152 replies
19h51m
Altman would have us believe it's all just an innocent misunderstanding but without actually saying so:
"We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson."
Is he trying to suggest the company did not try to make the voice sound like her without her permission?
The statement sounds like it's written by a lawyer to be technically true while implying something that is actually false.
These are weasel words.
He sounds sneaky, evasive and intentionally deceptive.
We should not give a sneaky, deceptive and manipulative person this much power over our future.
There are hundreds of people with similar voices. If any voice actor can pull the same accent than Ms. Johansson, it should be fair game, as long it was the original training material? Voices cannot be copyrighted or be exclusive, although I am sure Hollywood will try to copyright them in some point.
He kind of ruined that argument when he tweeted “Her” alongside the video. Pretty clearly drawing a line between the voice and Johansson’s portrayal in the movie.
Incredible, really. It would have been so easy to just… not do that.
That makes it weird, but it doesn't (itself) mean they literally used her voice. It just means they were inspired by the movie. It's not illegal to be weird.
Legally they don’t need to have literally used her voice to have broken the law, never mind violating many people’s basic sense of what’s right and wrong.
They don't? Because if it's true that they used a sound-alike voice actress for the actual model, I don't see how any reasonable complaint about that could stand. You can't ban people from voice-acting who have similar voices to other celebrities. There needs to be something more to it.
Actually, you probably can.[0]
[0] https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc
Edit: Added the context for the reply
Well that's... concerning? I'm not sure I disagree with the decision there but to apply it any more widely would be a problem.
It's such a huge problem that it's only brought up in the context of someone (probably) doing exactly what it's designed to prevent... By some miracle, this actually isn't used to outlaw satire or put Elvis impersonators out of work. It's used to prevent people from implying endorsement where none exists.
The something more is intent.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Perpetual benefit of the doubt given for every implication as though it’s happening in a vacuum is how humanity keeps putting megalomaniacs and sociopaths into positions of power and influence.
It’s really a shame.
If we're going to pillory Sam Altman, it's important to do it for the right reasons. That was not a good reason. I really should not need to defend this principle.
What reason do you suggest is more appropriate to “pillory Sam Altman”
Most of the other ones in this thread?
I think it’s less the voice and more about how they went about it. They were apparently in negotiations with her and they fell apart. Then they tried to resume negotiations with her two days before the new model launched.
If it was just an actor, it might be a case of inspiration gone awry. But this particular actor sued Disney in 2021 after making a lot of movies and a lot of money making movies for them.
Deliberately poking a fight with a litigation happy actor is weird. Most weird is really benign. But this is the kind of weird that forces out of court settlements. It’s reckless.
Edit - mistyped the date as 2001. Changed to 2021.
Oh, sure. There's plenty of other ways OpenAI have been boneheaded. I'm just saying the mere fact of referencing "Her" implies very little.
That's a fair statement if you take the "Her" post out-of-context and without the corroborating retort from ScarJo and his history. Which, of course, is not possible and also pretty boneheaded itself.
This isn't some college kid with an idea and too much passion.
The founding principle of Silicon Valley.
Let's take a parallel situation from around 20 years ago, and see how you feel about it. I'm going back that far as a reminder of what was long considered OK, before AI.
In the movie The Seed of Chucky, Britney Spears gets killed. You can watch the clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3kCg5o0cHA. It is very clearly Britney Spears.
Except Britney Spears was not hired for the role. They hired a Britney Spears impersonator for the scene. They did everything that they could to make it look like Britney, and think it was Britney. But it really wasn't.
Do you think that Britney should have sued the Chucky franchise for that? If so, should Elvis Presly's estate also sue all of the Elvis Presly impersonators out there? Where do you draw the line? And if not, where do you draw the line between what happened in Chucky, and what happened here?
I really don't see a line between now having someone who sounded like the actress, and then tweeting the name of one of her movies, and what happened 20 years ago with Chucky killing someone who looked like Britney, then showing a license plate saying "BRITNEY1", and THEN saying, "Whoops I did it again." (The title of her most famous song at the time.) If anything, the movie was more egregious.
