If it goes to court, it will be an interesting case and may have big ramifications.
I believe the person used was selected because she sounded like Scarlett. If guilty, will it be illegal for people sounding like famous people get voice work ?
I have heard ads with people sounding like various US Presidents over the years, could doing that be illegal ?
> If guilty, will it be illegal for people sounding like famous people get voice work ?
It continues to baffle me that people formulate this issue as it just being about the similar voices as opposed to OpenAI's efforts to capitalize on ScarJo's likeness by making explicit references to ScarJo and her work, in combination with using a similar voice.
Obviously, it is not against the law to have a similar voice as someone. Obviously, it is against the law to capitalize upon another person's likeness without their permission. I don't understand why people pretend it's hard to distinguish between the two categories, it's not.
Because it's not obvious and just using that word over and over again doesn't make it true.
Did OpenAI want to use a similar voice to Scarlett Johansson's specifically because it's her, and they want to capitalize off of her fame or her personhood specifically?
Or did OpenAI want to use a voice that sounds pleasant and appealing and as it so happens Scarlett Johansson has just such a voice and used such a voice in a famous movie about a talking AI?
In other words, if Scarlett Johansson had a different voice, perhaps even an unappealing one, would they still have used it because it's something particular about her fame and character they wanted to leverage, or did they use a similar sounding voice to hers because of the technical qualities of that voice that she happens to have and which has been demonstrated by her to be effective.
There are many other potential scenarios that one can argue are relevant to this case, and ultimately my point is that this case isn't obvious unless you come to it with an opinion already made up and have failed to appreciate the numerous points of view.
Right, but one can imagine a popular film about AI casting a voice actor not because the voice actor has an appealing or soothing voice, but because the actor is themselves very popular and will draw a large audience. Perhaps say Arnold Schwarzenegger is cast and OpenAI decides to create a voice very similar to the one Arnold uses in that movie because OpenAI wants to leverage the fame associated with that movie, that character, or Arnold himself. In that case the argument would be very strong that OpenAI is taking advantage of personality rights as opposed to mimicking a nice sounding voice that suits their product.
According to your argument, Scarlett Johansson was not cast in Her because something about her personhood would draw audiences to the movie, or something about her personality and character was being leveraged, but rather that her voice has some nice technical properties that made it a suitable choice for the movie.
In that case, the argument is less strong that OpenAI is infringing on Scarlett's personality rights, and more the case that they liked the properties and qualities that her voice has, and when she specifically turned down the offer to lend her voice to OpenAI, OpenAI found someone else who had similar properties and qualities as a replacement.
I didn't say her case was obvious. I said there are obviously two categories of types of conduct, one falling into a legal category and one falling into an illegal category. My observation is that much of the discussion here seems to not even acknowledge the reality that Right of Publicity laws exist and what they entail. That really has nothing to do with whether or not her case is good. Your response here seems to further my point, in that you completely run past that and instead debate the specifics (which we don't all know and aren't all privy to, and would be the disputed facts in any potential litigation).
> Obviously, it is against the law to capitalize upon another person's likeness without their permission.
This seems similar to MikeRoweSoft.com[1] which was ultimately settled instead of being tested in court.
Maybe closer, does this line of thinking mean that the twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson[2] couldn't have distinct professional acting careers without one another's explicit permission because of their similarity (capitalized on for Full House) as one would necessarily infringe on the likeness of the other? That seems like a bridge too far.
>Maybe closer, does this line of thinking mean that the twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson[2] couldn't have distinct professional acting careers without one another's explicit permission because of their similarity (capitalized on for Full House) as one would necessarily infringe on the likeness of the other? That seems like a bridge too far.
What line of thinking? Right of publicity laws are not new. If one of the twins purported to be the other, yes, why wouldn't the other twin have a claim? What is controversial about that?
> If one of the twins purported to be the other, yes, why wouldn't the other twin have a claim?
I agree that attribution is key.
