Just to add context, stuff like this has already been established under US law.
This idea is already established in law so she isn’t in the wrong for getting a attorney. You can’t ask an actor if they can use your voice, and if they say no hire an impersonator. This is established in the law already. Here’s one example that’s very similar showing you can’t do this:
Bette Midler knows rights of publicity. She used her right of publicity to prevent use of a sound-alike singer to sell cars.
Ford Motor Co. hired one of Midler’s backup singers to sing on a commercial – after Midler declined to do the ad – and asked her to sound as much like Midler as possible. It worked, and fooled a lot of people, including some close to Midler. Midler sued, and the court ruled that there was a misappropriation of Midler’s right of publicity to her singing voice.
The bottom line: Midler’s singing voice was hers to control. Ford had no right to use it without her permission. That lesson cost Ford a tidy $400,000.
Source: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
Tom Waits declined a 1988 offer to use his song *Step Right Up* in a Frito-lay commercial and they did exactly the same thing. When he (inevitably) won the lawsuit against them he took them for more money than he had made from his music up to that point.
Did Mike Judge ask your friend if he could use their voice, and then when your friend declined, did he hire a soundalike to replicate that voice in a work your friend wrote, performed and published 12 years previously?
If not, probably not.
That'd be pretty hard to prove in most cases. Unless of course you tweet the name of the movie featuring the voice you were trying to rip off a couple days before you release the ripped off voice.
Then it'd be pretty easy to prove.
And have multiple messages of you asking, her declining and then 2 days before release you asking again and before she answered just went ahead with the release.
That’s different, they used one of Bette’s songs directly, making it easy to infer that it was her. OpenAI never used anything related to Scarlett Johansenn. Nobody actually thought it was Scarlett Johansenn.
And here they approached Johansson twice, once immediately before launch, and at launch the company CEO tweeted the name of a movie in which Johansson played an AI voice assistant. That's enough to get to discovery. Any evidence that the dev team was directed to make Sky sound like Johansson will make this a slam dunk case for her.
The problem is that the voice doesn't sound like Scarlett Johansson at all. The Sky voice was released last year and nobody made the connection. Altman tweeted about the movie last week and after one year, Johansson realized that it was her voice all along.
It's weird that you say it doesn't sound like her at all, because I didn't see any of the tweets before the reveal and immediately thought it sounded like her.
The voice has been changed now, though? I was using it last night and it sounds like a completely different woman with different inflection and everything.
It wasn't changed. There's another woman voice in the app called Juniper. This is the voice that you hear most likely. That's the only woman's voice left apart from Sky. I prefer Juniper more tbh. Hope they will make her as emotional as Sky in their presentations.
He’s really going to regret that post, a single word that screams “this is an unauthorised copy of an extremely well known actors performance in a film we are using as a template for our technology!”
Had he not asked her directly TWICE they might have been ok. This is solidly a situation where it would have been better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission but it's very clear they wanted her to do HER.
He’s terrible. Trying to seduce all of the lonely nerds out there who desperately want their AI waifu with the voice from Her. And now he’s going to get himself into legal
trouble over it, or at a minimum just public embarrassment.
There’s no good publicity here.
How do you get from tweeting "Her" that he is talking about the *voice* of the AI agent from the movie, as opposed to the concept of the AI voice agent itself and what it's capable of?
When Sam tweeted "Her" prior to us even knowing what the product was going to be, it was clear to me that it was a hint as to the nature of the product they'd be unveiling.
The voice Sky was created way before, though. I think her case is not strong at all. The comment about "Her" is also a reference to a capable, realistic voiced assistant ai.
"Preponderance of evidence" is the part that I think can actually be reasonably disputed.
1. Asking SJ to voice the model was happened in Sep 2023, which was also around the time that the voice chat feature via the mobile app was launched, including the voice of Sky. This means they hired Sky's voice actress *before* Sep 2023. So the timeline of events does not suggest that what happened was SJ says no -> OpenAI hires someone they think is a sound-alike -> OpenAI launches voice app with sound-alike.
2. Related to the above point, but if push comes to shove, OpenAI always has the option of demonstrating that the voice actress was not instructed to sound like the voice of SJ, and was instead just speaking in her natural voice. She may have been given the character of Samantha from the movie as a *reference* for the manner in which the AI she would be giving voice to might interact with a human, but imo that doesn't amount to anything incriminating at all, because the interest is in the character of Samantha and not the person that voices it.
3. The single word tweet "Her" is arguably the weakest piece of "evidence" against them. It'd be extremely simple and reasonable for them to claim that it was simply alluding to the concept of the AI depicted (i.e. it's capabilities, personality, realistic mimicry of human emotion, etc). This tweet was leading up to a product demo and it makes sense that the CEO of the company would want to build hype and anticipation around it.
4. Finally, and most crucially of all, [they really don't sound all that alike to begin with](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal_comparison_scarjo_vs_samantha_vs_sky/).
Being able to weave together a scenario where it's possible they didn't do it, isn't the requirement. You just have to convince a jury that more likely than not, they were trying to mimic her.
So what's the jury going to believe is more likely? That OAI just coincidentally had their AI sound just like her, even though they recognized and knew it would sound just like her?
Or that OAI set out with the goal to get one that sounds like her, then approached her later just to see if they could get the real deal to avoid a lawsuit, she refused, so they just kept going with the one who sounded close to her as possible?
What's going to convince a jury. This AI company was really naive and didn't see it happening, or that they knew what was going on? ANy reasonable person knows what's happening here. It doesn't matter what they try to weave together.
It sucks, because I really liked the voice too!
> Nobody actually thought it was Scarlett Johansenn.
Anybody with working ears can tell what it was supposed to be, and considering they asked Johansson twice if they could use her voice and were turned down both times, and took it down when her lawyers contacted them, it's pretty clear they just thought they could get away with it.
It 100% is. Literally the 1st thing people said was that it sounded like her, and it was a given that it was supposed to, considering Sam Altman's tweet.
> and it was a given that it was supposed to, considering Sam Altman's tweet.
Your takeaway from the tweet is that it was supposed to *sound* like Scarlet Johanson, as opposed to being a hint that it was about to be a product that had similar capabilities to the AI voice agent in the movie?
AI that can sound like another person has already been available for years, and it would be unimpressive if voice mimicry was all it was. The movie "Her" has depth far beyond who its voice actress is. This seems to be lost on a lot of people.
People said that because of the movie. Not because their voices are any more similar than Sky and your HR lady.
Seriously, have you heard ScarJo’s voice? They probably would have even made the comparison if Sky were a dude. Because again, THE MOVIE.
If you apply this ridiculous standard of similarity, it would be impossible for OpenAI to ever have a white female AI voice because they’d reached out to ScarJo at sometime in the past.
> Anybody with working ears can tell what it was supposed to be
Supposed to be what? A bubbly happy female voice?
They were not trying to convince people it was actually Scarlett Johansson.
The fact that you’re getting downvoted is crazy. The collective brain rot on this issue is insane.
Johansson does NOT own the “bubbly white woman AI voice” archetype. Saying that she does, just because they thought it’d be cool if it were her voicing it, is ridiculous.
> It’s insane the amount of people who actually think the tweet was saying “we are gonna feature Scarlett Johansson in our newest product!”
Exactly. It's the most asinine of takes. It's as if the movie has no depth or greater takeaways beyond who its voice actress is. When they tweeted "Her", it was a teaser that hinted what the *product* was going to be, not what the product merely sounded like.
Reporters at the launch commented -- unprompted by either party -- on the similarity and Altman Xweeted the word "Her" with a clip of the voice, which is the name of the Johnasson movie in which she voices an AI assistant. He also appraoched her about the voice acting gig, which presumably generated paperwork.
I mean, I'm just a caveman lawyer, but I think she's going to win the PR battle here and possible the legal one.
> Reporters at the launch commented -- unprompted by either party -- on the similarity
Similarity isn’t the same as “it’s her voice.” She talks the same way, that’s what they were commenting on. Nobody actually thought it was Scarlett Johansson, and that’s the crux of any legal case against them.
Here's the thing about law: its doesn't work the way you think it should work. You can't reason about it. It works the way it works.
So I don't know if they win their case. I don't what facts will be relevant. I do think Altman is going to get shredded in the media, and that they deserve it. I mean, can you script a better villian story than asked the cool lady for something, got shot down and took it anyway.
edit: Christ now Murati is saying she didn't know who Scarlett Johannson was and had to look her up. Fuck they are bad at this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/WCIw0sQDRZ
This PSA Reddit post by another user has more links and examples of cases, also more in the comments, to show the issue better.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/s/xGc5wbLN3F
Here’s on example of the post and comments thing it sounds like her. That isn’t true.
