The precedent in this case already exists in Midler v. Ford Motor Co., in which when Academy Award nominated actress and singer Bette Midler sued Ford after Ford hired musical impersonators to sing famous songs for their commercials.
The court ultimately ruled in favor of Midler, because it was found that Ford gave clear instructions to the impersonating actress to sound as much like Midler as possible, and the ruling was voices, although not copyrightable, still constitutes their distinct identity and is protected against unauthorized use without permission. (Outside of satire, of course, since I doubt someone like Trump would be above suing people for making fun of him.)
I think Scarlett Johansson has a case here, but it really hinges on whether or not OpenAI actively gave the instruction specifically to impersonate Scarlett’s voice in “Her”, or if they used her voice inside the training data at all, since there is a difference in the “Sky” voice and the voice of Scarlett Johansson.
But then again, what do I know, I’m just here to shitpost and promote “Barbie”.
That’s, uh, “Jaime Pressly”, who is totally not esteemed Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie doing an American Southern accent to get more work in the US.
Hey, I have more than one comedy bit I do here other than something something Hell in a Cell, OK?
Speaking of which, Hell in a Cell isn’t even that exciting anymore after the WWE made it an annual event and painted the cages red, and why did Seth Rollins get disqualified after he attacked “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt with a sledgehammer 2019 even though Hell in a Cell matches have always been no disqualification?
It’s like their script writers don’t even care about their own rules.
I think abolishing intellectual property would hurt capitalism more than it would benefit it. Already it is strongly in favor of the rich and the big corporations. Getting rid of those limitations even without abolishing capitalism first, would, I think, be more to everyone’s benefit than detriment.
Disagree, without IP laws whoever has the most money can crush all competition. An example of this is how the first pump hand soap softsoap couldn’t patent the hand pump design because it already existed so they just bought all the existing stock to prevent anyone from releasing a competing product.
If you get rid of IP laws you’ll just further entrench the existing winners.
Write a good book? Without copyright, Penguin random house publishes an exact copy at a higher quality and sells a million copies while you sell a handful to discerning fans.
Build a quality product? Without trademark, proctor and gamble flood the market using your brand name and nobody can distinguish their products from yours even though their quality is much worse.
Invent something revolutionary? Without patents you have to keep your process a secret so you don’t get copied. If you get hit by a bus your invention is now lost to society forever unless someone manages to reverse-engineee it.
That’s probably going to be a big deal in future AI lawsuit.
If intellectual property isn’t exterminated wholesale it will lead to explicitely refusing to answer any person or copyrighted works by name.
So instead of “sing a song about bananas by Taylor Swift” it will be “sing a song about banana by a female singer pop singer whose songs are, on the whole, quite straightforward, primarily revolving around the saga of girl-meets-boy, boy-fails-to-live-up-to-expectations, girl-pens-another-breakup-anthem. Each track features tales of romantic entanglements and emotional rollercoasters, culminating in catchy, radio-friendly tunes that are sure to dominate the charts, accompanied by dramatic twists and heartfelt reconciliations that appear almost out of thin air.”
Wish I had time yesterday to do a comparison myself, using better clips from Her and the newest OpenAI demo clips. Plus would get the ChatGPT app to speak some lines from Her.
Nearly 2 years ago we were considering moving to San Francisco and I began to search for jobs. I found one that I was well qualified for and took a deep look at, but backed out because it was full of all this bold-faced language about 40 hours on prem and how remote would never be permitted. The wording really seemed a bit shocking to me and I backed the heck away. It was OpenAI and they tried to fire Altman like a month later. I am so glad that I walked away from that, the whole thing is terrifying.
There isn’t any evidence that they used her voice for the “Sky” voice model. Actually, there is evidence that they paid a voice actress to model that specific actress’s voice.
That actress sounds similar to Scarlett, but it isn’t Scarlett’s voice. Is that illegal? No. Is it grounds for a suit? maybe. Will Scarlett win? Maybe.
Let’s put it another way. If you wanted to record an audio book, but you wanted the voice actor to have certain qualities that you think would help your book sell. You think Scarlett has all of those qualities, so you ask her if she would record it for you. She declines.
