Scarlett Johansson denied OpenAI the right to use her voice. They used it anyway.
Scarlett Johansson denied OpenAI the right to use her voice. They used it anyway.
Most of AI just seems to be blatant theft and copyright issues.
No, it's only theft when it's poor people doing it.
When it's rich people, it's fair use of a publicly available resource.
That’s pretty much the whole point.
Making use of other people’s work and likeness in a way that removes any obligations you would normally have to those people.
Just clearly define “copyright violation” for them, and they’ll craft a method that technically eludes your definition.
Not in this case.
And traumatizing developing countries labor with what the internet has of most terrible.
The precedent in this case already exists in Midler v. Ford Motor Co., in which when Academy Award nominated actress and singer Bette Midler sued Ford after Ford hired musical impersonators to sing famous songs for their commercials.
The court ultimately ruled in favor of Midler, because it was found that Ford gave clear instructions to the impersonating actress to sound as much like Midler as possible, and the ruling was voices, although not copyrightable, still constitutes their distinct identity and is protected against unauthorized use without permission. (Outside of satire, of course, since I doubt someone like Trump would be above suing people for making fun of him.)
I think Scarlett Johansson has a case here, but it really hinges on whether or not OpenAI actively gave the instruction specifically to impersonate Scarlett's voice in "Her", or if they used her voice inside the training data at all, since there is a difference in the "Sky" voice and the voice of Scarlett Johansson.
But then again, what do I know, I'm just here to shitpost and promote "Barbie".
This reads like a lemmy version of a shittymorph post
Hey, I have more than one comedy bit I do here other than something something Hell in a Cell, OK?
Speaking of which, Hell in a Cell isn't even that exciting anymore after the WWE made it an annual event and painted the cages red, and why did Seth Rollins get disqualified after he attacked "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt with a sledgehammer 2019 even though Hell in a Cell matches have always been no disqualification?
It's like their script writers don't even care about their own rules.
Holy shit we have a character on Lemmy now I'm deleting my Reddit account
Who knew someone who plays characters on screen for a living would be so good at playing a character?
This is an A-Lister commie board, we have Ryan Gosling too!
Edit: whoops I thought this was a hexbear post but my point stands, less commie though
It's that barbie girl, in the lemmy wooorld ~~
There is almost certainly internal communication that basically reads "hey let's get an actress who sounds as close to ScarJo as possible". There's also the CEO tweeting "her" on the day of release.
Is that legal? IANAL, but OpenAI's reaction of immediately shutting that shit down leads me to believe they realized it is, in fact, illegal.
Your comparison is also incorrect. You're not getting a JEJ soundalike, you're getting a JEJ soundalike to do a Darth Vader impersonation. Meaningfully different semantics. They don't just want "white american woman who vaguely sounds like ScarJo I guess" they have proven beyond doubt that they want "The AI from the 2013 movie Her starring Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson".
Also legality aside, it's really fucking weird and ethically wrong. I don't care if it's legal or not, you shouldn't be able to make an AI replicate someone's voice without their consent.
OpenAI's actions could just as easily be explained by them seeking to protect their image as much as possible, knowing that if they let the voice stay then bad PR would only grow.
Even if there is no connection to ScarJo in this case, it's still in OpenAI's interest to appease the public for the sake of their reputation.
And OpenAI successfully, publicly closes down any competition in synthetic AI voices.
Tweeting “her” was stupid but he has stated for years its his favorite movie and honestly even with a wildly different man voice it is still a very similar appearing product as the movie.
There is evidence they wanted to use Johansson’s voice, because they asked to use her voice. Both OpenAI and Johansson have acknowledged this.
As far as I know, OpenAI has said they hired a voice actor before approaching Johansson, but refuses to offer additional information to corroborate.
After failing to secure Johansson to lend her voice to Sky - which is portrayed as having not just a very similar voice, but a very similar personality to Sam - the OpenAI team made several references to the Her movie prior to the announcement.
Similar voices happen. But when all of those other pieces align, it’s fairly clear that they’re copying the character. Focusing on only the voice being similar is reductive. They are committing IP theft and they’re attempting to confer approval/endorsement/a relationship of/to the Sky personality from the people involved in the Her movie.
