However, the fact that there is a debate at all proves there should be more of an investigation done.

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