Well shit, that sucks. But wait! She’s not the only person with those vocal qualities. I am sure you can find someone else with very similar qualities. So you hire another voice actress that has all of those–which coincidentally and very understandable sounds a lot like Scarlett. But it isn’t Scarlett.
Everyone wants to say “big corp bad!” here, but if they truly didn’t use Scarlett’s voice and didn’t do any sort of manipulation to make it sound more like Scarlett, then why CANT they do it. I get that Scarlett is upset, but she’s basically mad that someone sounds like her–and decided to work for OpenAI.
If I wanted James Earl Jones to read my eulogy, but he isn’t available or is unwilling. Why couldn’t I get someone to sound like him to read it? Why should he be able to sue me for using a voice actor that sounds similar to him?
Your comment raises several interesting points regarding the use of voice likeness and the legal implications of hiring voice actors who sound similar to well-known celebrities. Let’s break down the key issues:
Use of a Similar Voice: The core of the debate revolves around whether using a voice that sounds like a well-known celebrity constitutes a legal issue. If the voice used is indeed not Scarlett Johansson’s but merely resembles it, this might not be inherently illegal. However, it could still lead to legal disputes over rights of publicity and potential misrepresentation.
Voice Acting and Vocal Qualities: It is true that many voice actors can mimic the vocal qualities of celebrities. Hiring a voice actor who naturally has a similar voice to a celebrity is a common practice. The legal line is crossed if the intent and execution imply endorsement or use of the celebrity’s identity without permission.
Rights of Publicity: Celebrities, including Scarlett Johansson, have rights of publicity, which protect against unauthorized commercial use of their name, likeness, and other identifiable aspects of their persona. If the resemblance is close enough that it creates confusion or implies endorsement, it could be grounds for a lawsuit.
Potential for a Lawsuit: Whether Scarlett Johansson would win a lawsuit depends on several factors, including the jurisdiction’s specific laws on rights of publicity, the exact nature of the voice usage, and whether it can be proven that the voice model intentionally mimics her voice in a way that exploits her identity.
Practical Examples: Your analogy with James Earl Jones highlights a key point. If a voice actor is hired for their natural resemblance to a well-known voice, it’s typically acceptable. However, explicitly marketing or promoting the voice in a way that suggests it is the celebrity without their consent could lead to legal challenges.
In summary, while it may not be outright illegal to use a voice that sounds like a celebrity, there are significant legal nuances and potential for litigation if the use implies unauthorized endorsement or exploits the celebrity’s identity. The balance lies in how the voice is marketed and whether it misleads the audience into believing it is the celebrity.
References a suit will make will likely be to how US copyright laws prevent people from using lookalikes. AFAIK it’s never had a need to go with sounds like but it’s there to protect “brand of self”
There’s ample evidence, via the samples OpenAI released during their demo.
Actually, there is evidence that they paid a voice actress to model that specific actress’s voice.
Actually, there’s not. OpenAI refuses to release where they got their voice samples. They insist it came from “another unnamed actress”.
She’s not the only person with those vocal qualities.
If the raw data OpenAI used to train its AI came from voice samples produced by Scarlett Johansson, then there actually IS only one person with those vocal qualities.
If I wanted James Earl Jones to read my eulogy, but he isn’t available or is unwilling. Why couldn’t I get someone to sound like him to read it?
Nothing is stopping you from doing this.
However, if you took an existing privately licensed James Earl Jones eulogy and doctored it with AI trained data to replace another person’s name with your name, then you’d be robbing Jones of his work product.
Waving your hands and saying “But maybe I didn’t do the thing I did, so actually its fine” isn’t a credible defense.
Yup. People up in arms over this should be reminded that if you want to support SJ here that, in a worst case, you are directly supporting the privatization of vocalization. Like to goof around by talking in Morgan Freeman’s voice? Be prepared to get slapped with a notice to stop. That voice is off limits, and oh also your natural voice sounds like this person.
Is this silly? Absolutely. But dammit we see what’s happened to Youtube so be aware of the risk.