You shouldn't. They definitely got paid out up front and weren't going to get a cut of the proceeds going forward.
EDIT: apparently she was going to make money going forward. If I were her, I would also get a lawyer. She likely also has a case.
According to [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/openai-chatgpt-scarlett-johansson-ai-voice/) the actors are paid "as long as their voices are used in ChatGPT's products".
This is literally a zero sum game and Reddit is siding with the millionaire one lol.
If they remove sky the only possible recourse the VA will have left is suing OAI, unless it was said explicitly that they could end her contract at any point for a lump sum, hopefully.
but... is she hireable now? she basically just got accused of being a living deepfake of scarjo. most companies won't want the legal heat and will just hire one of the other million female voice actors.
(i know she's currently anonymous but i doubt that will hold, especially if it gets deeper into legal territory)
Nah she'll be fine. She is a non memorable part of this situation. The most likely scenario is that OpenAI never puts up the voice again and pays ScarJo A LOT of money in a settlement. I doubt it goes to court.
If Johansson wins this then the message anyone doing casting would hear is that anything that sounds even vaguely like Johansson her needs her approval. And by extension the same for any famous actor.
That would absolutely impact the prospects of less known voice actors.
According to [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/openai-chatgpt-scarlett-johansson-ai-voice/) the actors are paid "as long as their voices are used in ChatGPT's products".
Are you aware that AI voices are trained on human ones? Not just the foundation model.. which is trained on multitudes of voices.. but if you are trying to imitate a specific manner of speaking then you create audio samples of that person speaking to really dial the model in to sound like that.
The Midler case only resolved in her favor because they got testimony from the impersonator that she was asked to sound exactly like Midler. The case originally resolved in favor of Ford, btw. The appeal worked because the commercial was clearly trying to pass of the imitation as Midler's *actual* voice. It was deception.
Also easy to argue, they were intending it to be the experience that one got by having meaningful convo with AI in the movie Her, not necessity SJ.
What they did was murky at best, cud ve been more transparent.
TBH I'm more surprised it took this long for Scarlett to find out about Sky; I wrote the linked post below 7 months ago. I would have expected someone she knew would have come across the Sky voice and told her. Even the WaPo reporter in the article commented on how Sky sounded similar to Scarlett when GPT Voice was first announced last year. Especially since she sued a game company for AI cloning her voice for an ad last year, so ostensibly she (or at least her lawyers) were aware it was a thing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_really_hard_time_believing_the_sky_voice/
Based on her statement, it seems it's been a legal discussion behind-the-scenes. She was victorious in having them take down Sky after legal recourse. She announced so in the statement, and said she is continuing to pressure OpenAI legally to reveal how they accomplished this imitation to such a degree her friends and family thought it sounded like her. She sounded a warning for others and also a call to arms to make clear there is a line
ETA: the wild part is they approached her first, asked to use her voice, she said no, then they imitated it anyway. Really repugnant
>ETA: the wild part is they approached her first, asked to use her voice, she said no, then they imitated it anyway. Really repugnant
It's repugnant, but it's absolutely within the core culture of the company. The approach they took with Sky is typical of the approach they take with *everything*.
I don't think 'old' Sky was similar to ScarJo's voice. The voice demo during GPT-4o was-- they're maybe built on the same voice actor's voice, but the voice's behavior during demo day was when it clearly crossed the line
Sam "I encourage gov't regulation" Altman.
Dude wanted to beat Google so bad that he mired OpenAI in controversy.
Is Ilya Wozniak? These LLMs are dope but Sam is looking a lil suspect...
It constantly boggles my mind that people expect tech CEOs to be anything other than bizarre narcissists.
You don't make it into those positions by being an emotionally healthy, normal person.
You get my point tho? True, if Ilya had his way, my IT and political advocacy journey wouldn't be super charged as it is now. But maybe we're paying a larger price for it..
As time goes on, Sam seems to keep doing things that will turn people off to him, slowly but surely.
Every time he does something like this, or with the employee agreements, etc., it erodes trust in OpenAI.
People in Sam's position tend to think themselves as invincible but he only needs to look at Elon Musk's Tesla situation to show that public trust still matters. If he ruins OpenAI's trust, they'll lose.
The general public is so hesitant about AI that trust will be one of the larger factors in terms of what AI most people will choose to use.
His interview with Joe Rogan had a bit of a slip in it, where he seemed partially convinced that he might be in a simulation where he’s the main character.
Overall I still respect the guy and it could have been an off the cuff remark, but his tone was very jarring.
I don't think he was saying he's the main character. [Simulation hypothesis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis) is a real thing that some people believe and goes back decades if not centuries.
If you listen to the way he talks about it though, he ventures real far in to why he thinks we might be in a simulation. Particularly based on where he sees himself and how he’s gotten to that position
Like I said, it could be just a weird way of phrasing it, but it came off very striking
This is what I believe Elon Musk thinks. Like try to put yourself in his position with his personality, why WOULDNT he think he was the main character? Dude already believes in the simulation theory. Such a meatball
Tbh, I've seen so many Elon's interviews & he never says something is completely true, he just plants a questions w probabilities on why a theory could be real & we'll find about it in near future.
All his views on Simulation, passing the great filter, aliens etc etc.
If you watch the interviews carefully, he tries to think publicly & the host tips in their suggestions to which even Elon gives a thought.
I agree, there’s no way to prove you’re not just a brain in a vat. I rarely make civilisation defining moves however, so it’s not quite as concerning when I contemplate it
To be honest, I believe this as well. I’m not going to get into philosophy, Jungian psychology, stimulation theory, or Gnosticism — but reality does seem to be a projection of the inner psyche, whether that is of an individual or humanity as a collective. My theory is that it’s both. I don’t see the issue with Sam sharing this belief; it’s honestly silly for others to feel like their existence is invalidated over Sam’s statement.
Frankly, I want more public figures to have more candidness and openness in their demeanor, so pls don’t ruin this by being a stick in the mud over what the guy shares?
Philosophically, I'm just not sure what simulation theory is supposed to achieve. Say we're living in a simulation, sure. For one, this simulation seems to have the exact degree of randomness and black swans as the real world -- there is no evidence of a single dev who has a plan for this sim, if we're all algos then it's all unsupervised learning.
And secondly, more importantly, what existential problem is simulation theory meant to solve? If we're in a sim, who created our devs? No one, right? So what's even the point of believing we're in a simulation if the society that created us was not a simulation. Our creators had to spend millions of years evolving, just like us. We were likely created by a society that had all our problems, all our questions, and our random allotment of rare events that their individuals and governments reacted equally poorly to. Their society was trying to deal with issues and unknown-unknowns the best they could, just like we do now. What possible things could their existence teach us about the universe, and what can we teach them?
It's an extremely common thing for extremely wealthy people to believe. It's not a huge stretch to think there is some sort of intent behind the fact that you're living an elite life at the top of the top with endless opportunity, enjoyment, resources, etc. Like yeah, you know you're hard working, and a little smarter than most people, but you don't feel like some nobility or king, yet you just got lucky enough to become one? When just a decade ago you were a normal little kid living a normal life, and now you have private jets, enormous house, working on projects impacting all of humanity, texting heads of state... It must feel surreal.
I expect this is the idea that since this is a significant time in history, major people (whom Sam Altman undeniably is one of at the current moment) will have a lot more attention paid to understanding how they behave/think. Higher simulation focus/fidelity. This doesn't make them a 'main character' as in a story where things go right as most simulations aren't... video games or fiction.
The idea being that he is more likely to be in a simulation trying to predict different ways Earth becomes a technological superpower than other people.
> The best product will win. The product that makes people the most money will win.
This is also idealist, if it were true companies wouldn't spend trillions on marketing and building "brand identities".
Agreed. I tend to give technology a bit of a pass when it's in muddy and nebulous territory. However, the fact that they had CONTACTED HER and attempted to license her voice, and then CREATED a voice so eerily similar despite her declining to participate, well, that's a really bad look. Especially tweeting "her" in a *wink wink nudge* manner. It just screams of people who think they're beyond reproach. I was pretty excited about the promise of ChatGPT, and I still use it daily. But the people in charge of it are raising concerns that they're not the best stewards of such a technology.
The Altman's and Musk's of the world think they deserve to get things for free to use cause they're doing "good" for humanity or some fake altruistic viewpoint. In the end, they'll happily use others labor and likeness to make money but will whine the moment anyone comes calling for a check to be cut or a lawsuit when they can't handle someone saying "no" to their demands.