Since identical twins are often confused, the issue resolves itself with credit. But absent some attribution or credit, it seems like there would be a similar problem in the case of twins. This seems like why credits in works of entertainment are particularly important.
I'm just left wondering if OpenAI discloses who provided the voice and that person isn't prohibited from entering the marketplace of "voice work" (which would seem unfair?) then it seems like this would fizzle out?
IMO it has no bearing who did the voice, the issue is if OpenAI intended to confuse people by associating the similar voice with ScarJo through their marketing. The issue isn't the voice confusion on its own, it's that OpenAI is inducing it by bringing up ScarJo and her work in their marketing of the voice product.
ScarJo obviously doesn't care about the individual voice actress, the voice actress would not have sufficient money to cover any damages ScarJo would allege, especially in comparison to a well-capitalized company like OpenAI. Let's use our heads for a second.
I'm not making a legal argument, I'm discussing the absolutely awful intuitions constantly being put forth in the discussion of this potential case on HN.
Because women's objections are ignored and women are expected to provide more proof than men. Scarlett Johansson is the third woman so far who made it clear that she is not happy with Altman's/OpenAI's conduct, but they all are being asked to provide more proof of harm done. In case you missed it--his sister made serious allegations and was ignored; then a female board member went public with her reasons for resigning and people say its sour grapes; and now Scarlett Johansson is objecting to Altman suggesting that it was her voice even after he was told that she is not interested in working with OpenAI.
His mentally ill sister that the entire family says is lying, about something that allegedly happened when he was a small pre-pubescent child himself. And plenty of people are not attacking either the board member or Scarlett Johansson. Public opinion is at least definitely with SJ.
This really has nothing to do with how women are treated.
Looks like the appellate court came to the same conclusion though, a famous person's voice is distinctive to their identity and intentionally imitating it is a type of false association claim.
I think it might go the Google vs Oracle way. The courts might do the right and ethical thing (Google wins) but the basis will be a specific workaround (fair use of APIs) instead of something beneficial for society as a whole (APIs can't be copyrighted).
If you impersonate another actor for profit claiming to be him/her you may be facing legal action. There is a difference in selling yourself as "Scarlett Johansson" vs. "A Scarlett Johansson impersonator" vs. your own name/stage name. If it's covert and deceiving, you are in trouble, if it is overt, you are fine and that's why they world has so many Elvis impersonators. Although I see a new market opening for Kate Moss impersonators https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40498668
When it comes to works of art, if you tell the buyers/viewers it's yours you are fine, but if you paint a copy of a famous painting and claim it to be the original one, you are a criminal.
I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if this is relevant or not, but it's not really Scarlett Johansson's voice we're talking about, it's "the character in Her that Scarlett Johansson voiced". I'd be surprised if Scarlett's natural voice matches the one in Her - I assume she would have changed her pitch and/or cadence for the movie to match the director's requirements. Samantha's voice in Her has a subtle, 'not-quite-natural' sound to it, which would make sense for a computer-generated voice.
Can the movie studio that produced Her claim copyright over Samantha's voice? If they release "Her 2" without Scarlett Johansson, could the movie studio hire someone who sounds like Scarlett to play Samantha's character?
I don't think this case is as simple as people make it out to be. Even Sam Altman's tweet: "Her", seems to confirm they took inspiration from the movie Her, so is it wrong to hire a voice actor that sounds like the character in the movie? If Sam had tweeted, "Scarlett", then it would be very different.
You were asking about a hypothetical situation in which you may find yourself. That's what I addressed in my reply. The person whose voice was used does not pretend to be SJ afaik. It's the communications between OpenAI and SJ and Altman's tweets that created an ambiguous situation similar to someone trying to ask an attractive person out, being told it's not going to happen, but publicly winking and suggesting that there is something going on. It backfired. OpenAI and Altman are trying to get out of it, but their time of being the darlings of the media is over. There will be more scrutiny of their actions.