Holy fuck how do you not see the difference between “random nobody does an impression for free while hanging out with their pals” and “multi billion startup backed and funded by one of the richest companies on earth uses an impression as a key selling point for their new flagship product that they are charging access for and intend to profit from”
Obviously there is a difference. However, I am very aware that if something can be monetized, someone will try to monetize and monopolize it. A few years ago, and possibly still today, the word Saga was trademarked. Disney has attempted to trademark common phrases and such in some cultures. Sony has made attempts. I’m certain Apple has tried. The Pokemon Company. Nintendo. A tiny Youtube creator uses their own music and one chord sounds vaguely like some song and they get demolished.
Don’t think for a second that companies haven’t sat in meetings and gone, “Do we think we can trademark the sound of a voice? Can we OWN that likeness?” These fuckers would privatize air if they thought they could get away with it. Sound pissed all you want, the reality is we’ve very likely dodged this bullet once or twice already, so we should be aware.
The problem is that as far as I’m aware there’s literally zero evidence of this doomsday scenario you’re describing ever happening, despite publicity rights being a thing for over 50 years. Companies have zero interest in monetizing publicity rights to this extent because of the near-certain public backlash, and even if they did, courts have zero interest in enforcing publicity rights against random individuals to avoid inviting a flood of frivolous lawsuits. They’re almost exclusively used by individuals to defend against businesses using their likeness without permission.
Okay, fair enough. I did say worst case, though how you explain it makes sense. I don’t trust that they won’t try eventually, you’re probably right that they won’t do so without outcry. I appreciate the down to earth reaction and explanation!
Lemmy seems to love copyright now and walled gardens, they also hate all the companies doing great things with open source ai, etc. Plus there’s never any community projects or anything constructive ever been suggested let alone ran here.
95% of the people here’s political opinions are nothing but an aesthetic.
There is evidence they wanted to use Johansson’s voice, because they asked to use her voice. Both OpenAI and Johansson have acknowledged this.
As far as I know, OpenAI has said they hired a voice actor before approaching Johansson, but refuses to offer additional information to corroborate.
After failing to secure Johansson to lend her voice to Sky - which is portrayed as having not just a very similar voice, but a very similar personality to Sam - the OpenAI team made several references to the Her movie prior to the announcement.
Similar voices happen. But when all of those other pieces align, it’s fairly clear that they’re copying the character. Focusing on only the voice being similar is reductive. They are committing IP theft and they’re attempting to confer approval/endorsement/a relationship of/to the Sky personality from the people involved in the Her movie.
They might not want to give that actress’s identity out out of a respect for privacy. This information could come out in a closed court room, but with the state of viral social media, it might be smart to hold off on unveiling for now.
I don’t know what their motivation is, but I definitely hope they protect the identity of the voice actress. If her name gets out, it’s basically guaranteed her life would suck for a while.
If she’s like 99% of actors, she’s someone just struggling to get work, who’s lucky if she can afford to rent an apartment without roommates. If her name got out, she’s almost certainly have to deal with death threats, stalkers, etc. Rich celebrities can deal with that kind of attention because they have the money to hire security people, PR people, lawyers, etc. Some random voice actor is not going to have those resources.
If an actor was hired, I could see them being treated as a scab or not being offered roles - perhaps because they agreed to take a job that they had no idea would be used in such a way, or with no idea that a controversy would emerge.
I am dubious, though. It seems that OpenAI pulled the voice shortly after Johansson’s legal team requested information about how the Sky voice was created.
It’s a fair assumption that I’m biased - and I am. I’m not the biggest fan of ‘big tech.’ So perhaps I’m not as objective as others.
But I think the voice actor part is still minor. It’s not just the voice, it’s the character, and all the references to the movie, which I think were intended to deceive consumers and create false sense of endorsement.
Or maybe not, maybe it’s that Sam Altman is a man-child with a crush on Johansson. He’s openly said that Her is his favorite movie, and it’s not a leap to see a CEO cowing his staff into bad decisions.
Ironically, a similarity to a real, live person without an agenda is not a legal problem unless there’s an implied endorsement from the person. (Which I think was one of the goals here.)
But characters in movies and books are subject to copyright and are considered the intellectual property of the rights holders.
So like, if I wrote a book about Wolverine and used other Marvel X-men, Marvel could sue the shit out of me. Or if I used AI to create Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) to endorse my bandaid product line, I could also be sued by both Jackman and Marvel.
