Johansson’s statement, relayed to WIRED by her publicist, claims that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked her last September to provide ChatGPT’s new voice but that she declined. She describes being astounded to see the company demo a new voice for ChatGPT last week that sounded like her anyway.
“When I heard the release demo 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,” the statement reads. It notes that Altman appeared to encourage the world to connect the demo with Johansson’s performance by tweeting out “her,” in reference to the movie, on May 13.
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Says it all really and why some folks at OpenAI probably left because of the attitude of the current CEO to 'win' at any cost.
They're going for a style, just because SJ declined, should not mean they cannot pursue something similar. The fact they went to SJ in the first place means they had good intentions of getting a well founded voice.
Likely a voice professional can detect clear differences, as it's not convincing to be SJ from an outsider.
"My closest friends and news outlets" doesn't include family. Also, depending on how you ask, it's pretty easy to get any response. I wouldn't rely on that information.
"Sky" voice has been available since September though, OpenAI met with the "Sky" voice actress in June and July, months before contacting Scarlett Johansson.
> Johansson said that nine months ago Altman approached her proposing that she allow her voice to be licensed for the new ChatGPT voice assistant. He thought it would be "comforting to people" who are uneasy with AI technology.
> Just two days before the new ChatGPT was unveiled, Altman again reached out to Johansson's team, urging the actress to reconsider, she said.
I can't imagine they were asking repeatedly including just two days before the demo for funsies. Plus...
> OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has said the 2013 Spike Jonze film is his favorite movie, invited comparisons by posting the word "Her" on X after the company announced the new ChatGPT version.
What are you suggesting? That OpenAI chose the voice of "Sky" a year ago because she resembled Scarlett Johansson, and then decided to actually contact Scarlett Johansson?
I'm saying contacting the actress for permission and coyly tweeting "her" after referencing it as your favorite movie makes blanket denials a bit hard to swallow.
To me that voice never sounded like her. Even when I try to listen as if it is really her talking. The voice in the movie 'Her' was very distinct. Not this one though.
What about the voice of actress who actually did lend her voice for Sky? Can she claim that this is her voice?
The angle of why they would want to protect the voice actor's privacy? My guess is that their fear is people becoming attached to the voice in a sort of parasocial relationship, then seeking out the original voice actor to try and turn that parasocial relationship into something more.
If I were a voice actor, I wouldn't risk sharing my name because 95% of VAs and creators in general would hate me. It's like declaring "I'm using AI to enhance my art" on Twitter, but worse.
Did you read the part where they approached her to "license" the voice up until days before release? Plausible deniability would be a lot more believable if that wouldn't have been the case.
This is engagement farming, pure and simple, and has ensured that a very very broad audience is now aware that OpenAI has this kind of functionality.
Even if there ends up being some kind of monetary settlement ... I bet this works out as a net plus for OAI. Which is a bit sad that the market rewards dishonorable behavior.
A voice cannot be copyrighted. Altman was being courteous and professional by trying to sign a deal with her. But, he didn't have to and could have used a variation of her voice.
>The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson's, and it was never intended to resemble hers,” Altman told Forbes in a statement. “We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson.
>Days before OpenAI demonstrated its new, flirty voice assistant last week, the actress Scarlett Johansson said, Sam Altman, the company’s chief executive, called her agent and asked that she consider licensing her voice for a virtual assistant.
>It was his second request to the actress in the past year, Ms. Johansson said in a statement on Monday, adding that the reply both times was no.
80% of the analysis is solid. "OpenAI Violated Their Own Position" — this we know and can prove, I agree.
But then asking GPT-4 for probabilities (LLM said chance of coincidence is 10%), comparing to Midler v Ford ("direct parallel"), quoting opinions of random people etc. start and it falls apart.
I wouldn't be surprised if they found someone that sounded like her, their version of the story sounds on-brand for their specific variety of poor judgement.
This could have gone a lot differently if they didn't try to contact Johansson and didn't publicly mention the film, even if they intended it to sound very similar. Lots of hubris on their part. They set their own trap.
I bet OpenAI wanted spice up the demo by making it look like Her the movie and willing take the back lash later, using “we hired a similar voice actor as a slight reprieve”.
This is very familiar to early Napster/torrent era where it disrupted music distribution, now with voice and image likeliness. I think the industry will find a way to evolve for the better just like Music did
I don't actually see an ethical issue with this situation, unless the voice was specifically trained using clips of Scarlett Johansson's actual voice.
I should have some say over how my actual voice is used. If I am a public figure, ala Donald Trump, and there are a lot of people out there who do a great impression of me, those voices belong to the people actually creating them, not me.
If it turns out that there are people out there who either naturally sound like Scarlett Johansson, or who can alter their voice so that they sound like her, they should have the freedom to profit from their own talents (natural or otherwise).
If the resulting AI voice isn't actually claiming to be Johansson and isn't trained using her actual voice, I don't see anything wrong with it.
"
The appellate court ruled that the voice of someone famous as a singer is distinctive to their person and image and therefore, as a part of their identity, it is unlawful to imitate their voice without express consent and approval."
Thanks for sharing. I completely disagree with their rationale and decision but it’s good to know about the precedent here. I’d be completely on Ford’s side here too!
I would not be surprised to see that precedent overturned at some point because its outcome seems to deny individuals the right to profit from their own abilities, just because they happen to sound like a famous person.
In a novel case of voice theft, a Los Angeles federal court jury Tuesday awarded gravel-throated recording artist Tom Waits $2.475 million in damages from Frito-Lay Inc. and its advertising agency.
