It could also be the type of case where her lawyers stop openAI from ever using her voice again, if she wants that to be the case.
Being rich opens up options. If openAI would be using my voice instead, they’d have a wildly less popular product but nobody to sue them for it, cause I’d be using my money to still dream about home ownership at some point before I die, not to hire lawyers or fight windmills.
To add to this, Scarlett Johansson took on Disney and they settled. And Disney is like the final boss of litigious companies (either them or Nintendo). If she has the same legal team for this, and they think she has a case against OpenAI, this could open the door for OpenAI to get rightfully clobbered for their tech-bro ignoring of copyright laws.
Obviously I don’t know what the details of he suit against Disney but the truth is Disney fucked up and they knew it.
Disney tried to gain a few extra bucks at the cost of a legal battle with Johansson. If Disney won it would have been a clear signal that Disney is willing to screw over top talent for a few million dollars.
Not to compare “Black Widow” to “Endgame”, but that’s squabbling over millions when billions are at stake.
Looking at someone like Johansson that’s squabbling over millions when tens of hundreds millions are at stake. Contracts with top talent now take longer, top talent is a little less likely to work with Disney.
It all but guaranteed a loss for Disney.
The settlement was Disney’s way of saying “we fucked up”, and truth be told was probably at least partially responsible for Bob Chapek being replaced as CEO.
Or OpenAI are targeting a known litigious actress so that any competitors thinking of creating a business of celebrity-sound-alike are sufficiently dissuaded.
Let’s say OpenAI did actually use Scarlett Johansson’s voice. Who owns the audio that OpenAI used? Scarlett Johansson herself or the movie company that used the audio in their movie(s)? This might be a case of Scarlett Johansson vs the movie company, not Scarlett Johansson vs OpenAI, as OpenAI could have paid for them.
If she signed away her likeness rights then probably. However if the contract didn’t have a provision for transfer to another medium then they would revert to her.
Man, if I find something I could describe as a “space trunk” you’d better believe I am not going anywhere near it, let alone using my mower to pull it out.
I love this because what if actually? What if there's literally a buzzfeed tier list of five things to do we're missing for a utopian society? And mankind fucked it like we always do.
God gave plenty more laws in the next few books of the Bible. The famous commandments about not mixing fabrics or cutting your hair? Yeah Moses of the Ten Commandments is behind that book too.
What’s funny is that (according to the old testament) when Moses came down off the mountain with the tablets and found everyone worshipping the golden calf, he had a big hissy fit and smashed them. So then after doing quite a bit of murdering he had to go back up the mountain to get a second set. Exodus 32-34
I asked a religious relative how it was ok for Moses to murder people when he had only just be told by God himself “thou shalt not kill”, and she said it was because the don’t kill thing came further down the list than having only the one god.
The bible seems to consider it murder only if it’s another christian.
[if someone] has gone and served other gods and worshiped them, […] you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones.
-Deuteronomy 17:2-5
If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ […] you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death.
As a note, the Israelites would in later generations go on to kill a shitload of people. It’s one of those things where it seems like the Bible only really considers it murder if God doesn’t sanction it. It’s honestly one of the many sticking points that makes Abrahamic religions a hard sell for modern individuals. That said, if you look at it from a historical perspective, it really comes across more like a religious version of the Code of Hammurabi. It’s less “don’t kill” as a philosophical or religious position and more about sanctions against killing in a practical legal sense. A functioning society has laws that formally govern behavior and the Israelites were essentially an ecclesiarchy, with Moses being both head of state and high priest. The same laws that governed social life were always going to intersect with laws that governed spiritual life.
I believe the last two listed (‘Thou shalt not covet…’) are considered to be the same commandment, although they appear as two separate verses in the Bible.
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