I don't think this is an apples-to-apples comparison.
The movie producers didn't produce a simulation of Britney's voice and attempt to sell access to it.
However you feel about an probably-unapproved celebrity cameo in a movie, it's not the same thing as selling the ability to impersonate that celebrity's voice to anyone willing to pay, in perpetuity.
If you go to Vegas, you can go to a wedding officiated by someone who looks like, sounds like, and acts like Elvis Presly. This is available to anyone. You can get the same actor to do the same simulation for another purpose if you're willing to pay for it.
The biggest difference that I see is that technology has made the simulation cheaper and easier.
And these people are known as "Elvis Presley impersonators." They don't pretend to be some obscure person you've never heard of, for very obvious reasons.
The biggest difference here is obviously one of scale. I don't think ScarJo would be threatening to sue you, the individual, if you did a voice impression of her for a talent show or a friends wedding.
This kind of de minimis artistic use is what fair use was invented for, and god knows they licensed her likeness regardless.
Generally the "Right to Publicity" laws are clear about expiring at death. It's not like copyright.
There is a distinction between the image of a celebrity and their voice. The image of a celebrity is usually pretty cut and dried, it’s them, or obviously intended to be them. If the use of their image isn’t meant to be satirical, it’s problematic. The Crispin Glover/Back to the Future 2 case is a good example of non-satirical use that was problematic. Zemeckis used previous footage of Glover, plus used facial molds of Glover to craft prosthetics for another actor.
Voices…are usually not so distinctive. However, certain voices are very distinct—Tom Waits, Miley Cyrus, James Earl Jones, Matt Berry. Those voices are pretty distinctively those people and simulating their voices it would be obvious who you are simulating. Other celebrity voices are much more generic. Scarlett fits into this with a pretty generic female voice with a faint NY/NJ accent.
Open AI screwed up by taking a generic voice and making it specific to the celebrity by reference and by actually pursuing the actor for the use of their voice.
https://screenrant.com/seed-of-chucky-movie-promos-britney-s...
Given:
1. The plot of "Her" (guy falls in love with synthesized voice, played by Johansson)
2. Altman's affinity for the film (the article says he's called it his "favorite movie")
Reaching out to Johansson about cloning her voice, then doing so without permission feels like Altman is creeping on her.
The sooner this bubble pops, the better.
What bubble? This isn't crypto. Have you used these tools? They aren't going anywhere.
There could be a bubble in terms of stock valuation, but the tools are definitely going to stay.
This could be kinda like the dot com bubble -- the Internet went on to become BIG, but the companies just went bust... (and the ones that strive are probably not well known)
I finally caved and started using GPTs daily a couple of days ago.
I went to ask the Internet "best AI tools", and there's no clear consensus:
Various Redditors go on to suggest "here's 100 you might like to try".
So there's clearly a bubble, thousands of startups all trying for similar things.
I am personally looking forward to try Wolfram GPT:
https://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-plugin-chatgpt/
I understand there's way too much out there, but I think there is at least some clarity about the landscape at present.
ChatGPT is currently king of the mountain. That could change, but right now that's how it is.
Google's Gemini and Facebook's Llama 3 are clearly in a tier below. The 100s of tools you are seeing are various mixed and matched technologies that also belong in this tier.
Claude (massive context) and Mistral/Mixtral (decent with no censoring/guard rails) are interesting for special cases. And if you're determined and want to put in the effort, you can experiment or self-host and perhaps come up with some capabilities that do something special that suits a use case or something you want to optimize for (although not everyone has time for that).
So I wouldn't say it's just all this one big swirl of confusion and therefore a bubble and due to come crashing down. There's wheat, there's chaff, there's rhyme and reason.
This is completely false. Claude Opus is significantly better than GPT 4.
These models have been heavily censored, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Community efforts like Dolphin to fine-tune Mixtral have some success, but no, Karen is definitely still hard at work in France, ensuring that Mistral AI's models don't offend anyone's precious fee-fees.