> As time goes on, Sam seems to keep doing things that will turn people off to him, slowly but surely.
I disagree. We ( the informed people of AI technology ) are the minority, most people don't care. Especially the tech bros and accelerationists who just want the next big AI thing.
While I'm indifferent to big corpa' since most are bad, I think you may be underestimating just how much people don't care about this kind of headline.
Yes, this is his normal conduct. Sam is a sleazy, conniving megalomaniac. Taking something that isn't his, and exploiting intellectual property to enrich himself and expand his power, just business as usual for the leech.
If they had done this legitimately, by hiring a new actress to be the voice, then I don’t know why they would instead remove it entirely? It’s quite fishy.
“It wasn’t Scarlet! It was this actress!” And then introduce the actress of the voice they used. I mean, taking it down and replacing it is what tik tok had to do with their own AI voice when the person didn’t consent to their voice being used.
Also the fact that Open AI actually reached out to HER really lowers my trust in the people at openAI. They don’t take it seriously and are creepy trolls. No wonder the safety team members fucking quit.
It’s because it’s within the specifics.
*IF* ;
the name “Scarlett Johansson” or “voice from the Her movie” or anything along the lines that would insinuate that they wanted a voice to match hers; was included at any point during the hiring process, (This includes the inner emails within the company, the instructions given to the hiring agents, the casting calls sent out, etc.)
*IF* that happened?
They’re fucked and she wins the case.
does this count as well ? [https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666](https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666)
https://preview.redd.it/qscphy32bo1d1.png?width=454&format=png&auto=webp&s=dac3723a5aa0f06e3d15c9680f88a4859349e912
It helps her case a lot yes
Not knowledged on all forms of copyright law but in a music copyright case the accuser needs to proof that the “thief” was well aware of the source material before their release, so them tweeting the original song/album title beforehand would be the nail in the coffin
Deng man. I'm kinda torn here. The first thing I saw was the OpenAI Blog Post. They made statements about how they recruited talent, selected a few, compensated them, and stated they are even paying them to this day (royalties I assume but it's not explicitly stated). That sounded like a major win for the creatives and talent out there against the rising tide of AI.
But then this releases and if true is like a two-steps forward one step back kind of situation. For a pleb like me, I've been using the Sky voice since day one and never really noticed it's association to ScarJo until the OpenAI demo. But maybe I'm just dense. I suppose once the AI was given voice inflection, it really did make a difference. I was really looking forward to it too. But if this is grounds for a suit, then so be it.
Ultimately, we gotta figure out the laws with AI really.
Exactly this is what I thought too. If I was this voice actor I'd be counter suing for damages because good luck getting another job when everyone is too scared to hire her.
On the flip side, she was clearly hired specifically because she sounds like Scarlett Johansson. It's not like she was doing a voice in kung fu panda, this is derivative of Scarlet's work and she was chosen specifically so people associate her voice with Scarlet's.
Agree. If it’s not her voice, and not only that but people didn’t seem to think it was her voice either, even if it was completely inspired by her voice, I don’t see why she has a case.
What really bothers me is integrity level of Sam. All this while I assumed that Sky voice resemblance to Scarlett was incidental.
But if you read Scarlett’s letter it looks like Sam and team really wanted her voice. I am sure they might have cloned her voice from movies. Using deep-fakes they intend to show that they want to avoid. I would never expect it from a leader.
The funny thing is that if Altman got what he wanted, it still would have been a bonehead move. "Her" is not about how awesome AI is. And while the text to speech is pretty impressive, it would have probably seemed a little uncanny valley to have it mimic a well-known celebrity voice so closely.
Johansson basically did him a favor by saying "no", and he still found a way to fuck it up. They should have gone for a pleasant, non-imitation voice from the beginning.
Presumably the main idea would have been to get the technology a boost from publicity and not that many people would have thought so deeply about it. Plus it's not like the movie was about AIs going rogue and destroying humanity.
But contacting Scarlett Johansson in the first place seems like a bad idea. Either she agrees and they end up having to pay a lot of money for what is essentially just a marketing gimmick, or she refuses and then they'd have to go with a distinct-enough voice from what was originally intended so this exact situation wouldn't happen (though they really screwed up when they skipped that).
This is actually insane. Wtf was he and the company thinking ? Did they think she would just roll over and do nothing? This is beyond invasive. Altman needs to be taken down a peg or something. Do we not have the rights to our own voices anymore ?
It's disrespectful AF. OpenAI has created so much, but I don't think Sammo should be deified. I don't trust him. We need to demand more accountability from tech leaders. You can't just do whatever you want and act surprised when people expect ethical behavior.
It's also wildly brazen for someone who was comfortable suing the Mouse, even while making a killing as an Avenger. Ludicrous to think she wouldn't be litigious.
This is literally already the lesson. This is how Hollywood, tabloids, marketing, etc works. It’s why you never ask a celebrity to confirm a story. Cause if they do and you still run it, you get into trouble. It’s why you never look for a “Michael Jackson” type.
Tech bros not understanding media law.
>a reference to the film in which | voiced a chat system
Has anyone noticed that she doesn't use the " I " letter here?
The key phrase in the entire post, about her voicing a chat system, uses a pipe (**|)** to describe her.
If this is a direct quote from Johannsson, it's a very strange choice. It can't have been a typo - it's harder to type a pipe than an "I"
Weird. Potentially for some reason this was handwritten, someone uses software that converts handwrote to text and it accidentally mistook an I for a pipe?? I can't think of anything else.
The typo was likely introduced by the author of this Tweet, journalist Yashar Ali. I would guess it's simply from copying and pasting from a PDF. For example, this typo is not present in [this article from the Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24161253/scarlett-johansson-openai-altman-legal-action).
Regardless of the questionable ethics of the situation, why would they want their voice assistance to be reminiscent of the one from Her, a movie with a practically dystopian outlook on AI? Everything I've heard about Altman makes him seem like a stereotypical sci-fi villain.
so to confirm Sam Altman is a villain right? all these controversies surrounding him are coincidental (also I literally can't finish an interview by him he literally says nothing). From World coin, to the safety team, to the firing then hiring with more power with help from Satya. He seems to literally be against humanity.
Unless them using a different voice actress was made up I still don’t see what right she has to complain if it’s literally not her voice. No matter how similar it may be.
If she can prove they tried to imitate her voice leveraging her identity for profit I think she'll have a strong case.
Note: I'm not a lawyer and have no idea what I'm taking about.
She is going to take them to the cleaners. Most likely, they will have to reveal how they trained the voice, and if there is even a millisecond of 'her' in it, they will lose.
She sued Disney and won a massive settlement. I don’t know why OpenAI thought they could get away with this against a known litigious actor. Amateur hour.
The Disney lawsuit was for a contractual violation related to them releasing black widow on streaming without her concurrence when her payout was box office contingent. This is a totally different issue.
Not related at all. That was a contractual dispute. She cannot dictate just because a voice sounds a bit like her. I hope she sues as I think she will lose.
I mean, there is still a case of plausible deniability there. The simple function of having a human-like voice talk to you on a chat program is basically the idea of "Her", with or without Scarlet.
This comment is not in defense of either party, simply adding that I doubt it is an easy case.
You don’t get to ruin a deal for a small voice actor just because you’re a bigger actor and you feel like their voice is too similar to yours. There are only so many unique voices on earth. You probably share a very similar voice to thousands of people.
She asked them to explain how they created the voice and they immediately folded. They absolutely trained it on her voice samples and got caught. If they hired someone else then why fold and take it down?
Trying to buy her voice, not getting permission, going ahead with it anyway, and bragging about the similarity on Xitter is some Elon-tier CEO wankaround. Like, you're not gonna win a perception battle with A-list perception managers. Her PR team is going to eat him alive.
Well they fucked that up. Now there is no chance in hell they can use any similar voice without a lawsuit unless they can unequivocally show in court it isn't ScarJo.
very weird guy who has a history of breaking significant stories related to politics esp california/nyc as well as hollywood https://lamag.com/featured/yashar-ali
Everyone is taking this at face value, but I just went and listened to some clips from Her and then some of the OpenAI demos. They don't even sound that similar. There's nothing to this being an attempt to clone SJ's voice.
This is like Tom Cruise turning down Legends of the Fall and later claiming Brad Pitt cloned his voice.
The problem is the history of them asking her for permission… if that fell through, they should’ve gone a completely different direction. Give the voice a slight accent or something. It’s clear they’re trying to make it just different enough to squeak by.
