* OpenAI wanted an AI voice that sounds like SJ
* SJ declined
* OpenAI got an AI voice that sounds like SJ anyway
I guess they want us to believe this happened without shenanigans, but it's bit hard to.
The headline of the article is a little funny, because records can't really show they weren't looking for an SJ sound-alike. They can just show that those records didn't mention it. The key decision-makers could simply have agreed to keep that fact close-to-the-vest -- they may have well understood that knocking off a high-profile actress was legally perilous.
Also, I think we can readily assume OpenAI understood that one of their potential voices sounded a lot like SJ. Since they were pursuing her they must have had a pretty good idea of what they were going after, especially considering the likely price tag. So even if an SJ voice wasn't the original goal, it clearly became an important goal to them. They surely listened to demos for many voice actors, auditioned a number of them, and may even have recorded many of them, but somehow they selected one for release who seemed to sound a lot like SJ.
- the original report by Scarlett said she was approached months ago, and then two days prior to launch of GPT-4o she was approached again
Because of the above, my immediate assumption was that OpenAI definitely did her dirty. But this report from WaPo debunks at least some of it, because the records they have seen show that the voice actor was contacted months in advance prior to OpenAI contacting Scarlett for the first time. (also goes to show just how many months in advance OpenAI is working on projects)
However, this does not dispel the fact that OpenAI did contact Scarlett, and Sam Altman did post the tweet saying "her", and the voice has at least "some" resemblance of Scarlett's voice, at least enough to have two different groups saying that it does, and the other saying that it does not.
SJ is not the “AI” portrayed in the movie her. And AFAIK she does not in fact have all the same idiosyncrasies and tones in real life as the voice does in the movie because she was in fact directed to act like that.
Not only that but the voices are not the same because there was another actress for sky as we have seen.
To me It seems as if the case for SJ is DOA unless it comes out somehow that they in fact trained on her voice specifically. But since that doesn’t seem like the case I have no idea how SJ can legally own all voices that sound like hers.
It would obviously be a different story if OpenAI were saying that sky was SJ but that’s not the case. To me the question should be is “can the studio own the character in her that openAI was copying and any similar things”. Which given that systems like SIRI were already out there in the world when the movie came out and we knew this tech was on the way. The answer should be no but IANAL.
I’m not a huge fan of OpenAI anymore and I think they deserve criticism for many things. But this situation isn’t one of them.
Clarification: Of course if it turns out that they in fact trained on SJ or altered the voice to be more like hers then I’d think differently. I still think the studio has more of a claim though look from the outside and not being a lawyer.
Edit: clarification
No amount of unverifiable "records" (just pieces of paper provided by somebody who has a multimillion dollar incentive to show one outcome) will change my mind.
But if they can produce the actual voice artist I'd be more open-minded.
If it wasn't for us being biased by the surrounding circumstances I don't think people would have confused their voices. Their voices are not that similar. I probably personally know people with a voice as similar to SJ as Sky's. You probably do too.
The voice actress says the same: "I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely."
But then suddenly a story emerges and their voices are indistinguishable. All of these extra details shouldn't have even mattered.
Some voices are sexy and both of them fall into that category -- but that's beside the point.
That aside, it is genuinely pleasant to have a conversation with chatGPTo and some of that has to do with the voices. There's a kind of irony here because people generally imagined that AI would be cold, logical, unempathetic, etc. But LLMs are the opposite; they're extremely polite and deferential. Meanwhile they aren't that good at logic!
I read a lot of C&D letters from celebrities here and on Reddit, and a lot of them are in the form of "I am important so I am requesting that you do not take advantage of your legal rights." I am not a fan. (If you don't want someone to track how often you fly your private jet, buy a new one for each trip. That is the legal option that is available to you. But I digress...)
I am impressed
> the actress confirmed that neither Johansson nor the movie “Her” were ever mentioned by OpenAI. The actress’s natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice, based on brief recordings
Given this I don't think anyone at OpenAI did anything wrong in this instance except Sam Altman. After getting explicitly rejected by Johansson he should not have asked again and definitely should not have referenced her character in that tweet. And this whole thing could have been avoided if they just used a different voice for the demo instead of their voice that happened to sound the most like her.
They should have learned from Weird Al. Famously, he technically doesn't need permission to do song parodies but he asks anyway and respects the artist's wishes if they say no.