It's an exuberance bubble. Every tech company on earth is racing to "do something with AI" because all of their competitors are trying to "do something with AI" and they don't want to be left out of the excitement. The excitement and exuberance will inevitably cool, and then a new thing will emerge and they'll all race to "do something with that new thing."
Why? The grandparent is not saying it's coincidence. Why is it not okay to hire someone who has a voice similar to celebrity X who you intentionally want to immitate? I mean if you don't actually mislead people to believe that your immitation is actually X - which would be obviously problematic?
He strongly implied that it wasn’t an imitation.
We are talking about miohtama's argument, not Sam Altman.
I don't believe Sam Altman, but I am interested in the general “is it legal/ethical to immitate something uncopyrightable” argument.
Altman tweeted the name of a film Johansson stared in in association with this launch.
Alright then, the solution is simple. All he has to do is name the actress that OpenAI -did- hire for the voice work, right? That would put any doubt to rest.
Had the film Her used someone else as the AI voice that sounded like Johansson would there be complaints about the film using a voice that sounded like Johansson? Does it matter if producers try to hire her first? Because only Johansson has that voice? Johansson does not visually show up the film Her and if not for the film credits could the voice in that film be used to use identity her from hundreds millions of other possible women? ( I had no idea who did the voice acting and would never had known if not for this news.) Now if the owners of the film Her were to request OpenAI licence a character from their film (like licencing say C3P0 character from Disney) maybe there would be a case but an actor claiming they own a natural human "voice" I think is a stretch when there are thousands of people with similar voices. And she is visually never in the film that made that AI voice famous so it could be anyone in that film with a similar voice.
I don't know about complaints but Ms. Johansson might be able to win a civil suit in that hypothetical situation. It would depend on the facts of the particular case, particularly any evidence that the defendants acted in bad faith. I think a lot of technologists don't understand how burden of proof works in civil trials, or that there is no presumption of "innocence".
Civil trails are based on a preponderance of evidence (aka 50%) burden of proof standard (vs beyond reasonable doubt standard in criminal trails).
I can see a civil judge or jury being given evidence showing very few listeners think the voices match in _blind voice tests_.
Here for example you can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice? And what does that tell you about likely court result for Johansson? And having reached this conclusion yourself would you now think the other actress Rashida Jones is entitled to compensation based on this similarly test? Because there are no other women with similar voices?
Her was a movie with an AI assistant who talked like a normal human rather than an intentionally clunky "bleep blorp" dialect that lots of other movies go with. They even make fun of this in the movie when he asks her to read an email using a classic voice prompt, and she responds pretending to be a classic AI assistant.
The new voice2voice from OpenAI allows for a conversational dialect, most prominently demonstrated in pop culture by the movie Her. Sam's tweet makes perfect sense in that context.
Sky's voice has been the default voice in voice2voice for almost a year now, and no one has made a connection to the Her voice until it started acting more conversational. It seems pretty obvious that OpenAI was looking for a more conversational assistant, likely inspired by the movie Her, and it would have been cool if the actress had helped make that happen, but she didn't, and here we are.
Also Juniper has always been the superior voice model. I just now realized that one of my custom GPTs kept having this annoying bug where the voice kept switching from Juniper to Sky, and that seems to be resolved now that Sky got removed.
No.[1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_r...
He knew there would be blowback, he just didn’t care. Look at how many people are talking about it.
This is one of those “accuse a diver of being a paedophile” moments. Who knew Sam is a creep with a Scarlet Johansson obsession cooking up a voice model just like her on compute daddy Satya paid for (but books as revenue, 2000 dotcom style).
More likely he was drawing a line between the fictional AI assistant, and their real, actualised assistant.
I imagine he feels invincible at this point and gets off on displaying power.
He said/X-ed the quiet part loud.
In back to the future II, Crispin Glover didn’t sign up to be George McFly so they used facial prosthetics and impersonation to continue the George McFly character.