They might not want to give that actress's identity out out of a respect for privacy. This information could come out in a closed court room, but with the state of viral social media, it might be smart to hold off on unveiling for now.
They are copying the fictional movie character… the voice is a real person and their is precedent that explicitly impersonating a voice is ip theft.
But a fictional personality and a voice that has similar features? I really hope this does settle in court.
There isn’t any evidence that they used her voice
There's ample evidence, via the samples OpenAI released during their demo.
Actually, there is evidence that they paid a voice actress to model that specific actress’s voice.
Actually, there's not. OpenAI refuses to release where they got their voice samples. They insist it came from "another unnamed actress".
She’s not the only person with those vocal qualities.
If the raw data OpenAI used to train its AI came from voice samples produced by Scarlett Johansson, then there actually IS only one person with those vocal qualities.
If I wanted James Earl Jones to read my eulogy, but he isn’t available or is unwilling. Why couldn’t I get someone to sound like him to read it?
Nothing is stopping you from doing this.
However, if you took an existing privately licensed James Earl Jones eulogy and doctored it with AI trained data to replace another person's name with your name, then you'd be robbing Jones of his work product.
Waving your hands and saying "But maybe I didn't do the thing I did, so actually its fine" isn't a credible defense.
They insist it came from “another unnamed actress”.
Rumor has it they've kept her in a jar since birth, her only exposure to the world being through cameras hidden around the Julliard campus.
Yup. People up in arms over this should be reminded that if you want to support SJ here that, in a worst case, you are directly supporting the privatization of vocalization. Like to goof around by talking in Morgan Freeman's voice? Be prepared to get slapped with a notice to stop. That voice is off limits, and oh also your natural voice sounds like this person.
Is this silly? Absolutely. But dammit we see what's happened to Youtube so be aware of the risk.
Holy fuck how do you not see the difference between "random nobody does an impression for free while hanging out with their pals" and "multi billion startup backed and funded by one of the richest companies on earth uses an impression as a key selling point for their new flagship product that they are charging access for and intend to profit from"
Lemmy seems to love copyright now and walled gardens, they also hate all the companies doing great things with open source ai, etc. Plus there's never any community projects or anything constructive ever been suggested let alone ran here.
95% of the people here's political opinions are nothing but an aesthetic.
I asked ChatGPT for a response to your comment
Your comment raises several interesting points regarding the use of voice likeness and the legal implications of hiring voice actors who sound similar to well-known celebrities. Let’s break down the key issues:
In summary, while it may not be outright illegal to use a voice that sounds like a celebrity, there are significant legal nuances and potential for litigation if the use implies unauthorized endorsement or exploits the celebrity's identity. The balance lies in how the voice is marketed and whether it misleads the audience into believing it is the celebrity.
References a suit will make will likely be to how US copyright laws prevent people from using lookalikes. AFAIK it’s never had a need to go with sounds like but it’s there to protect “brand of self”
To be fair, I did choose Sky specifically because it sounded like Scarlett.
I believe she has many reasons to believe they used her voice and I think it's fair for her to want to open a lawsuit. They literally asked her and she said no. They tweeted "Her" which is pretty clearly referencing her role in the film.
Their actions mislead people into believing it's Scarlett Johanssons voice.
Did they tho? It clearly says the AI name is Sky and not Scarlett. Misleading would imply they specifically called her out in marketing materials.
If anything, they mimic the AI in the movie Her. If anything they should be the one that might have a case.
Lawsuits have been won by celebrities because a commercial used a lookalike, which still impacts the celebrity and their brand. They were in the wrong and didn't care.
She absolutely should sue, and I hope she wins. Their BS excuse of "It's totally someone else, but you wouldn't know her, she goes to another school. Also we have to protect her identity for reasons" is as blatant as it gets.
Her identity was never used.
Setting a president that voice can be copyrighted would be extremely bad for everyone who isn't already a AAA actor.
If I sound like David Attenborough, even if I have an amazing voice, I can never work in any voice acting for the rest of my life. Just because some trust will sue my ass for sounding too similar to David.