I think it’s obvious here that Sky was intended to represent Sam from Her, and is almost certainly trained on her voice data (which is copywritten). After a few days thought however, I’m less certain of the argument this could be seen as a false endorsement scheme, since Johansson isn’t mentioned anywhere. (Despite the character being solely played by her, and the numerous attempts to have Johansson work on the project in an official capacity.)
There is almost certainly internal communication that basically reads “hey let’s get an actress who sounds as close to ScarJo as possible”. There’s also the CEO tweeting “her” on the day of release.
Is that legal? IANAL, but OpenAI’s reaction of immediately shutting that shit down leads me to believe they realized it is, in fact, illegal.
Your comparison is also incorrect. You’re not getting a JEJ soundalike, you’re getting a JEJ soundalike to do a Darth Vader impersonation. Meaningfully different semantics. They don’t just want “white american woman who vaguely sounds like ScarJo I guess” they have proven beyond doubt that they want “The AI from the 2013 movie Her starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson”.
Also legality aside, it’s really fucking weird and ethically wrong. I don’t care if it’s legal or not, you shouldn’t be able to make an AI replicate someone’s voice without their consent.
OpenAI’s actions could just as easily be explained by them seeking to protect their image as much as possible, knowing that if they let the voice stay then bad PR would only grow.
Even if there is no connection to ScarJo in this case, it’s still in OpenAI’s interest to appease the public for the sake of their reputation.
There is without a doubt a connection to ScarJo. They asked her to voice the AI, they asked her again right before release, and the CEO tweeted “her” on release.
The only question is whether, backlash aside, they could technically get away with it (which does not make it right).
Tweeting “her” was stupid but he has stated for years its his favorite movie and honestly even with a wildly different man voice it is still a very similar appearing product as the movie.
I believe she has many reasons to believe they used her voice and I think it’s fair for her to want to open a lawsuit. They literally asked her and she said no. They tweeted “Her” which is pretty clearly referencing her role in the film.
Lawsuits have been won by celebrities because a commercial used a lookalike, which still impacts the celebrity and their brand. They were in the wrong and didn’t care.
She absolutely should sue, and I hope she wins. Their BS excuse of “It’s totally someone else, but you wouldn’t know her, she goes to another school. Also we have to protect her identity for reasons” is as blatant as it gets.
Setting a president that voice can be copyrighted would be extremely bad for everyone who isn’t already a AAA actor.
If I sound like David Attenborough, even if I have an amazing voice, I can never work in any voice acting for the rest of my life. Just because some trust will sue my ass for sounding too similar to David.
We’re not talking about any project though. In your case, it’d only be like an unaffiliated project specifically trying to imitate a project David Attenborough has worked on in an attempt to mislead people to think it could be David Attenborough. There’s always room for parody, but you couldn’t sell your voice as the ‘Planet Earth’ voice.
That’s the thing. The line is too thin. OpenAI is def not in the clear tho, but likeliness should not be copyrighted. But they didn’t claim this was Scarlett. At most they are trying to replicate a character in a movie.
If they flat out said “Introducing Scarlett AI” then she might have a case. But they didn’t
A voice is too subjective. I for one can tell a very big difference between the voices and they sound like different females. The flirty way Sky is speaking is like Sam from Her. If anything the movie should be upset.
One of her more recent and popular roles is Black Widow in the Marvel/Avengers movies. The one with red hair, dresses in an all black leather biker suit like an assassin, and acts as the sort of voice of reason to help keep the heroes grounded. (like being able to calm down the hulk when he’s having one of his fits)
Another role was as the title character in Lucy. The movie where she was conned/forced to be a drug mule and inadvertently got dosed with what she was carrying. This sort of supercharged her mind to superhuman levels, and turned her into a perfect assassin to be able to seek revenge on everyone who did her wrong.
Honestly I would not recognize the name if it were not for a guy I knew who she was his dream girls (for some reason there is a type of guy who has one model, actress, etc that they are just obssesed with. The obsession is not huge but you will know how much they like X. I guess sometimes its a band or athlete and can be male now that I think of it)
I doubt they are using Johansson’s voice. I expect they need much more studio-quality training data than they would have for her.