He sued Universal, and reportedly settled for $760,000.
Example article on the topic - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bac...
While not defending OpenAI or Altman, the caveat here is that this was a voice actor using their natural voice, not an actor impersonating scarlett johansson.
Setting a precedent that if your natural voice sounds similar to a more famous actor precludes you from work would be a terrible precedent to set.
Yes, but literally no one anywhere is suggesting that the voice actress used would be banned from work because of any similarity between her voice and Johansson's; that’s an irrelevant strawman.
Some people are arguing that there is considerable reason to believe that the totality of the circumstances of OpenAI’s particular use of her voice would make OpenAI liable under existing right of personality precedent, which, again, does not create liability for mere similarity of voice.
It's not. The original comment in this chain was drawing parallel to a lawsuit in which someone intentionally took steps to impersonate an actor.
This situation is a voice actor using their "natural voice" as a source of work.
If a lawsuit barring OpenAI from using this voice actor is successful, due to similarities to a more famous actor, that puts this voice actor's future potential at risk for companies actively wanting to avoid potential for litigation.
Suggesting a calming female persona as a real time always present life assistant draws parallel to a movie about a calming female persona that is a real time always present life assistant is not a smoking gun of impropriety.
Pursuing a more famous name to attach to marketing is certainly worth paying a premium over a lesser known voice actor and again is not a smoking gun.
Sky voice has been around for a very long time in the OpenAI app dating back to early 2023. No one was drawing similarities or crying foul and decrying how it "sounds just like Scarlett" ..
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435388
No.[1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/177v8wz/i_have_a_r...
While you're right I should have chosen my words more carefully, a random reddit post with 68 upvotes doesn't really dispute the substance of my comment.
OpenAI has been plastered across the news cycles for the last year, most of that time with Sky as the default voice. There was no discernable upheaval or ire in the public space suggesting the similarities of the voice in any meaningful public manner until this complaint was made.
The Reddit post had a link to a Washington Post article. And what you think the substance of your comment was is unclear.
Most people don't use ChatGPT. Many people who use ChatGPT don't use voice generation. OpenAI's September update didn't have a demo watched by millions unless I missed something. Altman hyped the May update with references to Her. Some people thought the recent voice generation changes made the Sky voice sound more like Johansson. Some people gave OpenAI the benefit of the doubt before Johansson revealed they asked her twice. And what do you believe it would prove otherwise?
You mean this?
"Each of the personas has a different tone and accent. “Sky” sounds somewhat similar to Scarlett Johansson, the actor who voiced the AI that Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with in the movie “Her.” Deng, the OpenAI executive, said the voice personas were not meant to sound like any specific person."
As I stated prior, and thank you for making my point, despite being publicly available for near a year, there was minor mention of similarities with no general public sentiment.
If by "hype" you mean throwaway comments on social media that general population was unaware.
Drawing a parallel to a calming persona of an always on life assistant from pop culture in a few throwaway social media posts from personal accounts such as "Hope Everyone's Ready" isn't hyping it as Her any more than Anthropic is selling their offerings as a Star Trek communicator despite a few comments they've made on social media.
Ambiguous "some people" overstates any perceived concern and "most people don't use ChatGPT" understates how present they've been on the news.
Mobile app, which heavily emphasized voice and has "Sky" as it's default voice The ChatGPT mobile application had over 110+ million downloads across iOS and Android platforms before the May announcement.
In regards to the November announcement, yes, voice was very prominent in it with Sky as the default language. (https://youtu.be/pq34V_V5j18?si=66lEWxgteBbtKifl)
I think it would be more like "precludes you from work (arguably) deceptively impersonating the more famous actor."
Speaking with your natural voice is not impersonating.
You should tell that to OpenAI, who are the ones selling it as "her".