Actors use stage names all the time because the actors union doesn't allow duplicate names. Emma Stone's birthname for example is Emily Stone, who is another actor. Actors and musicians are also known to seek as much uniqueness as possible to be able to trade on that uniqueness. If you were a talented singer or painter you'd have trained early on to develop your own distinct voice or style, it's how the music and art schools work.
Fairly sure I understand the public details about this situation. We have at least one newspaper that has reviewed recordings or footage from the voice actor and confirmed that the OpenAI voice is a direct match for her actual regular speaking voice. We also have records illustrating that the CEO had no direct involvement in the hiring of the voice talent, and that there was no direction given for her to "sound like 'Her'".
Without any evidence that OpenAI set out to intentionally find someone who sounded like a fictional character, why should this individual be prevented from seeking work as a voice actor in any capacity?
They wanted Scarlett Johansson specifically, couldn't get her and then hired someone
They hired the Sky voice actress well before contacting SJ.
with the intent to convince the public it was her.
The only evidence for this is Sam's "her" tweet, which can easily be referring to the concept of a realistically-voiced AI assistant rather than SJ in particular.
> They hired the Sky voice actress well before contacting SJ.
Then why would they need to contact SJ 2 days before the release? If they already had the Sky voice complete? If there wouldn't be enough time to have SJ record everything for the voice?
To me, it doesn't pass the sniff test. Either their talent department is just really bad at planning and had no clue it was releasing just two days later (unlikely), or they were trying to get an agreement signed with her before the release, anticipating that this would happen (likely).
Then why would they need to contact SJ 2 days before the release?
According to OpenAI, they wanted SJ for a separate voice (https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho...), possibly as a "one more thing" conclusion to the demo. You can say that they're lying, and certainly OpenAI doesn't have the highest credibility at the moment, but it's at least plausible.
or they were trying to get an agreement signed with her before the release, anticipating that this would happen (likely)
If they anticipated this would happen, why wouldn't they just ditch the Sky voice altogether?
> If they anticipated this would happen, why wouldn't they just ditch the Sky voice altogether?
This is my opinion so it's not factual. They already don't have any qualms making billions of dollars operating with a maybe-illegal-but-definitely-not-cool business model that hoovers up copyrighted content without compensated authors to use their works to train models to reproduce similar works, again without compensating any copyright owners. Why would they act different when it's one celebrity? Sugar Daddy Microsoft has enough money and lawyers to throw at SJ to keep her busy until she either croaks or goes broke.
Also, why would MS or OpenAI lose out on a billion dollars in stock growth with the release of ChatGPT4.o when, for a few million dollars, you can do whatever you want.
I will assume that imitating Reagan to sell X products (that are not insulting the to the memory of Reagan) would be "ok". But Reagan is dead, and I don't feel that using a voice similar to his (or Clinton's who's still alive) removes bread from their table.
If everyone deliberately starts using a voice 'like' Johansson's, or the image 'like' Johansson's, that would steal the bread from her table.
I don't know if there are laws/cases covering 'lookalikes' but it's kinda like that.
No. Contrary to layperson belief, there is little new in deepfakes. People have been faking the image of celebs for many years decades (SNL) and faking their personality even further (Hustler v Falwell, Lohan v GTA). The porn industry has an entire genre dedicated to parodies of famous people and famous situations. And there are the professional celeb lookalikes. Every historical film involves someone trying to mimic a real person. Imagine if Winston Churchill's estate started going after every actor who has ever used "his" accent without permission. All of those are situations where the mimicry was done blatantly and openly. This is a case where the mimicry is contested at best. The only hope would be to somehow prove literal copying, her voice fed into that software.
And pity every other upcoming actor who looks/sounds vaguely similar to an existing famous person. Shall they be gagged, the very sound of their voice owned by someone else?