Sure they're both female voices with some similarities, but they sound like distinctly different people if you listen to the two back to back.
If it goes to court I’m sure discovery will unearth a bunch of emails and slack messages pertaining to this as well as documentation about the make up of their training sets and casting and performance notes for the voice talent. Hopefully they’re under legal hold now.
But while many hear an eerie resemblance between “Sky” and Johansson’s “Her” character, an actress was hired to create the Sky voice months before Altman contacted Johansson, according to documents, recordings, casting directors and the actress’s agent.
It feels like it took years before people started hating Google and Tesla, but these guys wasted very little time pretending to be good.
Do I still pay for and use them? Unfortunately yes, but I won't spend a second defending them or thinking they are trying to do anything remotely good, safe or ethical. Once things settle and hopefully someone else takes over, I can move my money elsewhere.
How is it not obvious to everybody that this is what Sam and the OpenAI people are referencing with their tweets?
Scarlett Johanssons voice is certainly pleasing, but it feels misplaced to assume that the voice is the important thing here and not everything else.
Higher-minded discussions certainly take place on a range of issues in AI. Can I rely on my AI to tell the truth? Is it ethical to use an AI for military applications? How do I make sure my AI doesn't turn into Archie Bunker? Even (IMO) fringe issues like whether it will exterminate humanity.
It would seem that those are rather abstract concerns. It would seem that your average person mostly cares about who's getting paid.
Notice that every month or so they have a few new “scandals” with high intrigue but noticeably iron clad legal and political “cover your ass” investments/ politicking
Meanwhile they are getting deep into bed with Apple, making an admarket (worst possible case scenario for users IMO) and generally cementing all of these commercial inroads for revenue
I’d be impressed if it weren’t so destructive and psychotic
No press is bad press
This feels a bit to me like confirmation bias: “OpenAI is selling an AI voice tool just like in that movie! Surely that’s what they’re going for!”
That said, the fact that they contacted her twice about it does feel awfully suspicious
Human mind is a curious place.
I can make enough arguments and counterarguments, but this whole thing doesn’t sound convincing. If I want to change my voice to sound like Michael Jackson and walk like him, no one’s business if I do that and publicly.
I understand the concerns of “looks and sound” models here, but the reality changes with time and thick ice becomes thin, you have to adapt too. Progress isn’t responsible for everyone’s job, especially if it’s built on such an ephemeral concept. That only worked for a while.
If they just released, people would be like hey it’s like “Her”.
Sky doesn’t sound like SJ. It’s a different voice.
Sam didn’t have to tweet “her”.
The problem with CEOs is they can’t keep their mouths shut. Same with Elon. They have God complex and need to be center of attention.
If Elon just kept it to science memes, Tesla would be a much larger company.
But they can’t keep their heads down and execute. They gotta be out there with their megaphones alienating the very crowd that got them there.
At this point, I feel OpenAI would be a more successful company without Sam.
Five small, unremarked-upon words that illustrate OpenAI's positioning perfectly.
This one case is a pretty grey area. But what is not is the voice cloning tools like Eleven Labs which can and do clone voices very well.
Forget about stealing one person's voice. Or a lot of people's voices. This technology will soon be able to replace everyone's skillset. Give it 2-5 years.
This type of reaction is how we know that humans will not maintain control of the planet for much longer.
The wealthy and powerful will again monopolize this power for their own benefit despite AI being the product of the sum of human technological civilization.
Open AI found records to show they did nothing wrong in response to questions from WaPo
The same goes for actors and their likenesses ... just stop protecting ultra wealthy celebrities. They'll be a bit poorer, but they're going to be okay. You're just holding back progress
I can imagine in a decade some place like China which doesn't care about protecting celebrities will have movies with dozens of Tom Cruises Arnolds and Johansson's and will just be pumping out better quality content at affordable budgets. Young talented directors won't be hamstrung by these legal roadblocks
But the media hype effect the demo was supposed to bring has already happened, so they don't really need the voice anymore.
The fine will be the cost of doing advertising/marketing, they absolutely knew what they were doing.
If this were the massive creative effort they make it out to be, it seems like they'd have netted another solid result or two
https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2024/05/22/do-not-mess-with-sca...
False reporting. The SJ statement contains no such allegation.