Drawing a parallel to a calming persona of an always on life assistant from pop culture in a few throwaway social media posts from personal accounts such as "Hope Everyone's Ready" isn't "selling it as Her" any more than Anthropic is selling their offerings as a Star Trek communicator despite a few comments they've made on social media.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435388
If we assume that Scarlett Johansson is telling the truth, why would they try to resume negotiations with her two days before they launched the model? If they found a good actor whose voice sounds like Scarlett Johansson, that’s a great argument. But if they found a good actor whose voice sounds like Scarlett Johansson because the real Scarlett Johansson said no, that gets more questionable.
When they did all that and still promoted the launch by directly referring to a Scarlett Johansson role, it got even more questionable.
I’m not pulling out my pitchforks but this is reckless.
Could they be trying to avert possible negative public perception even if they believe all they did was 100% legal? If you have ample funds and are willing to pay someone to make X easier for you does your offer to pay them imply that X is against the law? If your voice sounds like someone famous now you are prevented from getting any voice acting work? Because that famous person owns the rights to your voice? Tell me which law says this?
I don’t know why you’re asking me those last three questions. First, I’m not a lawyer. Second, I didn’t make any claims that could make those questions relevant.
Instead, I’ll repeat my earlier claim - this was reckless. If they were trying to avoid a strong negative perception, they failed. And they failed with an actor who sued Disney shortly after they paid her $20 million to make a movie.
You asked the good question about why they may have acted as they did and I attempted to answer it. In hindsight based on results it may look reckless but decisions need to be judged based on that is known at the time they are made and the public reaction was not a foregone outcome. The openAI sky voice has been available since last September why was there no outrage about it back then?
You can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice?
OpenAI did not fail. They suspended the sky voice and backed down not to further anger a segment of the public who views much of what OpenAI does in a negative light. Given the voice test above do you seriously think OpenAI would lose in court? Would that matter to the segment of population that is already outraged by AI? How are journalists and news companies affected by AI? How might their reporting be biased?
How do you know?
"Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice"
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/20/1252495087/openai-pulls-ai-vo...
Ahh, because Sam "Insufficiently Candid" Altman has never lied before?
There is precedent.
Frito Lay wanted to use a Tom Waits song for an ad.
Since Waits is violently opposed to the use of his music in ads he declined.
So they hired an impersinator for the soundtrack.
Waits sued Frito Lay for voice misappropriation and false endorsement and they had to cough up to the tune of 2.6 million for violating his rights.
This was upheld on appeal[0].
So, you absolutely have precedent and in my opinion it's galling that the tech bro'ship just doesn't give a shit about the rights of others.
[0]
I think the issue is intent. It's fine if two voices happen to be similar. But it becomes a problem if you're explicitly trying to mimic someone's likeness in a way that is not obviously fair use (eg parody). If they reached out to Johansson first and then explicitly attempted to mimic her despite her refusal, it might be a problem. If the other voice was chosen first, and had nothing to do with sounding the same as Johansson, they should be fine.
You don't need fair use for something that isn't copyrightable.
No, it is. Waits v. Frito Lay was a successful lawsuit where Tom Waits sued Frito Lay for using an impression of his voice in a radio commercial. https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc
See also Midler v. Ford Motor Co. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Correct me if I'm wrong that had nothing to do with copyright and fair use is moot
In California, personality rights have the same protections. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Celebrities_Rights_...
Isn't there also something about an actor's voice versus an actor's performance?
Eg, James Earl Jones performing Darth Vader vs Mufasa vs Terence Mann are three different things.
With generative AI training may not be needed, it can be part of prompt: imitate voice like in this file: her.mp3.
that's..... that's training.
It's only training if it remembers it after the conversation is over.
Absolutely false.
It's, not though.
I believe professional singer's voices will be copyrighted in future if not getting already.
Trademarked more likely.
Try to sing or play a cover just like original of a song - yt will take it down in no time.
the same with white noise videos, they strike copyright infringement easy or at least they were. Did not check but I assume so it still is the case.
they have been since 1988. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Voice *actors* act. It is in the name. The voice they perform in is not their usual voice. A good voice actor can do dozens of different characters. If you hire a voice actor to impersonate someone else's voice, that is infringement. Bette Midler vs Ford, Tom Waits vs Frito Lay are the two big examples of court cases where a company hired voice actors to impersonate a celebrity for an ad, and lost big in court.