This story is blowing so fucking far out of proportion it's honestly incredible. Just so everyone is one the same page, here is a video timestamped to the voice, and immediately following the voice you can hear the voice from Her as well.
https://youtu.be/3BWjomtK-94?si=tDu574b4GySpnPIy&t=42
They are not similar other than they are both female.
The whole "her" thing that Altman threw up on twitter is just because the goddamned movie was a touchstone for the kind of thing that they are doing. They weren't cloning the fucking voice. It's like naming your new iguana Godzilla. It's not going to destroy Tokyo any time soon, it's just a cultural reference, you know, like a meme.
As far as Johansson goes, she is falling prey to this shit just like every other celebrity that has been railing against big bad AI. There are so many sheisty lawyers trying to get their hands on the first big win from an AI suit that they will say anything to get a celebrity to sue, because if their firm wins, they become the Anti-AI lawfirm that all others will seek in the future. They will print money, but only if something sticks, and so far, nothing has. This will be another case like any other, where they take it to court, and there is no real basis for anything, and it ends up being all over the news and then disappearing like the whole debacle over Sarah Silverman's book. In three months there will be another case against AI, and again, nothing will stick, because the people putting the bug in people's ears don't understand how to use most of the functionality of their cellphone, let alone how generative AI works.
They are not similar other than they are both female.
I thought Ferengi were supposed to have good hearing.
No no you don't understand. Since Scar Jo played a female voice that behaved nicely and made jokes in a movie she now owns the rights to any female (or feminine male voice) that either: makes a joke, says something witty, answers a question, or makes a statement. This is a slam dunk case for Scar Jo. I will also be sued for writing this as she also wrote an email in a movie once that had words in the forms of sentences just like this post so I'm screwed.
Just tell the judge that an AI wrote your post and you can walk away scot-free.
Finally, a sane response. Of course they'll "sound similar" because they're both female voices attempting to come off as friendly with an American accent.
I'm more on the side of opposing AI implementations but people are really reaching with this one. I'm assuming it was pulled just so they can get their legal defense in order.
This will be another case like any other, where they take it to court, and there is no real basis for anything
Because then they'll give up whoever it was that they used to voice the AI and it'll be mostly over. The thing is though that if they rush into a lawsuit too eagerly, nobody's going to want to work with them under a similar contract.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/3BWjomtK-94?si=tDu574b4GySpnPIy&t=42
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I think they're both pretty similar. The main difference being that one is being played from a shitty phone speaker and recorded by a camera and the other is coming from studio quality audio.
Yeah I thought OpenAI came out and said that they modeled the voice of a different actress, and they don't want to share their identity out of a respect for privacy.
It could just be a coincidence that Altman tweeted the image from Her, and people made the connection between the voice and ScarJo, especially since she did something extreme similar in that movie.
Could be coincidental. Could not be. We don't really have the evidence to say either way, but maybe ScarJo's suit will affect change so that better rights are granted to people and their digital twins.
Welp, we finally have the voice spoofer from Uplink.
"My voice is my passport, verify me."
Fuck me sometimes I felt like I was the only person on the planet to play that game
The reference was actually a reference to the earlier movie Sneakers which was one of the first movies about hacking.
And yeah, Uplink was awesome.
Hah, guess there are at least 3 of us here.
Though I found it randomly on Steam, a decadeish after it originally came out.
Do not try to play it in 4k. It'll work, because its an actually well coded game, but there is no scaling lol. Teeeny Tiny UI.
I can't not read that in a garbled south african accent.
I doubt they are using Johansson's voice. I expect they need much more studio-quality training data than they would have for her.
The desire to create a "Her" might be real but explains why they chose a similar voice actress, made Sky the default, and continued to pursue Johansson to some day create the real thing.
Suspending the Sky voice looks guilty but it might be a temporary action while the legal team considers their response. There might be a non-zero risk of being found liable if there were directions in the voice casting process to seek a result comparable to Scarlet Johansson. You'd want to collect and assess correspondence to see if that's a possibility, which might take a while.
If only she was ever in a situation where her voice was professionally recorded.
Since when would an actress be in front of a camera?
Wtf is this thinking.
Open Ai wouldn't use something or someone without consent? There's a plethora of lawsuits and evidence that they did that with pretty much every medium out there.