Is literal copying a necessary element for a right of publicity claim? I don't think so, but I don't litigate them. I would think that OpenAI's conduct in referencing ScarJo and her body of work in relation to the voice would allow for a reasonable inference that they intended the public to believe it was ScarJo's voice, and not that of a similarly sounding voice actor?
from the article:
"It doesn’t matter whether a person’s actual voice is used in an imitation or not, Rothman says, only whether that audio confuses listeners"
Do you have non-layman knowledge about these kinds of claims?
Fair use only applies to copyrighted material. A voice, a mode of speech, is not copyrightable. Step one in a copyright defense it to prove that no "taking" occurred, or that any involved material wasn't protected by copyright (Lohan v. GTA). Only then do you get to affirmative defenses such as fair use (Hustler). This case would not get that far, not absent evidence of literal copies of her recorded voice being played back by the software.
It's interesting to see Sam Altman on the record claiming this was a complete accident the same week that it came out that he got fired from OpenAI last year for having a pattern of handwaving "misunderstandings" when he got caught on the wrong side of the truth.
Nobody believes that you gave a feminine voice to an AI and nobody involved considered the similarities to the most famous feminine AI character, especially when you started out by trying to hire the same actress to do the voice.
This week might be the bit flip on his reputation. Starting to see defense comments getting downvoted, when earlier critical comments would get downvoted. Once you pass that 50% opinion it's pretty hard to reverse.
I’m mystified as to two things here: first that people feel this is ‘open and shut’ in Ms Johannsen’s favor, and second that this hasn’t been settled economically.
IF: OpenAI had advertised SJ as being a voice, had sold the plus subscription with that voice as a benefit, and had instructed talent scouting and internal editors to ‘copy her’ then this would be open and shut. We know for sure the first part did not happen: if there’s a case then discovery will tell us the second part.
If on the other hand they chose the voice for sky because they liked the actors natural voice, whether or not it was because they were reminded of SJ that is anything but open and shut- in fact it seems very difficult to me; a judge must determine that another actor cannot work at all, even if she makes no attempt to sound alike, sell as SJ, all through a platform that shows undeniable value regardless of voice. Guys, SJ is beautiful and likable. But this is a big ask of a credible federal judge.
As to money, I’m also mystified why they can’t ink a deal like: the largest single film voice acting payment is roughly $15mm. Let’s do a deal where we use your actual voice (which I would say is obviously different than sky) and rev share 50/50 with you on premium purchases, 50mm guaranteed year one.
It seems to me like this would open up the best possible world where people can have gpt4o talk with the voice of whatever actor that’s licensed, and these actors have a new distribution vehicle that’s valuable. Again SJ may not want to license for whatever reason she chooses, but I bet that OpenAI didn’t make a serious rev share offer, and I think they should.
For the first part, you're forgetting the "her" tweet, and the attempts of getting SJ to sell them her voice as recently as two days before they launched her sound-alike. And we know they thought it's a soundalike because they immediately changed it once the scandal started.
For the second part, you're assuming that they just didn't offer enough money. It's very likely instead that SJ didn't want to associate her brand with this business.
To add on to your comment, in the arts and creative space there are substantial levels of opposition to AI as it's perceived as a job killer and maybe at some level perverse or akin to an automated plagiarism system that steals their intellectual property (this is complicated and not my personal take, but I see where they're coming from).
It's quite likely that SJ would suffer from severe reputational damage from being the literal voice of AI.
I'm not forgetting "Her", and I think it's in-bounds to say a company is inspired by / referencing a film in PR -- I can list quite a few SV startups that directly tie their DNA to an inspiring book or film, and heretofore that's generally not considered objectionable. (For instance, Paypal / Cryptonomicon).
The sky voice has been part of the app since the launch, it was not newly launched for GPT4o.
You're missing a key step in your logic chain: That they pulled the voice when SJ made a public complaint does not imply that they thought it was a soundalike, or that they documented they were making a soundalike, or that a soundalike is wrong, or that they thought they were doing something wrong when they hired the Sky voice actor. It just means that they pulled the Sky voice on public request from SJ.