Either way this brings up artists rights in an AI world which is a good thing.
Training a computer to have any actual-human sounding voice is likely to almost match someone's voice.
I haven't taken an IP class since 2004, but I'm not sure if there's a real case here is there?
A company wanted a voice, had something in their minds, approached a voice actor who has a similar voice to what they have in mind, got rejected, then approached next candidate and worked with her. Simple as that. If this is illegal, I don't know what is legal.
I.e. maybe being hot is actually less about being unique and more anout being consistent.
Maybe sultry female voices only have so much variety.
I didn’t think of Scarjo during the demo. That said, I don’t need robots to be sexy, so it doesn’t matter.
I feel the real goal is to slow OpenAI down with distractions.
If you pick a particular genre, sometimes the output can feel like many similar singers voices merged together... and not.
I remember noticing the Sky voice going away, and mannerisms aside it felt a little more expressive and upbeat than I expected.
Additionally, glad no one here is a lawyer and should stick in their lane.
Sam probably should have changed the voice as soon as Scarlett noped out from the deal. All this furore could have been avoided.
This would be a loop hole to imitate anybody. Including in music right? Like using imitations of Tupac.
The case law is clear and it is linked all up and down these threads so I won't reproduce here. It does not matter if it was a voice actor who sounded just like her, or if it was a trained AI voice that never used a single recording from ScarJo, what matters is if OpenAI intended to gain from reproducing the likeness of Scarjo. Intent is the key, not even how similar the voices are or the source.
Given that the Jury of average joes will be given this instruction directly by the judge, you can almost hear the plaintiff's lawyers case. "OpenAI contacted Scarlett 9 months before release asking to use her voice. She refused. OpenAI contacted her two days before release again asking to use her voice and she refused. Then, just prior to launch the CEO of the company tweets "Her" despite the fact that they could not secure an agreement with my client. The CEO of OpenAI, when engaged in a massive launch and PR campaign, referenced the likeness of my client in a clear attempt to produce economic benefit."
The two contacts before made the case 50/50 from the plaintiff's perspective. sama tweeting "Her" right before the launch is him spiking the football in his own endzone. The defense only has technicalities. At the civil level of burden of proof this is an absolute slam dunk case for the plaintiff. OpenAI will settle for a very large undisclosed amount of money. No way they let this go in front of a civil jury.
documents, recordings,... these days can be artificially created if I'm not mistaken?
The fact that Sam Altman was requesting a licensing deal days before launch would suggest that they had a known problem that the model was too close to Scarlett Johansen's voice. In the generous case, this could come down to a few documents from product conception indicating that they wanted the model to replicate the movie "Her."
strange, no?
In this case they even tried to do the right thing and offered her compensation. She declined, probably because she thought it wasn't enough money (never underestimate the vanity/cupidity of women).
In the end they showed that they were just being "nice": they don't even need her work output of voice acting, they can just create a similar enough version just fine.
And the fact is that it isn't her voice. She didn't do the work, she refused. It also should be clear that there is bound to be another woman in the world with similar physical characteristics that has a voice close enough to her. She just cannot own a particular voice characteristic, she could have owned the work associated with her voice acting, but she refused.
The whole outrage is just dumb, I really hope she loses in court because otherwise it is going to set a very problematic precedent.
They are enough people in the world profiteering from various position without actually doing the equivalent work value that we don't need to get them even more money.
I hope Sam feels fine after so much baseless harassment.
Famous case here is Back to the Furure Part II where the producers hired another actor and used prosthetics to look like Crispin Glover. Crispin isn’t actually in the move but people thought he was because they used tech to make it look like it was him.
Sam tweeting “Her” is sort of the smoking gun here in showing it was their intention to make people think it was the same voice. Whether or not it actually was doesn’t matter per precedent in the law. What matters is that they tried to make people think it was Johansson. Sam’s tweet handed OpenAI’s lawyers a dumpster fire.
Computer, end program.
Did OpenAI pay any amount of credit to the artist responsible for the free creative direction they copied for their AI's voice? I would imagine more than the voice actor, the person responsible for casting Scarlett and writing the movie would deserve something.
I can completely buy that they were looking for a voice actress that sounded kind of like Scarlett, but this mimic isn't perfect because it misses this "raspiness".