The desire to create a “Her” might be real but explains why they chose a similar voice actress, made Sky the default, and continued to pursue Johansson to some day create the real thing.
Suspending the Sky voice looks guilty but it might be a temporary action while the legal team considers their response. There might be a non-zero risk of being found liable if there were directions in the voice casting process to seek a result comparable to Scarlet Johansson. You’d want to collect and assess correspondence to see if that’s a possibility, which might take a while.
Open Ai wouldn’t use something or someone without consent? There’s a plethora of lawsuits and evidence that they did that with pretty much every medium out there.
They could easily make it based on publically available voice data, especially for an actress of her fame. That’s how they were able to create AI versions of Biden’s voice and other famous people.
That doesn’t mean they did, but your first sentence implies they couldn’t have, when they very easily could if they wanted to.
That doesn’t make it legal, let alone ethical. As a performer, her likeness, including her voice, is protected by personality rights. There have been multiple lawsuits over soundalikes in the past.
Oh definitely. If they used her voice in that way, not okay at all. I’m not sure if they have because I keep seeing contradicting arguments, but if they did, 100% agree with you that just because it’s out there, doesn’t mean you can take it and profit on it.
My brother played the heck out of Uplink as a kid; thanks to him, I know about the UplinkOS mod, which makes the game (more) playable at higher resolutions. It looks to be an overhaul of the entire UX, so your mileage may vary, I guess.
This story is blowing so fucking far out of proportion it’s honestly incredible. Just so everyone is one the same page, here is a video timestamped to the voice, and immediately following the voice you can hear the voice from Her as well.
They are not similar other than they are both female.
The whole “her” thing that Altman threw up on twitter is just because the goddamned movie was a touchstone for the kind of thing that they are doing. They weren’t cloning the fucking voice. It’s like naming your new iguana Godzilla. It’s not going to destroy Tokyo any time soon, it’s just a cultural reference, you know, like a meme.
As far as Johansson goes, she is falling prey to this shit just like every other celebrity that has been railing against big bad AI. There are so many sheisty lawyers trying to get their hands on the first big win from an AI suit that they will say anything to get a celebrity to sue, because if their firm wins, they become the Anti-AI lawfirm that all others will seek in the future. They will print money, but only if something sticks, and so far, nothing has. This will be another case like any other, where they take it to court, and there is no real basis for anything, and it ends up being all over the news and then disappearing like the whole debacle over Sarah Silverman’s book. In three months there will be another case against AI, and again, nothing will stick, because the people putting the bug in people’s ears don’t understand how to use most of the functionality of their cellphone, let alone how generative AI works.
No no you don’t understand. Since Scar Jo played a female voice that behaved nicely and made jokes in a movie she now owns the rights to any female (or feminine male voice) that either: makes a joke, says something witty, answers a question, or makes a statement. This is a slam dunk case for Scar Jo. I will also be sued for writing this as she also wrote an email in a movie once that had words in the forms of sentences just like this post so I’m screwed.
She did not indicate anything of the sort, just that she did not want to take part in it. Beyond that is speculation. She is asking for documentation proving they did not use her voice without permission to train the AI. That’s perfectly fair.
Finally, a sane response. Of course they’ll “sound similar” because they’re both female voices attempting to come off as friendly with an American accent.
I’m more on the side of opposing AI implementations but people are really reaching with this one. I’m assuming it was pulled just so they can get their legal defense in order.
This will be another case like any other, where they take it to court, and there is no real basis for anything
Because then they’ll give up whoever it was that they used to voice the AI and it’ll be mostly over. The thing is though that if they rush into a lawsuit too eagerly, nobody’s going to want to work with them under a similar contract.
I think they’re both pretty similar. The main difference being that one is being played from a shitty phone speaker and recorded by a camera and the other is coming from studio quality audio.
Yeah I thought OpenAI came out and said that they modeled the voice of a different actress, and they don’t want to share their identity out of a respect for privacy.
It could just be a coincidence that Altman tweeted the image from Her, and people made the connection between the voice and ScarJo, especially since she did something extreme similar in that movie.
Could be coincidental. Could not be. We don’t really have the evidence to say either way, but maybe ScarJo’s suit will affect change so that better rights are granted to people and their digital twins.
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