That, combined with SJ reports that she turned down a licensing deal, and WaPo reporting that the Sky voice actor sounds like the voice delivered in ChatGPT, are pretty much the only facts we have right now.
As to SJ brand decisions -- maybe. I would bet the offer was low / not discussed, instead of it being substantial. But, that is also speculation.
Why the fuck would one of the most famous people on the planet who is already phenomenally wealthy want to be the voice of a company that has already maligned her for an application that people are already demonstrating the use of to have sexually explicit conversations.
Anyone signing up to your revenue sharing scheme is going to be all over the internet saying the most vile things imaginable.
On the sound alike front it seems like attribution must resolve this since it can't possibly be reasonable to deny access to the marketplace of voice work because someone else that you sound like "got there first"?
commercial benefit for copyright is not limited to literally selling things but also covers ads and publicity.
the legal system may be asked to consider if a press release for a new model counts as advertising, and if implying a connection to Her was a significant part of said advertisement.
the fact that it does not cost money does not make it legal. PETA can't go around running its mouth saying "Beyonce supports PETA and banning pets" when she's said no such thing.
So, to be clear, I think you could launch a company that was like "It's 100% exactly as good as the movie Her. Seen the movie Her? This is like that AI. You can download it here", and not legally owe a penny. The concept of the AI in Her is not something that the makers of the film own, and companies are inspired by creative works of all sorts all the time when they make things. This is considered good in American business law.
Agreed that an endorsement, express or implied, is usually something the endorser has rights over.
So, in this case, from your perspective, you'd need to prove that people understood such an endorsement to have happened, and if you want damages, that it benefitted the company and/or harmed the endorser.
On these terms, the facts we know don't seem terrible for OpenAI - they negotiated in good faith for the endorsement, and when she went public / gave a final 'no' they pulled the voice, which apparently was not created by a copycat voice actor, but instead by another woman that SJ claims sounds identical to her. OpenAI has not summarily fallen over or gone bankrupt, in fact, the app that caused controversy hasn't launched yet.
Personality rights in California also cover the right to persona, as in a specific person acting as a specific character. You can sound like ScarJo to some extent, but ScarJo does own her performance of Her and anything like that. Daniel Craig is allowed to be James Bond, but Daniel Craig is not allowed to pretend to be Sean Connery playing James Bond.
And of course there can be impersonators, but there is a world of difference between hiring an impersonator for the express purpose of impersonating where everyone knows that is the case, vs. hiring an impersonator to imply commercial endorsement from the original person.
A commercial endorsement does not require that it be the sole form of endorsement or that it even be financially positive. Ford was running more than one ad campaign when Bette Midler sued and won, and Frito Lay was in a similar boat with Tom Waits.
Yes to all this. Where we are at right now is: guy with scottish accent is available in an app and his name is "Clay". Owner of app tweets how Bond was inspiring to him making the app.
If it can be shown in court that Sky is an impersonation and that SJ is ruled to have endorsed whether through tweets from Sam, or the Sky voice, and that she suffered some damage or that OpenAI benefited in some way before taking it down, then I think she would likely win some money in damages. Unless all those are true, it seems tough to get more than she already got -- a quick removal of the voice.
Few people mention the existing Sky voice actor (whose agent has held her name for safety concerns) is harmed here, quite substantially, by the idea that SJ could control her own performance. At any rate, my point at the top of all this is just that this is not 'open and shut' and I'm not even sure OpenAI has been more than 'aggressive' so far in its launch; we might found out they were, but I don't think the facts on the ground show more than that right now.
i think people don't mention the existing sky voice actor, because in these kind of cases it is never the actual impersonator getting sued or found liable. in fact, if there were something problematic here, it could be entirely possible that OpenAI kept the voice actress in the dark about the intent of the performance and they would still have a legal problem.