Fine tuning a general TTS model on a specific custom voice doesn't require as much data as you think it does.
The hard part is building the foundational model that can be easily fine tuned. And OpenAI has already done that.
They could easily make it based on publically available voice data, especially for an actress of her fame. That's how they were able to create AI versions of Biden's voice and other famous people.
That doesn't mean they did, but your first sentence implies they couldn't have, when they very easily could if they wanted to.
Pursuing a voice to match that of "Her" is a very weird move considering the story it tries to convey
This is very much the type of case that settles out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.
I'm much more concerned about the fact that the voice has simulated emotions behind it, leading people to trust their hallucinating AI even more.
Send a huge bill and then sue for payment. Let them fight the fight for you.
Let's say OpenAI did actually use Scarlett Johansson's voice. Who owns the audio that OpenAI used? Scarlett Johansson herself or the movie company that used the audio in their movie(s)? This might be a case of Scarlett Johansson vs the movie company, not Scarlett Johansson vs OpenAI, as OpenAI could have paid for them.
If she signed away her likeness rights then probably. However if the contract didn't have a provision for transfer to another medium then they would revert to her.
Source: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
I've never seen "her" the movie and at certain inflections all I could hear is Scarlett Johansson's voice.
🔊 Vocal Comparison: ScarJo vs Samantha vs Sky
RedLib link via SafeReddit (privacy protecting)
Wish I had time yesterday to do a comparison myself, using better clips from Her and the newest OpenAI demo clips. Plus would get the ChatGPT app to speak some lines from Her.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Scarlett Johansson is famed for many roles, among them her disquieting performance in Her, a movie about the relationship between a man and an AI chatbot.
When OpenAI boss Sam Altman contacted Johansson to ask to use her voice for his company's forthcoming real-life AI chatbot, you can well imagine why1 she said no.
Johansson, clearly livid, ultimately issued a public statement and a legal letter before the clone was removed.
"I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference," she said, … "In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity," Johansson said in a statement to NPR.
But Murati's audacious claim never to have heard the voice of the AI chatbot in her boss's favorite movie is key to understanding something else: they don't just think they're the smartest people in the world, they think that everyone else is stupid.
As a final fun thing today, check out how Google News's AI junk has hallucinated a factually incorrect headline that's the exact opposite of the truth here:
The original article contains 427 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I have 4o and it doesn't sound like her at all.
They disabled Sky's voice. Also, the full 4o voice model isn't public yet, just the text aspect of it.
I guess I have the standard Sky voice. But the voices online sound different to me. Voices is subjective.
Why downvote him? He made an observation and comments even explained why. I learned something, it added to the discussion.
That's the major issue here. Voices and sounds should never be copyrighted. It sets the wrong president.
Nearly 2 years ago we were considering moving to San Francisco and I began to search for jobs. I found one that I was well qualified for and took a deep look at, but backed out because it was full of all this bold-faced language about 40 hours on prem and how remote would never be permitted. The wording really seemed a bit shocking to me and I backed the heck away. It was OpenAI and they tried to fire Altman like a month later. I am so glad that I walked away from that, the whole thing is terrifying.
It sounds more like Rashida Jones.
lol ‘bitch, I don’t know who she is’ that is hilarious honestly if it wasn’t all going into such serious direction
One of her more recent and popular roles is Black Widow in the Marvel/Avengers movies. The one with red hair, dresses in an all black leather biker suit like an assassin, and acts as the sort of voice of reason to help keep the heroes grounded. (like being able to calm down the hulk when he's having one of his fits)
Another role was as the title character in Lucy. The movie where she was conned/forced to be a drug mule and inadvertently got dosed with what she was carrying. This sort of supercharged her mind to superhuman levels, and turned her into a perfect assassin to be able to seek revenge on everyone who did her wrong.
They’re not just deliberately using her voice; they’re deliberately lying about it and bragging about what really happened in public. They’ll pay some nuisance settlement that’s a small fraction of their profit.
That’s how they treat an a list actress. Imagine how they treat everyone else. You don’t get a settlement. You just get fucked.