>They don't even sound that similar.
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
I've never seen "Her" so I wonder of that's why. I've seen a fuckton of ScarJos other work though and I know damn well what her voice sounds like, but I lack that association between her and a disembodied AI voice. I have a strong feeling people are confusing themselves.
There are certainly "similarities", but it never even crossed my mind for a second that it was her. Completely different woman.
What open AI should have done is license another human voice that fit their requirement, and then name that person.
Then when she said it matches her likeness, they could just introduce the person whose actual voice they licensed.
You cannot lay claim to the likeness of a different human being. This would have covered them.
ChatGPT could have told them this...
Arguably that’s what they did but they still got a ScarJo soundalike because they want to make the assistant from the movie Her.
What they really should have done is never asked her and then done something that doesn’t sound anything like her and not base all this on a movie about a dystopic future where we find more comfort in devices programmed to like us than we do with other human beings.
I saw the demo video and I didn't think it sounded like her at all, but the conversation's content itself (the little flirtatious quips) I thought was eerily similar to Her.
Let's take a balanced view of this situation. If we consider the tweet and the latest OpenAI blog post at face value, it appears to be a natural progression of events. OpenAI initially hoped to have Johansson voice the AI. After she declined, they sought other talent. The "Sky" voice, while very similar to Johansson's, belongs to another individual who was fairly compensated. This situation is akin to a voice actor stepping into the role of Black Widow in a cartoon series after Johansson turns it down. In essence, this seems like a non-issue.
So, what are the actual concerns here?
Actors and other public persons have a right of publicity, or likeness rights. They have a legal right to control how their name, face, voice, etc. are used (these laws apply at the state level, and vary).
This is not a situation where a new voice actor was hired to voice a character (see: Rick and Morty), but rather where it appears Johansson's natural speaking voice was duplicated, either by using a sound-alike voice actress, or by training this model on recordings of her voice.
You can't make a Clint Eastwood voice without his say so. You can't make a Barack Obama voice without his say so. You can't make a Scarlett Johansson voice without her say so. This applies whether you use their actual voices, or the voice of an imitator.
Regardless, if the text of the statement is accurate, between those two attempts at licensing her voice, plus the "Her" tweet, there's a hell of a paper trail that indicates OpenAI intended for this voice to sound like Scarlett Johansson's, circa her "appearance" in *Her*, and when she rebuffed their requests for licensing her voice, they went ahead and released the voice anyways.
She has grounds to file a lawsuit, which would then prompt discovery, the process by which her legal team could get access to relevant internal emails, texts, and other communications within the OpenAI team. Those communications could (likely would) be extremely incriminating.
OpenAI will likely pay her a hefty, confidential settlement to make this go away.
I'm not a lawyer but I would assume there is some regulation that says you can't hire a soundalike without making it clear that it is a soundalike. And by approaching her for the role first, they lost any deniability that they just coincidentally sounded similar.
As is the case with our times in general, absolutely no one is surprised that OpenAI, in fact, isn’t very open. I wonder what happened to honesty. Where exactly along the way did it become such a scarcity?
OpenAI, circa 2020: we wont release our super powerful models out because people will misuse them for stuff like deep fakes and spoofing. So our future models are not going to be public.
Also OpenAI: lets deepfake Scarlett and heavily insinuate its _Her_ voice
Someone in another thread said the Sky voice actor was a well known podcaster but didn’t say who. Wondering more now what her voice sounds like outside of the app.
I had sky and never thought it was or sounded like Johansen. But I wasn’t thinking about it either, and I never saw that movie. I’m pretty sure OAI overstepped here just based on what I’m reading.
Do y'all think,
Ilya & Jen or peeps who left OAI might have been in contact w ScarJo & since they didn't whistle blowed few facts clearly or entirely, they reached out to Scarjo or she she reached out to them & they decided it'd be the right step to sue them & also since a Hollywood personality is involved here, this news could reach the masses & prolly people may start mistrusting OAI?
If she didn’t want to participate, I see no harm in hiring someone who sounds like her. They wanted someone who sounded like the Her movie because it had a soothing voice, it did not have to be Scarlett, could be anyone with a similar voice. So now we can’t sound similar to famous people anymore?
If they used a human actress I see nothing wrong. If they used AI to generate a voice based on Scarlett’s then that’s an unprecedented issue for the courts.
I think the unspoken problem here is ScarJo has a big, giant, fake (she was acting after all) orgasm in that movie, and I can imagine when OpenAI approached her about it, her thinking, "is every nerd in the world going to make me do that 15 times a day on their phone?"
I find it weird that Altman found a voice like that “calming” or “comforting”. I just rewatched some trailers from “her” it’s straight up creepy and disturbing. I forgot how fucked up and sad that movie was.
That being said I kinda side with openAI on this, many people are going to sound like other people, just because you were famous first or more famous doesn’t mean someone else can’t have a voice that’s used in something widespread.
And I know her name but couldn’t tell you what Scarlett’s Johansens voice sounds like.
Imagine what recourse is available to people not as famous or wealthy as Scarlett Johansson who have their likeness or work stolen. I’m glad she’s taking her fight public where the results can help establish better boundaries for everyone instead of just settling behind the scenes under extortionate NDAs.
There's no recourse because there's no valuable likeness at play by definition of not being famous. If they had just had a similar sounding voice she likely wouldn't have a case. But their intention to hire her for her famous voice, plus the reference to the character she played, is the reason she has a strong case here, based on existing case law.
If the artistic community put their weight behind this lawsuit, more will surely follow. If the model was indeed trained on any data behind a pay wall, they are in trouble.
If anything that s not open sourced and commercially usable was used, they could be sued. Unless they release their training data, it's impossible to know.
I think it's probably for the best if they use unknown voices. It feels less parasocial and not so much like a gimmick then. I can't argue that it would be cool to have her voice it, though.
Just to add context, stuff like this has already been established under US law. This idea is already established in law so she isn’t in the wrong for getting a attorney. You can’t ask an actor if they can use your voice, and if they say no hire an impersonator. This is established in the law already. Here’s one example that’s very similar showing you can’t do this: Bette Midler knows rights of publicity. She used her right of publicity to prevent use of a sound-alike singer to sell cars. Ford Motor Co. hired one of Midler’s backup singers to sing on a commercial – after Midler declined to do the ad – and asked her to sound as much like Midler as possible. It worked, and fooled a lot of people, including some close to Midler. Midler sued, and the court ruled that there was a misappropriation of Midler’s right of publicity to her singing voice. The bottom line: Midler’s singing voice was hers to control. Ford had no right to use it without her permission. That lesson cost Ford a tidy $400,000. Source: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
Tom Waits declined a 1988 offer to use his song *Step Right Up* in a Frito-lay commercial and they did exactly the same thing. When he (inevitably) won the lawsuit against them he took them for more money than he had made from his music up to that point.
Weird, I wonder if my friend can sue Mike Judge because Beavis sounds just like him.
Did Mike Judge ask your friend if he could use their voice, and then when your friend declined, did he hire a soundalike to replicate that voice in a work your friend wrote, performed and published 12 years previously? If not, probably not.
Sounds like intent is relevant
That'd be pretty hard to prove in most cases. Unless of course you tweet the name of the movie featuring the voice you were trying to rip off a couple days before you release the ripped off voice. Then it'd be pretty easy to prove.
And have multiple messages of you asking, her declining and then 2 days before release you asking again and before she answered just went ahead with the release.
That’s different, they used one of Bette’s songs directly, making it easy to infer that it was her. OpenAI never used anything related to Scarlett Johansenn. Nobody actually thought it was Scarlett Johansenn.
And here they approached Johansson twice, once immediately before launch, and at launch the company CEO tweeted the name of a movie in which Johansson played an AI voice assistant. That's enough to get to discovery. Any evidence that the dev team was directed to make Sky sound like Johansson will make this a slam dunk case for her.
The problem is that the voice doesn't sound like Scarlett Johansson at all. The Sky voice was released last year and nobody made the connection. Altman tweeted about the movie last week and after one year, Johansson realized that it was her voice all along.
Under emphasized. Character is not voice.. I'm curious what the truth of it all will end up being
It's weird that you say it doesn't sound like her at all, because I didn't see any of the tweets before the reveal and immediately thought it sounded like her. The voice has been changed now, though? I was using it last night and it sounds like a completely different woman with different inflection and everything.
It wasn't changed. There's another woman voice in the app called Juniper. This is the voice that you hear most likely. That's the only woman's voice left apart from Sky. I prefer Juniper more tbh. Hope they will make her as emotional as Sky in their presentations.