So when a cartoon show hires a sound alike replacement voice actor so that the switch is hard to tell the former actor has a case against the show? Perhaps instead the show has a case against the former voice actor using that same character voice elsewhere such as in radio advertising to impersonate cartoon characters that are not licenced?
Theoretically yes. Which is why they disclaim that right in their work contract for a voice acting gig.
Believe it or not, these issues have been around for decades, and have been well settled for nearly as long.
So the voice of the AI in the film "Her" who do you think has more rights to it being reused elsewhere in association with AI? The voice actor? The film owners? Why then the current news?
Here’s a side by side. I’m not hearing the similarity that everyone else is: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cx9t8b/vocal_comp...
Oops, that sounds like a match with Rashida Jones. Here’s one one of Scarlett J.:
https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_...
I have a suspicion that most people with strong opinions on this haven’t actually compared Sky and Scarlett Johansson directly.
^^^this
Rashida Jones is indeed a closer match, and might well be the person they went to once Scarlett declined and showed no interest.
Looking like a celebrity is obviously not an issue. A lookalike being passed off as a celebrity is an issue.
Was OpenAI was passing off their AI model as Johansson? Obviously not.
If anything OpenAI tried to mimic the AI from the film Her and owners of that film may try to seek compensation. I hope that fails but they can try.
The whole "Her" thing, and the fact that even Johansson's family and friends couldn't tell it apart are somewhat telling.
Or Altman could reveal the identity of the voice actress OpenAI did use. I'm sure that will happen, and remove all doubt...
You can listen to the voices side by side:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cwy6wz/comment/l4...
And here is voice of another actress ( Rashida Jones ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=385414AVZcA
This test is not blind but YOU tell me which you think is similar to the openAI sky voice? And what does that tell you about likely court result for Johansson? And having reached this conclusion yourself would you now think the other actress Rashida Jones is entitled to compensation based on this similarly test? Because there are no other women with similar voices? What might support from friends and family of Rashida Jones be an indication of?
No, voices can be exclusive. One good example is Bette Midler, who sued Ford in tort for misappropriation of voice and won on appeal to CA9. 849 F.2d 460.
This is not the case. “ A voice, or other distinctive uncopyrightable features, is deemed as part of someone's identity who is famous for that feature and is thus controllable against unauthorized use. Impersonation of a voice, or similarly distinctive feature, must be granted permission by the original artist for a public impersonation, even for copyrighted materials.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
So you really buy this bluff about using another similar sounding voice actor?
I think the law doesn't allow impersonation.
It's not that simple. Actors have a right to protect the use of their likeness in commercial projects like ads, and using a "soundalike" is not sufficient to say that isn't what you were trying to do. The relevant case law is Waits vs. Frito Lay. The fact that OpenAI approached her about using her voice twice and that Sam Altman tweeted about a movie she starred in makes her case much stronger than if they had just used a similar voice actor.
If the voice actor was cast... why bother reaching out to ScarJo?
Like, do you want to pay her fee, Sam? Because the general idea is to not pay the fee. Which is why you probably cast the voice actor before reaching out to Johansson.
A potential answer to that is liability protection even when you feel like you are legally in the clear. It is still worth paying a sum to avoid a lawsuit you think you will win.
An example of this is Weird Al pays for the rights to things that are probably ok under fair use parody protection. Paying for the rights removes the possibily of a challenge.
Does Weird Al pay rights? I know he asks for permission to maintain his relationships with artists and to make sure he gets his share of songwriting credits (and the fees).
But does he pay for rights? I’ve never seen that before and I’d love to read more.
Actually, yes, he does.
https://www.weirdal.com/archives/faq/
That says he asks for permission. His new song would generate songwriter credits and they’re paid out totally differently from regular royalties. Is that what you mean by him paying for rights?