No, you don’t understand, these guys are tech bros, they’re special, for reasons.
From the article:
And that sums up techbros in one sentence.
According to her statement, they were still trying to strike a deal with her within days of the release.
I can't imagine anything more shady than trying to strike a deal with someone for their likeness, all the while preparing to use it anyway and later denying it had anything to do with them
She is going to take them to the cleaners, and Altman and his circlejerk club will deserve every single cent of the damages they’re forced to pay. I genuinely hope she makes it an incredibly messy and eye wateringly expensive legal process for them. I’m not a ScarJo fanboy by any means, but fuck OpenAI for thinking they can get away with something so absurdly blatant and obviously unethical.
They "let the cat out of the bag" by referencing the movie "Her" if I understand correctly. Not really an admition of guilt like the article makes it seem.
They also clearly state on their website that they used an other voice actor. If you actually compare both voices, they aren't the same just similar. They probably went with someone that sounds like her on purpose specifically because of the movie but that's fine really.
This article is emotional and manipulative. I don't think scar jo deserves to own the whole spectrum her voice belongs to just because she voiced an AI in one movie. This is how you end up with corporations owning all voices like they tried with music.
I wouldn't ever want someone to be able to own a tone/sound of voice. I'm with you there.
But it kinda sounds like they're trying to straight-up imitate her. Like they want people to hear this ai and think it's voiced by johanssen herself.
I don't know if that's true, or if it even makes a difference legally, it's just the impression I'm getting.
I'm not knowledgeable about any of this; any correction is welcome, lol.
In Scarlett Johansson‘s statement, she says that OpenAI approached her to voice the Sky voice.
Whether or not OpenAI hired another actress that sounded very similar to her (hah.) and they are weirdly cagey about naming or they just ripped off the audio from her movies and are lying about hiring a voice actress, is not the extent of the issue.
People sounding alike just happens. But that we know they asked to use Johansson’s voice for this. After being rebuffed, they created Sky, which sounds a lot like Sam, and made several references to the Her movie. Sky is even presented with the same ‘personality’ as Sam. They aren’t just ripping off Scarlett Johansson’s voice acting, they’re ripping off the character as a whole, and trying to associate themselves with the movie. That’s shameful and rips off Spike Jonze as well as all the other creatives who created that movie.
And for what? Because tech bros didn’t get what they wanted, so they decided to try to rip off the characters anyway? Because Her is sort of a cultural touchstone, and their product is merely well-positioned, but GPT-4o will be in a crowded market space within 6 months?
It’s sort of pathetic - pretending to lean on the relevance of a movie because your product is destined to become irrelevant.
Also - highly ironic to me that Her is (somewhat) about how you can’t own something that doesn’t consent to be owned. And those dumb bitches went and ripped it off when they didn’t get consent. Well, now Sky’s gone to join Sam in some non-corporeal reality.
Sorry for the novel. I didn’t sleep well and I get weird when I’m sleep deprived.
No matter how similar the voice is to Scarlett Johansson's, it would still sound fundamentally different. But there are tricks that you can use to alter the pitch and range of a voice to make it sound more like a specific person and that's probably what they did.
There's also this part:
Which is still not an admission of guilt, but seems very shady at the very least, if it's actually what happened.
You don't need an admission of guilt to lose in court. The fact that they pursued her permission up until 2 days before the release, even after being assured the client did not wish for them to utilize her voice, is pretty damning.
What's the difference between this and an AI releasing a Taylor Swift album? Does Taylor Swift deserve to own a whole spectrum of voice?
Voice acting is still an art, and artists deserve to be paid for their contributions. If she has performed an awfully in Her, would they still want to mimic her voice? If Her hadn't been made, would they have come up with the voice and personality out of the blue?
No, because it's art, and AI is just an advanced copying machine. Open AI is just the newest attempt to leverage artists and workers from their group bargaining power. It's the scab of the future, but with more carbon emissions.
That‘s the type of cockiness you‘d expect from scoundrels who just committed the biggest heist in history and got away with it. I‘m not surprised in the slightest.
These are the same dudes who have LSD and mushroom parties with their female coworkers and then pressure them into sex.
Source? Sounds about right for techbro AI douches, curious though