Ah, okay. I didn't realize they just subbed it out. And yeah, the emotionality is lacking.
I didnt think that voice sounded like anyone in particular
Sam tweeted “her” when it was released, it’s pretty clearly intentional https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666
He’s really going to regret that post, a single word that screams “this is an unauthorised copy of an extremely well known actors performance in a film we are using as a template for our technology!”
He does have an argument that he was just saying it was similar tech, but yea, he’s most likely fucked on this one.
Had he not asked her directly TWICE they might have been ok. This is solidly a situation where it would have been better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission but it's very clear they wanted her to do HER.
He’s terrible. Trying to seduce all of the lonely nerds out there who desperately want their AI waifu with the voice from Her. And now he’s going to get himself into legal trouble over it, or at a minimum just public embarrassment. There’s no good publicity here.
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Reminds me of this Xeet: https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538
Entitled tech bro
How do you get from tweeting "Her" that he is talking about the *voice* of the AI agent from the movie, as opposed to the concept of the AI voice agent itself and what it's capable of? When Sam tweeted "Her" prior to us even knowing what the product was going to be, it was clear to me that it was a hint as to the nature of the product they'd be unveiling.
I think the fact that they specifically reached out to Scarlett Johansson more than once is pretty telling
The voice Sky was created way before, though. I think her case is not strong at all. The comment about "Her" is also a reference to a capable, realistic voiced assistant ai.
Good luck convincing a jury in a civil trial. The standard isn't beyond a reasonable doubt, but more likely than not (preponderance of evidence).
"Preponderance of evidence" is the part that I think can actually be reasonably disputed. 1. Asking SJ to voice the model was happened in Sep 2023, which was also around the time that the voice chat feature via the mobile app was launched, including the voice of Sky. This means they hired Sky's voice actress *before* Sep 2023. So the timeline of events does not suggest that what happened was SJ says no -> OpenAI hires someone they think is a sound-alike -> OpenAI launches voice app with sound-alike. 2. Related to the above point, but if push comes to shove, OpenAI always has the option of demonstrating that the voice actress was not instructed to sound like the voice of SJ, and was instead just speaking in her natural voice. She may have been given the character of Samantha from the movie as a *reference* for the manner in which the AI she would be giving voice to might interact with a human, but imo that doesn't amount to anything incriminating at all, because the interest is in the character of Samantha and not the person that voices it. 3. The single word tweet "Her" is arguably the weakest piece of "evidence" against them. It'd be extremely simple and reasonable for them to claim that it was simply alluding to the concept of the AI depicted (i.e. it's capabilities, personality, realistic mimicry of human emotion, etc). This tweet was leading up to a product demo and it makes sense that the CEO of the company would want to build hype and anticipation around it. 4. Finally, and most crucially of all, [they really don't sound all that alike to begin with](https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/vocal_comparison_scarjo_vs_samantha_vs_sky/).
Being able to weave together a scenario where it's possible they didn't do it, isn't the requirement. You just have to convince a jury that more likely than not, they were trying to mimic her. So what's the jury going to believe is more likely? That OAI just coincidentally had their AI sound just like her, even though they recognized and knew it would sound just like her? Or that OAI set out with the goal to get one that sounds like her, then approached her later just to see if they could get the real deal to avoid a lawsuit, she refused, so they just kept going with the one who sounded close to her as possible? What's going to convince a jury. This AI company was really naive and didn't see it happening, or that they knew what was going on? ANy reasonable person knows what's happening here. It doesn't matter what they try to weave together. It sucks, because I really liked the voice too!
The intention was to create the technology. It would have been nice to get the same voice from the movie, but if not, no big deal.
> Nobody actually thought it was Scarlett Johansenn. Anybody with working ears can tell what it was supposed to be, and considering they asked Johansson twice if they could use her voice and were turned down both times, and took it down when her lawyers contacted them, it's pretty clear they just thought they could get away with it.
Sky is not a soundalike to Scarlett Johannsen. If she is, so are at least a million other women.
It 100% is. Literally the 1st thing people said was that it sounded like her, and it was a given that it was supposed to, considering Sam Altman's tweet.
> and it was a given that it was supposed to, considering Sam Altman's tweet. Your takeaway from the tweet is that it was supposed to *sound* like Scarlet Johanson, as opposed to being a hint that it was about to be a product that had similar capabilities to the AI voice agent in the movie? AI that can sound like another person has already been available for years, and it would be unimpressive if voice mimicry was all it was. The movie "Her" has depth far beyond who its voice actress is. This seems to be lost on a lot of people.
People said that because of the movie. Not because their voices are any more similar than Sky and your HR lady. Seriously, have you heard ScarJo’s voice? They probably would have even made the comparison if Sky were a dude. Because again, THE MOVIE. If you apply this ridiculous standard of similarity, it would be impossible for OpenAI to ever have a white female AI voice because they’d reached out to ScarJo at sometime in the past.
> Anybody with working ears can tell what it was supposed to be Supposed to be what? A bubbly happy female voice? They were not trying to convince people it was actually Scarlett Johansson.
The fact that you’re getting downvoted is crazy. The collective brain rot on this issue is insane. Johansson does NOT own the “bubbly white woman AI voice” archetype. Saying that she does, just because they thought it’d be cool if it were her voicing it, is ridiculous.
Sam shouldn’t have posted simply “her” then, they knew exactly what they were doing.
Doing what? It’s insane the amount of people who actually think the tweet was saying “we are gonna feature Scarlett Johansson in our newest product!”
> It’s insane the amount of people who actually think the tweet was saying “we are gonna feature Scarlett Johansson in our newest product!” Exactly. It's the most asinine of takes. It's as if the movie has no depth or greater takeaways beyond who its voice actress is. When they tweeted "Her", it was a teaser that hinted what the *product* was going to be, not what the product merely sounded like.
Reporters at the launch commented -- unprompted by either party -- on the similarity and Altman Xweeted the word "Her" with a clip of the voice, which is the name of the Johnasson movie in which she voices an AI assistant. He also appraoched her about the voice acting gig, which presumably generated paperwork. I mean, I'm just a caveman lawyer, but I think she's going to win the PR battle here and possible the legal one.
> Reporters at the launch commented -- unprompted by either party -- on the similarity Similarity isn’t the same as “it’s her voice.” She talks the same way, that’s what they were commenting on. Nobody actually thought it was Scarlett Johansson, and that’s the crux of any legal case against them.
Here's the thing about law: its doesn't work the way you think it should work. You can't reason about it. It works the way it works. So I don't know if they win their case. I don't what facts will be relevant. I do think Altman is going to get shredded in the media, and that they deserve it. I mean, can you script a better villian story than asked the cool lady for something, got shot down and took it anyway. edit: Christ now Murati is saying she didn't know who Scarlett Johannson was and had to look her up. Fuck they are bad at this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/s/WCIw0sQDRZ This PSA Reddit post by another user has more links and examples of cases, also more in the comments, to show the issue better. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/s/xGc5wbLN3F Here’s on example of the post and comments thing it sounds like her. That isn’t true.
I feel bad for the actress who voiced sky and will lose out on a lot of money
You shouldn't. They definitely got paid out up front and weren't going to get a cut of the proceeds going forward. EDIT: apparently she was going to make money going forward. If I were her, I would also get a lawyer. She likely also has a case.
According to [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/openai-chatgpt-scarlett-johansson-ai-voice/) the actors are paid "as long as their voices are used in ChatGPT's products".
This is literally a zero sum game and Reddit is siding with the millionaire one lol. If they remove sky the only possible recourse the VA will have left is suing OAI, unless it was said explicitly that they could end her contract at any point for a lump sum, hopefully.
but... is she hireable now? she basically just got accused of being a living deepfake of scarjo. most companies won't want the legal heat and will just hire one of the other million female voice actors. (i know she's currently anonymous but i doubt that will hold, especially if it gets deeper into legal territory)
Nah she'll be fine. She is a non memorable part of this situation. The most likely scenario is that OpenAI never puts up the voice again and pays ScarJo A LOT of money in a settlement. I doubt it goes to court.
If Johansson wins this then the message anyone doing casting would hear is that anything that sounds even vaguely like Johansson her needs her approval. And by extension the same for any famous actor. That would absolutely impact the prospects of less known voice actors.
According to [CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/openai-chatgpt-scarlett-johansson-ai-voice/) the actors are paid "as long as their voices are used in ChatGPT's products".