Rereading your comment, I see that my answer rather falls short of your question. I don't claim to know anything about Weird Al beyond what he wrote on that page.
Honestly pal, I really appreciate you trying! I’m one of very few people strange enough to care about the minutiae of this. I’m grateful that you jumped into my weird rabbit hole with me for awhile. It was kind of you to try to help me.
IANAL - but I think there is some sort of carve-out for parody? @sama and OpenAI are clearly not parodying "Her" - especially with that paper trail.
This is a great question and I hope someone here with requisite knowledge can help.
My understanding is he doesn’t have to ask permission but does for two purposes. It’s important to him to keep good relationships with artists, and he wants to make sure that he gets songwriting credits because those are paid differently (and are often more lucrative) than royalties from recordings.
I’d love to find out if he directly pays artists for rights. That would be really interesting and would add a whole dimension to his problems with Prince.
Now you've got me doubting myself. It was covered in a Tom Scott video. I'll have a look for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU&t=485s
Because it’s still great marketing to have Scarjo on board? That immediately returns positive ROI on the cost to hire her.
Which is also why it’s unethical to use a voice clearly designed to be mistaken for her.
I agree that it’s a bit of a sketchy thing to do, and potentially even illegal based on similar case law, but the commenter I responded to created an entire fake sequence of events that seems incredibly unlikely, when there’s a far simpler explanation.
I mean, I guess? I don't know how many people base their choice in AI model or application on the voice, but maybe I'm just not privy to that.
Is there any way to confirm that they actually did hire a voice actor prior to reaching out to ScarJo?
ScarJo claims they reached out to her just 2 days prior to demoing the voice that sounded like her, and (I believe) OpenAI outright claimed that they hired a different voice actor, though they didn't admit that they instructed her to try to sound like Scarlett's character in Her, which could make or break Scarlett's case.
How can we tell if the model was trained exclusively on data from the voice actor and not ScarJo.
The hiring of the voice actor could be complete misdirection for all we know.
They claimed they hired someone and they can't tell you who it is but pretty please trust them that they hired someone.
Jim Carrey made his career by impersonating celebrity voices. So did Rich Little.
Parody is covered under fair use.
As pointed out upthread, fair use is an exemption for copyright. You don’t need fair use for something that isn’t copyrighted (and, indeed, isn’t even copyrightable).
The voice and expression is copyrightable, that's just how audio books are under copyright protection.
Did Jim Carrey provide a service for anyone to impersonate a voice?
Sure. How do you think he made money at it?
Are you referring to doing impressions where the act lasts for a few minutes, or are you saying that Jim Carrey actually impersonated other celebrity voice for like a whole movie or interview? There is a difference, I think. One feels like “fair use” while the other would seem more like “plagiarism”.
"I think it's fine for a profit-driven corporation to impersonate people on a large scale without their permission. Jim Carrey did it..."
When Jim Carrey is impersonating, it's clear that it's Jim Carrey impersonating someone for comedy-sake, not providing a service in lieu of someone else. In other words, Jim Carrey isn't getting paid to stand in for Jack Nicholson for example. Otherwise, it looks more like the Midler vs Ford Motor Co. case[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Pop goes the weasel.
We should not give anybody this much power over our future.
This is why open source must win. I mean, it won't, but it's the only path to avoiding a silicon aristocracy.
The code for these systems is around 1000 lines. It just takes $100,000,000 in electricity costs to execute the program. Open source might not matter.
I guess what we really need is super cheap fusion power or something? Or perhaps a way to easily share the cost by spreading the training load and electricity bill across millions of home computers?
It's not literally the electricity that's the problem. It's also the billions in GPUs, and the teams of people fine tuning with reinforcement learning.
Unlike most software projects that came before, Big AI Projects require a level of funding and coordination that can't be overcome with "more volunteers". It requires coordination and deep pockets - not for writing the code but for training it.
You are 2.5 years and $375m behind Sam :)
Nuclear fusion start-up Helion scores $375 million investment from Open AI CEO Sam Altman
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/sam-altman-puts-375-million-...