I mean, yes, Scarlett Johansson is the actress, but she is not playing herself in the movie. I didn't watch the movie, but I guess she matched her voice to the character, an AI called Samantha, who is not Scarlett Johansson.
It is not like the "Midler vs Ford" case that is often referred to. Where Ford hired a singer to sound like Midler, but that's Midler singing as Midler, not acting a fictional character.
Maybe Warner Bros could complain, they are the owners of the character OpenAI imitates. In the same way that Disney (rather than Scarlett Johansson) would complain if someone used the Black Widow character without permission.
To defeat Scarlett Johanssen?
The point is it’s the wrong thing to do, regardless of whether or not he can legally get away with it.
No wonder Silicon Valley’s reputation for ethical behavior is in the toilet.
But if you deliberately seek out the actress who voiced "her" and then happen to get a similar sounding alternate after the "her" actress refuses, you're in legal violation. Is that right?
I'd like to have seen this go to court.
samalt is walking in the shadows of ethical/non-ethical line and he seems obviously is proficient in that.
however, even in such cases he does not hesitate to walk in the border of non-ethical is worrisome for the future of the ethics in ai.
Voice is just an instrument. I love finding reasons to hate on big tech, but “it sounds like Me” (intentional or not) is bullshit. If I build a piano that sounds just like your piano… tough luck there are two pianos now.
Scarlett Johansson has a lot of fans, and they will now see your company as a problem.
Legally you might get a pass... but business wise it is a big Nope... nerd hubris strikes again. =)
> Mitch Glazier, the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, said that Johansson may have a strong case against OpenAI if she brings forth a lawsuit.
> He compared Johansson’s case to one brought by the singer Bette Midler against the Ford Motor Co. in the 1980s. Ford asked Midler to use her voice in ads. After she declined, Ford hired an impersonator. A U.S. appellate court ruled in Midler’s favor, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized use.
> But Mark Humphrey, a partner and intellectual property lawyer at Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, said any potential jury probably would have to assess whether Sky’s voice is identifiable as Johansson.
> Several factors go against OpenAI, he said, namely Altman’s tweet and his outreach to Johansson in September and May. “It just begs the question: It’s like, if you use a different person, there was no intent for it to sound like Scarlett Johansson. Why are you reaching out to her two days before?” he said. “That would have to be explained.”
* A.K.A. "Personality rights": https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
Sosumi
Come on OpenAI - do it!
>OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show
>>A different actress was hired to provide the voice for ChatGPT’s “Sky,” according to documents and recordings shared with the Washington Post.
New theory, HN is a honey pot for dumb people that Y Combinator studies how to make money from.
Previous theory it was a Alzheimer's style "Fake bus stop" used to round up imposter hackers and keep them contained while the real Hackers did stuff.
Everything OpenAI and Altman related seems to have multiple layers like an onion.
If we wait long enough we might get documents which show they uses Scarlett Johansson's voice but hired an actress to claim it's hers.
One month later it might be the opposite again.
In times of AI fakes real evidence is hard to find.
They are very likely to settle out of court. Investors get a bit anxious with pending litigation.
But I honestly hope Johansson does not. She certainly has the runway to take it all the way. Make them look like fools in open court. Show the people their real colors.
I personally want an AI Taylor Swift that can sing to me whatever song I want, and I would like it to be cheap and owned by a corporation.
So you are trying to tell me there was zero chance that this film director was not aware of the movie "Her" and may have been influenced by it?
Why doesn't the voice sound like the Enterprise's computer from TNG? I don't mean sound, I mean cadence, more professional and not like a sexline operator.
It sounds too close to Scarlett for me to believe this was not the goal whether they hired somebody else or not, and if they try and prove beyond a doubt no audio post processing was done. Just listen to famous musicians doing acoustic or no processing versions of their songs to see how much you can craft a voice or sound.
[Edit]
1. A movie that features an AI voice of a female voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
2. A real-life AI company, OpenAI, is trying to put a distinct voice to their AI product vs. a canned voice.
3. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, contacting SJ to ask her to be the AI voice.
4. SJ refuses.
5. CEO of OpenAI tweets "her" the title of the movie in #1 above.
My common sense and the above facts says OpenAI did whatever they did to get close enough to SJ's voice. SA pursued it a few times, no? It definitely sounds like her enough to me.