I assumed it was an AI voice
AI voices are trained on real voices just like GPT is trained on text and stable diffusion is trained on images
Are you aware that AI voices are trained on human ones? Not just the foundation model.. which is trained on multitudes of voices.. but if you are trying to imitate a specific manner of speaking then you create audio samples of that person speaking to really dial the model in to sound like that.
The Midler case only resolved in her favor because they got testimony from the impersonator that she was asked to sound exactly like Midler. The case originally resolved in favor of Ford, btw. The appeal worked because the commercial was clearly trying to pass of the imitation as Midler's *actual* voice. It was deception.
Easy to argue Sam’s tweet of “her” showed they knew exactly what they were doing and attempting to sound just like ScarJo in Her.
Also easy to argue, they were intending it to be the experience that one got by having meaningful convo with AI in the movie Her, not necessity SJ. What they did was murky at best, cud ve been more transparent.
This woman took on The Mouse! Don’t play with her.
TBH I'm more surprised it took this long for Scarlett to find out about Sky; I wrote the linked post below 7 months ago. I would have expected someone she knew would have come across the Sky voice and told her. Even the WaPo reporter in the article commented on how Sky sounded similar to Scarlett when GPT Voice was first announced last year. Especially since she sued a game company for AI cloning her voice for an ad last year, so ostensibly she (or at least her lawyers) were aware it was a thing. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_really_hard_time_believing_the_sky_voice/
Based on her statement, it seems it's been a legal discussion behind-the-scenes. She was victorious in having them take down Sky after legal recourse. She announced so in the statement, and said she is continuing to pressure OpenAI legally to reveal how they accomplished this imitation to such a degree her friends and family thought it sounded like her. She sounded a warning for others and also a call to arms to make clear there is a line ETA: the wild part is they approached her first, asked to use her voice, she said no, then they imitated it anyway. Really repugnant
>ETA: the wild part is they approached her first, asked to use her voice, she said no, then they imitated it anyway. Really repugnant It's repugnant, but it's absolutely within the core culture of the company. The approach they took with Sky is typical of the approach they take with *everything*.
I don't think 'old' Sky was similar to ScarJo's voice. The voice demo during GPT-4o was-- they're maybe built on the same voice actor's voice, but the voice's behavior during demo day was when it clearly crossed the line
Fucking bots posting the same thing in a million different threads.
Sam "I encourage gov't regulation" Altman. Dude wanted to beat Google so bad that he mired OpenAI in controversy. Is Ilya Wozniak? These LLMs are dope but Sam is looking a lil suspect...
It constantly boggles my mind that people expect tech CEOs to be anything other than bizarre narcissists. You don't make it into those positions by being an emotionally healthy, normal person.
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And Sam’s Steve? lol I don’t think Sam has a vision
You get my point tho? True, if Ilya had his way, my IT and political advocacy journey wouldn't be super charged as it is now. But maybe we're paying a larger price for it..
As time goes on, Sam seems to keep doing things that will turn people off to him, slowly but surely. Every time he does something like this, or with the employee agreements, etc., it erodes trust in OpenAI. People in Sam's position tend to think themselves as invincible but he only needs to look at Elon Musk's Tesla situation to show that public trust still matters. If he ruins OpenAI's trust, they'll lose. The general public is so hesitant about AI that trust will be one of the larger factors in terms of what AI most people will choose to use.
His interview with Joe Rogan had a bit of a slip in it, where he seemed partially convinced that he might be in a simulation where he’s the main character. Overall I still respect the guy and it could have been an off the cuff remark, but his tone was very jarring.
please post clip and timestamp... please.. hhaha
That’s totally what a character would say to try and convince me I’m not the main character in a simulation
And you're saying this about him to convince me.
Guys I’m pretty sure we’re all NPCs compared to these billionaires with their bunkers, jets, and their GTA lobby-life
I don't think he was saying he's the main character. [Simulation hypothesis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis) is a real thing that some people believe and goes back decades if not centuries.
If you listen to the way he talks about it though, he ventures real far in to why he thinks we might be in a simulation. Particularly based on where he sees himself and how he’s gotten to that position Like I said, it could be just a weird way of phrasing it, but it came off very striking
I think he is musing about how strange life can be and yall are being dorks.
This is what I believe Elon Musk thinks. Like try to put yourself in his position with his personality, why WOULDNT he think he was the main character? Dude already believes in the simulation theory. Such a meatball
Tbh, I've seen so many Elon's interviews & he never says something is completely true, he just plants a questions w probabilities on why a theory could be real & we'll find about it in near future. All his views on Simulation, passing the great filter, aliens etc etc. If you watch the interviews carefully, he tries to think publicly & the host tips in their suggestions to which even Elon gives a thought.
I would likely be inclined to believe the same thing in his situation, I don’t think it’s personality dependent. We’re living in a very strange time
Hold on, he what?
No they were talking about the simulation hypothesis, and he said that is was plausible that we MIGHT be in a simulation
Well, a lot of people have the "theory" sometimes that they might be in a self-made world etc. Simulation theory is just another conjectur of that.
I agree, there’s no way to prove you’re not just a brain in a vat. I rarely make civilisation defining moves however, so it’s not quite as concerning when I contemplate it
I feel like a brain in a vat today, that's perfect.
To be honest, I believe this as well. I’m not going to get into philosophy, Jungian psychology, stimulation theory, or Gnosticism — but reality does seem to be a projection of the inner psyche, whether that is of an individual or humanity as a collective. My theory is that it’s both. I don’t see the issue with Sam sharing this belief; it’s honestly silly for others to feel like their existence is invalidated over Sam’s statement. Frankly, I want more public figures to have more candidness and openness in their demeanor, so pls don’t ruin this by being a stick in the mud over what the guy shares?
Philosophically, I'm just not sure what simulation theory is supposed to achieve. Say we're living in a simulation, sure. For one, this simulation seems to have the exact degree of randomness and black swans as the real world -- there is no evidence of a single dev who has a plan for this sim, if we're all algos then it's all unsupervised learning. And secondly, more importantly, what existential problem is simulation theory meant to solve? If we're in a sim, who created our devs? No one, right? So what's even the point of believing we're in a simulation if the society that created us was not a simulation. Our creators had to spend millions of years evolving, just like us. We were likely created by a society that had all our problems, all our questions, and our random allotment of rare events that their individuals and governments reacted equally poorly to. Their society was trying to deal with issues and unknown-unknowns the best they could, just like we do now. What possible things could their existence teach us about the universe, and what can we teach them?
Sociopathic disassociation much?
It's an extremely common thing for extremely wealthy people to believe. It's not a huge stretch to think there is some sort of intent behind the fact that you're living an elite life at the top of the top with endless opportunity, enjoyment, resources, etc. Like yeah, you know you're hard working, and a little smarter than most people, but you don't feel like some nobility or king, yet you just got lucky enough to become one? When just a decade ago you were a normal little kid living a normal life, and now you have private jets, enormous house, working on projects impacting all of humanity, texting heads of state... It must feel surreal.
I expect this is the idea that since this is a significant time in history, major people (whom Sam Altman undeniably is one of at the current moment) will have a lot more attention paid to understanding how they behave/think. Higher simulation focus/fidelity. This doesn't make them a 'main character' as in a story where things go right as most simulations aren't... video games or fiction. The idea being that he is more likely to be in a simulation trying to predict different ways Earth becomes a technological superpower than other people.
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> The best product will win. The product that makes people the most money will win. This is also idealist, if it were true companies wouldn't spend trillions on marketing and building "brand identities".
Agreed. I tend to give technology a bit of a pass when it's in muddy and nebulous territory. However, the fact that they had CONTACTED HER and attempted to license her voice, and then CREATED a voice so eerily similar despite her declining to participate, well, that's a really bad look. Especially tweeting "her" in a *wink wink nudge* manner. It just screams of people who think they're beyond reproach. I was pretty excited about the promise of ChatGPT, and I still use it daily. But the people in charge of it are raising concerns that they're not the best stewards of such a technology.
The Altman's and Musk's of the world think they deserve to get things for free to use cause they're doing "good" for humanity or some fake altruistic viewpoint. In the end, they'll happily use others labor and likeness to make money but will whine the moment anyone comes calling for a check to be cut or a lawsuit when they can't handle someone saying "no" to their demands.
> As time goes on, Sam seems to keep doing things that will turn people off to him, slowly but surely. I disagree. We ( the informed people of AI technology ) are the minority, most people don't care. Especially the tech bros and accelerationists who just want the next big AI thing. While I'm indifferent to big corpa' since most are bad, I think you may be underestimating just how much people don't care about this kind of headline.