Once again, marx and the mean of production strike
Yes, an Open AI
Just to state the obvious, "we" are not doing anything here. "We," as in "the general public 'we'" don't have much of a choice when someone has lots of money and lawyers and wants to use those resources to sneakily and deceptively make more money. Unless "we" elect better representatives who are willing to write and enforce laws governing the wealthy's ability to effectively do whatever they want, then "we" don't have much of a say.
It doesn't matter because Sky's voice is materially and objectively different from ScarJo's.
Anyone who heard them both side by side would immediately realize this.
Comparison: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695
lol
The clips that I have seen sound very similar to Scarlett Johansson to me, to the point that I thought it was her likeness on purpose. Is this Sky? https://www.tiktok.com/@kylephilippi/video/73185169285097751...
It doesn’t sound like her
I listened to a comedy podcast early last week that was using Chatgpt4 with this voice to make some funny bits/jokes.
Without having any context about who the voice was, or the "Drama" between OpenAI and actress in question, or even really being aware of Scarlett Johansson's body of work, I immediately went "Oh that's Scarlett Johansson or whatever, cool"
To read all of this after the fact is almost comical. It's as if the powers that be realized the issues with the "one-man-in-charge-of-ai" platform and created this almost unbelievable story to decredit him.
It's not a vague suggestion - in the full statement that's been reported elsewhere, he explicitly says it.
I'm skeptical whether this is true, but it's a pretty unambiguous and non-sneaky denial.
scenario
-the creator of a new widget takes tha widget to another widget manufacturer and says "Would you like to put your stamp on this? It's similar to yours, yet derivative enough and we would both benefit."
- other widget manufacturer says "no"
-Creator of widget then puts the badge on the widget anyway, gets called out/faces legal action
-Creator of widget says "Well, we planned to put the badge on there anyway before even considering the other widget manufacturer. It's just coincidence.
This shouldn't even go to court. Laughable that the face of modern tech is cheesing this much.
Non-sequitur statements like this drive me nuts. Somehow, politicians and executive types learn how to use just enough of them to make the audience forget what they're not saying.
It's quite funny (not sure if ironic) in the context of OpenAI, ChatGPT can do exactly the same thing: generate a string of sentences that from cursory skimming might sound about right but when reading with attention you find all the cracks and incongruences in the generated text.
sneaky, deceptive, and manipulative is a tag line for many billionaires. you don't get that rich without stepping on many people.
Recall the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It certainly changes your perspective.
I think this should be applied to our government. In my opinion, it is a failing in the structure of our government that those running the country control the police and appear to rarely be investigated unless by the request of a political opponent. They are seemingly outside of the law. It would be better if they were under perpetual investigation; forever kept in check. We should have assurance that those leading our country are not villainous traitors.
Well, here's Yishan Wong describing how Altman and the Reddit founders have conned Conde Nast: https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_bes... he answers at https://reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/whats_the_bes...
Cool story bro.
Except I could never have predicted the part where you resigned on the spot :)
Other than that, child's play for me.
Thanks for the help. I mean, thanks for your service as CEO.
I'm surprised no one's pointing out the similarity between initial consonants in Sky and Scarlett. It seems deliberate.
I agree that he should have been honest, but from the opposite perspective.
Altman should have said, "Yes, we made the voice similar to this washed-up actress, but her voice is not much different from anyone else with similar regional upbringing, year of birth, habits, and ethnic background, so we invite anyone else born in the mid-eighties, raised in Greenwich, and with Danish heritage, to sue us too. We'll see how well you do in court. Otherwise, get fucked."
This whole thing with anybody giving a shit about your voice, which isn't even yours, as it's a product of your environment and genes, and will be strikingly similar to anyone with similarities thereof, is insane.
Altman shouldn't have used weasel words, I agree. He should have owned it, because it's a total non-issue, and the people upset about it need to be shamed as the Luddite assholes that they are.
That describes nearly every statement to ever come out of a CEO's mouth. (Or anyone else who's primary job is marketing)