The U.S. District Court jury found that the corn chip giant unlawfully appropriated Waits’ distinctive voice, tarring his reputation by employing an impersonator to record a radio ad for a new brand of spicy Doritos corn chips.
The biggest problem is that they were making insinuations that it was intentionally similar to her role in the movie Her (and even contacted her directly to do it).
There are laws for unauthorized use of likeness that could possibly apply here.
I'm not familiar with the specific laws that are relevant here, but I have trouble buying the argument that this constitutes a "likeness" when Johansson was in no way involved in its creation, other than by providing inspiration.
So they asked her and she turned them down. But guess what, they can get a pretty good result without even involving her. It turns out that her "talent" for the voice from the movie Her is in fact not so unique and valuable because it can be reasonably well replicated by other people, so why shouldn't a company be able to choose an alternative like that? A person should not have an exclusive claim to the rights of all voices that sound remotely like theirs.
Celebrities have some right to publicity, so in this case she could argue that they were watering down the value of her as an actress by widely selling an unauthorized sound-alike.
The laws around this aren't strong (which is why her response pointed out the need for legislation), and as I mentioned OpenAI would have been in a much stronger position if they didn't directly reference the film publicly several times. One could argue that they were using the film and her role to promote their product.
ethics and legality are completely different things, this case isn't black and white at all.
if you're just talking ethically though, i still find it shady. it would be like asking Gaudi to design a new building, then when he says no, finding Bob who can replicate Gaudi's style really well. there, it's legal, and you could say it's ethically fine because Bob should have freedom to profit from his skill. But it feels gross
What if this was just regulatory capture of the licensed voice cloning industry in disguise?
Just deliberately make a point to regulators on how unlicensed AI voice cloners are cloning actors voices without their permission an scare Hollywood to introduce regulations to wipe out unlicensed voice cloners from the market.
I’m convinced that is what this looks like. What’s next is that OpenAI will settle and the rules will be defined for licensing cloned voices.
A market only for those who can afford the license costs: Big Tech, OpenAI and Eleven Labs.
In addition to being unaware of case law related to lookalikes/soundalikes (midler, waits), AI bros are showing themselves having ear deafness (like face blindness) claiming to hear no similarities to scarjo.
OpenAI could have had a neat and legitimate crossover promotion between Her and ChatGPT if Scarlett had played along. It doesn't cost her anything, and they likely could have produced the voice they wanted with some material from her, maybe 10 minutes of talking?
However, the lady doth protest too much.
Actors and big media companies are doing their damnedest to prevent any progress, because technology is encroaching on their craft. It seems that entirely AI generated media at Hollywood blockbuster levels of audiovisual quality are a matter of engineering at this point.
Let's not impede progress so that we can play a pretend game that we need humans to do work that AI or software can do at the same level of quality.
Actors like Scarlett shouldn't be able to license or protect their voices or appearance, regardless of how distinctive. Someone's doppleganger shouldn't be limited in their own rights based on what they decide with regards to appearance in media. Someone that looks like Scarlett Johansson shouldn't be able to decide for her that they don't want to appear in any video.
If Scarlett decides to get plastic surgery and radically alters her face or body, should she retain any rights over how she used to appear? What about twins separated at birth? Can I get plastic surgery to appear like 1980s Tom Cruise and start an acting career?
What if I want to copy Bradley Cooper's nose from Maestro, Scarlett's eyebrows from Asteroid City, and Legolas' ears from Lord of the Rings? Should I have to pay royalties for visual styles of individual components of a look? What about shades of hair - Demi Moore's hair is the same color as my own. Should she pay me royalties for copying "my" style?
This is absurdist territory, and the entitlement is raw and kind of disgusting. I can get on board with protecting someone's creative work, allowing copyright that ensures a clean protection of that individual's ability to profit from their own efforts. Recordings of music or performances, copies of scripts or writings, those things are clear work product.
Granting someone any rights or protections based on the sound of their voice, or the shape of their face, or the color of their skin, or any other integral feature, regardless of how engineered or refined it might be, is crazy. They didn't earn and don't own the features they were born with. Don't validate the entitled assumptions and crazy rent seeking schemes of Hollywood middlemen.
As long as OpenAI didn't claim any association with work product, they'd have been OK. By Tweeting "Her," Altman potentially infringed on work product by trying to use the movie to hype his own product. There might have been a fair use argument, if there was more nuance. Altman wanted to associate ChatGPT with Her, however, and didn't necessarily have the legal right to do that, especially in a commercial context. With it being free, however, maybe not profiting from the potential infringement will mean they get a slap on the wrist and a little embarrassed?
There are some deep and convoluted discussions ahead with regards to licensing and copyright issues. We should steer clear of granting individuals rights to things they did not earn and that may be shared with others - people shouldn't be granted extra rights because they're pretty and famous, nor should pretty and famous people be limited by the rights of some doppleganger.
If some Harrison Ford lookalike wants to license their appearance, then they should be perfectly free to do so as long as they don't infringe on any of the real Ford's work product. Same deal for voices or any other output by any individual where there's a reasonable possibility of mistaken identity. That probably means deepfake porn will end up being legal, so long as the underlying work product or identity isn't infringed on.
OpenAI should be free to use any voice they want. The ethical thing is definitely to approach the individuals with voices they want to emulate, but as long as they don't infringe on protected work product or claim association with the original voice, there shouldn't be any limitation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40421225