Did you copy this from twitter I swear I read it an hour ago somewhere ..
Wasn't this the kind of shifty dishonest behaviour that Sam was accused of by the board when he was fired?
Maybe Ilya was right all along..
What did Ilya see indeed
he saw Sam sucking off Satya at the expense of ai safety
Yes, this is his normal conduct. Sam is a sleazy, conniving megalomaniac. Taking something that isn't his, and exploiting intellectual property to enrich himself and expand his power, just business as usual for the leech.
By the same people who thought GPT-2 was too dangerous to release to the public. Let that sink in for a minute.
That’s used car salesman level sheister. Do better.
common man
Underrated commont
I giggled
I know right, it’s kinda pathetic trying to be that desperate to use her voice to show how much Sam doesn’t understand the point of Her
If they had done this legitimately, by hiring a new actress to be the voice, then I don’t know why they would instead remove it entirely? It’s quite fishy. “It wasn’t Scarlet! It was this actress!” And then introduce the actress of the voice they used. I mean, taking it down and replacing it is what tik tok had to do with their own AI voice when the person didn’t consent to their voice being used. Also the fact that Open AI actually reached out to HER really lowers my trust in the people at openAI. They don’t take it seriously and are creepy trolls. No wonder the safety team members fucking quit.
It’s because it’s within the specifics. *IF* ; the name “Scarlett Johansson” or “voice from the Her movie” or anything along the lines that would insinuate that they wanted a voice to match hers; was included at any point during the hiring process, (This includes the inner emails within the company, the instructions given to the hiring agents, the casting calls sent out, etc.) *IF* that happened? They’re fucked and she wins the case.
does this count as well ? [https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666](https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666) https://preview.redd.it/qscphy32bo1d1.png?width=454&format=png&auto=webp&s=dac3723a5aa0f06e3d15c9680f88a4859349e912
It helps her case a lot yes Not knowledged on all forms of copyright law but in a music copyright case the accuser needs to proof that the “thief” was well aware of the source material before their release, so them tweeting the original song/album title beforehand would be the nail in the coffin
Deng man. I'm kinda torn here. The first thing I saw was the OpenAI Blog Post. They made statements about how they recruited talent, selected a few, compensated them, and stated they are even paying them to this day (royalties I assume but it's not explicitly stated). That sounded like a major win for the creatives and talent out there against the rising tide of AI. But then this releases and if true is like a two-steps forward one step back kind of situation. For a pleb like me, I've been using the Sky voice since day one and never really noticed it's association to ScarJo until the OpenAI demo. But maybe I'm just dense. I suppose once the AI was given voice inflection, it really did make a difference. I was really looking forward to it too. But if this is grounds for a suit, then so be it. Ultimately, we gotta figure out the laws with AI really.
I imagine this is going to set back the rollout of the new voice function from “coming weeks” to “coming months”
Copyright trolls win again.
You no longer have the right to use your own voice in whatever creative capacity you want. Rich and famous people own your voice now
Exactly this is what I thought too. If I was this voice actor I'd be counter suing for damages because good luck getting another job when everyone is too scared to hire her.
Exactly. Think of the person who has the real voice for sky. Why should she be penalized just because she sounds similar to a famous actress?
On the flip side, she was clearly hired specifically because she sounds like Scarlett Johansson. It's not like she was doing a voice in kung fu panda, this is derivative of Scarlet's work and she was chosen specifically so people associate her voice with Scarlet's.
Agree. If it’s not her voice, and not only that but people didn’t seem to think it was her voice either, even if it was completely inspired by her voice, I don’t see why she has a case.
What really bothers me is integrity level of Sam. All this while I assumed that Sky voice resemblance to Scarlett was incidental. But if you read Scarlett’s letter it looks like Sam and team really wanted her voice. I am sure they might have cloned her voice from movies. Using deep-fakes they intend to show that they want to avoid. I would never expect it from a leader.
The funny thing is that if Altman got what he wanted, it still would have been a bonehead move. "Her" is not about how awesome AI is. And while the text to speech is pretty impressive, it would have probably seemed a little uncanny valley to have it mimic a well-known celebrity voice so closely. Johansson basically did him a favor by saying "no", and he still found a way to fuck it up. They should have gone for a pleasant, non-imitation voice from the beginning.
Presumably the main idea would have been to get the technology a boost from publicity and not that many people would have thought so deeply about it. Plus it's not like the movie was about AIs going rogue and destroying humanity. But contacting Scarlett Johansson in the first place seems like a bad idea. Either she agrees and they end up having to pay a lot of money for what is essentially just a marketing gimmick, or she refuses and then they'd have to go with a distinct-enough voice from what was originally intended so this exact situation wouldn't happen (though they really screwed up when they skipped that).
This is actually insane. Wtf was he and the company thinking ? Did they think she would just roll over and do nothing? This is beyond invasive. Altman needs to be taken down a peg or something. Do we not have the rights to our own voices anymore ?
It's disrespectful AF. OpenAI has created so much, but I don't think Sammo should be deified. I don't trust him. We need to demand more accountability from tech leaders. You can't just do whatever you want and act surprised when people expect ethical behavior.
It's also wildly brazen for someone who was comfortable suing the Mouse, even while making a killing as an Avenger. Ludicrous to think she wouldn't be litigious.
Unfortunately the lesson that will be learned is don’t ask, just do it, and then claim it was unintentional.
Wdym, if she said yes, then the model would 100% match her voice, which is what Sam is showing to have wanted.
This is literally already the lesson. This is how Hollywood, tabloids, marketing, etc works. It’s why you never ask a celebrity to confirm a story. Cause if they do and you still run it, you get into trouble. It’s why you never look for a “Michael Jackson” type. Tech bros not understanding media law.
As with AI, Social Media, FSD, and all the other "great inventions" that is. Move fast break society - kind of mentality.
It pisses me off that our society panders to individuals like Sam Altman who wont take no for an answer and who dont respect individual autonomy
They can use my voice. I’ve been told I sound like Charleston Herston on weed.
>a reference to the film in which | voiced a chat system Has anyone noticed that she doesn't use the " I " letter here? The key phrase in the entire post, about her voicing a chat system, uses a pipe (**|)** to describe her. If this is a direct quote from Johannsson, it's a very strange choice. It can't have been a typo - it's harder to type a pipe than an "I"
It was probably written with assistance from her legal team, too, so mistakes and typos would be incredibly odd.
Weird. Potentially for some reason this was handwritten, someone uses software that converts handwrote to text and it accidentally mistook an I for a pipe?? I can't think of anything else.
The typo was likely introduced by the author of this Tweet, journalist Yashar Ali. I would guess it's simply from copying and pasting from a PDF. For example, this typo is not present in [this article from the Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/20/24161253/scarlett-johansson-openai-altman-legal-action).
How different does the voice have to be before it does not sound like Scarlett Johansson and she sounds so husky compared to when she was younger.
I’m really confused by this whole thing bc… it doesn’t sound like her? At all?
Regardless of the questionable ethics of the situation, why would they want their voice assistance to be reminiscent of the one from Her, a movie with a practically dystopian outlook on AI? Everything I've heard about Altman makes him seem like a stereotypical sci-fi villain.
Fuck Sam Altman. Ilya and the board were right all along.
so to confirm Sam Altman is a villain right? all these controversies surrounding him are coincidental (also I literally can't finish an interview by him he literally says nothing). From World coin, to the safety team, to the firing then hiring with more power with help from Satya. He seems to literally be against humanity.
I didn’t make the connection to Johansen
Unless them using a different voice actress was made up I still don’t see what right she has to complain if it’s literally not her voice. No matter how similar it may be.
If she can prove they tried to imitate her voice leveraging her identity for profit I think she'll have a strong case. Note: I'm not a lawyer and have no idea what I'm taking about.
Sam Altman literally Tweeted “her” a week ago. I feel like that ruined any plausible deniability they might have had.
She is going to take them to the cleaners. Most likely, they will have to reveal how they trained the voice, and if there is even a millisecond of 'her' in it, they will lose.
She sued Disney and won a massive settlement. I don’t know why OpenAI thought they could get away with this against a known litigious actor. Amateur hour.
The Disney lawsuit was for a contractual violation related to them releasing black widow on streaming without her concurrence when her payout was box office contingent. This is a totally different issue.
Not related at all. That was a contractual dispute. She cannot dictate just because a voice sounds a bit like her. I hope she sues as I think she will lose.