I'm aware of both of those -- this voice actor is not a "Johannsen sound-alike" actor. And she is not reciting lines from "Her". It's a significant difference, and there are real harms to any actor not already 'famous' implied by the sort of ruling people here think is obvious -- it's a big leap to say "The Federal Government will not allow you to work because you sound too much like X and so other person, signed, Judge Alsop."
I agree; one's voice should be protected, generally.
However, I do not agree that one should be able to stamp out use of any voice one person deems 'too similar' from plying that trade. This would be pretty surprising; it raises numerous questions of fair play, who decides, whether the courts wish to be in the position of making these determinations, and ultimately, I think the balance of equity is against making a broad decision like this, full stop. People have the right to work, and especially have the right to work in a fair environment where they are not unduly taking advantage of other's rights and trademarks.
Marilyn Monroe did not have rights to ban women from blonde curls, or beauty marks, Bettie Page did not have the ability to stop numerous lookalikes from selling pinup photos; this is the same situation.
It’s not just a matter of the voice being a 1:1 match with Johansenns’s or that it used it as an input to build the model. What is definitive is that Open AI intently based this on the film Her as per docs and tweets && they used her voice similarity after being declined more than once.
Is there any particular reason we need to speculate instead of simply letting the case happen and seeing what it looks like? This is basically fanfic masquerading as reporting? I assume the parties involved will not be forming their legal strategy by reading wired.
As far as I know, nobody has filed any cases in court, yet I see multiple articles and misstatements claiming otherwise which is odd.
This "case" was essentially resolved immediately and seemingly without major damage to either party. But people are absolutely chomping at the bit to have this be some kind of court-case, even if such a case would be long, expensive, and likely with two losers and zero winners.
If people want to discuss some hypothetical court-case go at it, but the chance of this actually going anywhere is low. I just feel like this is filling some "AI news" void.
Funny how the ownership class is so strongly against technology that makes their "ownership" of something as silly as a voice at risk of losing its return on investment they will go to battle over this. This shows weakness in human voice talent, just look at this massive liability using humans introduces. Sorry honey, just because you think s voice sounds like you doesn't give you the right to throw a fit. Seems like shes salty that she didn't take their offer because when they said honestly it's fine we can do it without you, she didn't believe them. Now when they have done just as high quality of a voice without her she cannot grasp the fact they just didn't need her at all and her only value is basically vendor lock in, which is now failing. The people fighting this think a genie can go back in a bottle or something, or that you can leverage being "important" to claim the technology is unfair. NYT, this random actress, nobody cares. This is at the level of a national security breakthrough in terms of significance, trying to insert yourself into the middle of it after the fact to get the piece of the pie you already rejected just looks bad. I imagine we see more and more of these cases falling apart soon, can I sue my boss for reading my github page and getting ideas from it? Can I sue my teacher for reading harry potter to me? Can I sue youtube for hosting videos of people doing impersonations of obama?
These systems learn. Learning is legal and protected. If we could sue the people who quote books they don't own, reference TV shows they don't have a current and valid license to stream, where do we draw the line? If I can sue a computer for learning from the world, or the teacher that gave it material, why can't I sue a church for teaching nonsense? Infact, why doesn't OpenAI just become a formal religion or something?
All of this is 1.) going nowhere 2.) pointless overall 3.) a waste of energy 4.) preventing scientific progress
Yeah, I don't get this at all. I don't have a donkey in this fight, but it seems to me that
1. They wanted to build the experience from the movie Her.
2. They wanted to use Johansson's voice because that would be a cool tie-in.
3. Johansson said no, so they went with somebody else.
4. End of story.
4. They did the childish move to let someone impersonate her
5. The lawyers told them two days before release that this is a bad idea and they should get Johansson's approval
6. They did not and did the other childish move to release it nevertheless
I believe the person used was selected because she sounded like Scarlett. If guilty, will it be illegal for people sounding like famous people get voice work ?
I have heard ads with people sounding like various US Presidents over the years, could doing that be illegal ?