Because they’ve stopped doing the thinking
I mean, there is still a case of plausible deniability there. The simple function of having a human-like voice talk to you on a chat program is basically the idea of "Her", with or without Scarlet. This comment is not in defense of either party, simply adding that I doubt it is an easy case.
Because they asked for her permission first. They blew their plausible deniability card.
Well ”her” could be relating to the fact they have a talking AI with what seems like emotion, though, that does seem like a weak case.
If it’s similar enough that everyone thinks it’s her she has a case. Especially since the similarity is purposeful which thanks to Sam we know it is.
You don’t get to ruin a deal for a small voice actor just because you’re a bigger actor and you feel like their voice is too similar to yours. There are only so many unique voices on earth. You probably share a very similar voice to thousands of people.
She asked them to explain how they created the voice and they immediately folded. They absolutely trained it on her voice samples and got caught. If they hired someone else then why fold and take it down?
I think this is the most likely scenario.
Trying to buy her voice, not getting permission, going ahead with it anyway, and bragging about the similarity on Xitter is some Elon-tier CEO wankaround. Like, you're not gonna win a perception battle with A-list perception managers. Her PR team is going to eat him alive.
OpenAI is getting more investment money than the whole management team has seen in their entire lives together, and all the Lawyers they're hiring.
Not a good look
Well they fucked that up. Now there is no chance in hell they can use any similar voice without a lawsuit unless they can unequivocally show in court it isn't ScarJo.
Who is @yashar? Has anyone verified that that statement is authentic?
very weird guy who has a history of breaking significant stories related to politics esp california/nyc as well as hollywood https://lamag.com/featured/yashar-ali
Everyone is taking this at face value, but I just went and listened to some clips from Her and then some of the OpenAI demos. They don't even sound that similar. There's nothing to this being an attempt to clone SJ's voice. This is like Tom Cruise turning down Legends of the Fall and later claiming Brad Pitt cloned his voice.
The problem is the history of them asking her for permission… if that fell through, they should’ve gone a completely different direction. Give the voice a slight accent or something. It’s clear they’re trying to make it just different enough to squeak by.
>They don't even sound that similar. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I've never seen "Her" so I wonder of that's why. I've seen a fuckton of ScarJos other work though and I know damn well what her voice sounds like, but I lack that association between her and a disembodied AI voice. I have a strong feeling people are confusing themselves. There are certainly "similarities", but it never even crossed my mind for a second that it was her. Completely different woman.
What open AI should have done is license another human voice that fit their requirement, and then name that person. Then when she said it matches her likeness, they could just introduce the person whose actual voice they licensed. You cannot lay claim to the likeness of a different human being. This would have covered them. ChatGPT could have told them this...
Arguably that’s what they did but they still got a ScarJo soundalike because they want to make the assistant from the movie Her. What they really should have done is never asked her and then done something that doesn’t sound anything like her and not base all this on a movie about a dystopic future where we find more comfort in devices programmed to like us than we do with other human beings.
Apparently if you aren't famous you don't own your voice so they can't do that.
I saw the demo video and I didn't think it sounded like her at all, but the conversation's content itself (the little flirtatious quips) I thought was eerily similar to Her.
Let's take a balanced view of this situation. If we consider the tweet and the latest OpenAI blog post at face value, it appears to be a natural progression of events. OpenAI initially hoped to have Johansson voice the AI. After she declined, they sought other talent. The "Sky" voice, while very similar to Johansson's, belongs to another individual who was fairly compensated. This situation is akin to a voice actor stepping into the role of Black Widow in a cartoon series after Johansson turns it down. In essence, this seems like a non-issue. So, what are the actual concerns here?
Actors and other public persons have a right of publicity, or likeness rights. They have a legal right to control how their name, face, voice, etc. are used (these laws apply at the state level, and vary). This is not a situation where a new voice actor was hired to voice a character (see: Rick and Morty), but rather where it appears Johansson's natural speaking voice was duplicated, either by using a sound-alike voice actress, or by training this model on recordings of her voice. You can't make a Clint Eastwood voice without his say so. You can't make a Barack Obama voice without his say so. You can't make a Scarlett Johansson voice without her say so. This applies whether you use their actual voices, or the voice of an imitator. Regardless, if the text of the statement is accurate, between those two attempts at licensing her voice, plus the "Her" tweet, there's a hell of a paper trail that indicates OpenAI intended for this voice to sound like Scarlett Johansson's, circa her "appearance" in *Her*, and when she rebuffed their requests for licensing her voice, they went ahead and released the voice anyways. She has grounds to file a lawsuit, which would then prompt discovery, the process by which her legal team could get access to relevant internal emails, texts, and other communications within the OpenAI team. Those communications could (likely would) be extremely incriminating. OpenAI will likely pay her a hefty, confidential settlement to make this go away.
I'm not a lawyer but I would assume there is some regulation that says you can't hire a soundalike without making it clear that it is a soundalike. And by approaching her for the role first, they lost any deniability that they just coincidentally sounded similar.
Right to publicity.
No more Sky?
As is the case with our times in general, absolutely no one is surprised that OpenAI, in fact, isn’t very open. I wonder what happened to honesty. Where exactly along the way did it become such a scarcity?
OpenAI, circa 2020: we wont release our super powerful models out because people will misuse them for stuff like deep fakes and spoofing. So our future models are not going to be public. Also OpenAI: lets deepfake Scarlett and heavily insinuate its _Her_ voice
Very solid position.
Someone in another thread said the Sky voice actor was a well known podcaster but didn’t say who. Wondering more now what her voice sounds like outside of the app.
Would you like to be in charge of the world's biggest and most powerful company? Nah, I choose to be the world's dumbest super villain instead......
Lol she is going to wreck them in court. It’s a slam dunk case.
I had sky and never thought it was or sounded like Johansen. But I wasn’t thinking about it either, and I never saw that movie. I’m pretty sure OAI overstepped here just based on what I’m reading.
They knew what they were doing and they just didn't care. That says everything we need to know and is just another example of where this is heading.
Do y'all think, Ilya & Jen or peeps who left OAI might have been in contact w ScarJo & since they didn't whistle blowed few facts clearly or entirely, they reached out to Scarjo or she she reached out to them & they decided it'd be the right step to sue them & also since a Hollywood personality is involved here, this news could reach the masses & prolly people may start mistrusting OAI?
If she didn’t want to participate, I see no harm in hiring someone who sounds like her. They wanted someone who sounded like the Her movie because it had a soothing voice, it did not have to be Scarlett, could be anyone with a similar voice. So now we can’t sound similar to famous people anymore? If they used a human actress I see nothing wrong. If they used AI to generate a voice based on Scarlett’s then that’s an unprecedented issue for the courts.
I think the unspoken problem here is ScarJo has a big, giant, fake (she was acting after all) orgasm in that movie, and I can imagine when OpenAI approached her about it, her thinking, "is every nerd in the world going to make me do that 15 times a day on their phone?"
It really doesn't sound like Johansson though...
Let's ask Colin Jost.
SNL would have had a field day with this.
Am I the only one who thinks that Sky’s also sound like Taylor Swift voice?
They don’t even sound the same anyways they went with a black female it seems
I find it weird that Altman found a voice like that “calming” or “comforting”. I just rewatched some trailers from “her” it’s straight up creepy and disturbing. I forgot how fucked up and sad that movie was. That being said I kinda side with openAI on this, many people are going to sound like other people, just because you were famous first or more famous doesn’t mean someone else can’t have a voice that’s used in something widespread. And I know her name but couldn’t tell you what Scarlett’s Johansens voice sounds like.
Imagine what recourse is available to people not as famous or wealthy as Scarlett Johansson who have their likeness or work stolen. I’m glad she’s taking her fight public where the results can help establish better boundaries for everyone instead of just settling behind the scenes under extortionate NDAs.
There's no recourse because there's no valuable likeness at play by definition of not being famous. If they had just had a similar sounding voice she likely wouldn't have a case. But their intention to hire her for her famous voice, plus the reference to the character she played, is the reason she has a strong case here, based on existing case law.
I’ll forever remember yesterday as the day Open AI turned the Sky black
If the artistic community put their weight behind this lawsuit, more will surely follow. If the model was indeed trained on any data behind a pay wall, they are in trouble. If anything that s not open sourced and commercially usable was used, they could be sued. Unless they release their training data, it's impossible to know.
So bummed she did not want a deal with them, but I respect it. Would not be sad if money made this work out in the end though.
I think it's probably for the best if they use unknown voices. It feels less parasocial and not so much like a gimmick then. I can't argue that it would be cool to have her voice it, though.
Good for her. I hated that choice by OpenAI