Yeah, but then again, I totally expected this opening the comment threads. Same happened with RMS debacle, same happened with similar events earlier, same happened on many a Musk stories. It seems that a neat narrative with clear person/object to hate, once established, is extremely resilient to facts that disprove it.
Right. Even if you think OpenAI isn’t a good place, this is an investigation by an established newspaper that refuted some of the more serious accusations (that OpenAI got a Johannson impersonator - they didn’t, that they modified the voice to sound like Johansson - evidence suggests this didn’t happen). When the reaction is “I don’t care that an investigation refuted some of the accusations”, it demonstrates someone isn’t openly approaching things in good faith.
Likewise, if someone’s attitude is - “OK, maybe there’s no paper trail, but I’m sure this is what the people were thinking”, then you’ve made an accusation that simply can’t be refuted, no matter how much evidence gets presented.
> refuted some of the more serious accusations (that OpenAI got a Johannson impersonator - they didn’t
A lot of the argument here comes down to whether the article does refute that. I don't believe it does.
What it refutes is the accusation that they hired someone who sounds like Johansson after she told them she would not do it herself. That was certainly a more damning accusation, but it's not an identical one.
But in my view, it requires a pretty absurd level of benefit of the doubt to think that they didn't set out to make a voice that sounds like the one from the movie.
Maybe good for them that they felt icky about it, and tried to get her for real instead, but she said no, and they didn't feel icky enough about it to change the plan.
Do you believe the article "refutes" that? Does it truly not strike you as a likely scenario, given what is known, both before and after this reporting?
> A lot of the argument here comes down to whether the article does refute that.
It clearly refutes the claims that they got a Johansson impersonator. The article says this is a voice actress, speaking in her normal voice, who wasn’t told to mimic Johansson at all. You can say that you personally think she was chosen because people thought she sounded similar to Johansson, even though there’s no evidence for that at this point. But the claim - which was made several times in discussions on here before - that she is a Johansson impersonator is factually incorrect.
> But in my view, it requires a pretty absurd level of benefit of the doubt to think that they didn't set out to make a voice that sounds like the one from the movie.
I tried it several times in the past and never once thought it sounded like Johansson. When this controversy came out I looked at videos of Her, because I thought Johansson could have been using a different voice in that movie, but no - the voice in her is immediately recognizable as Johannson’s. Some have said Sky’s was much closer to Rashida Jones, and I agree, though I don’t know how close.
I think this is quibbling over the definition of "impersonator"?
I think the most plausible thing that happened is that they thought "hey it would be so awesome to have an AI voice companion like the one in Her, and we can totally do that with these new models", and then auditioned and hired someone that sounded like that.
Does it not fit the definition of "impersonator", since they didn't explicitly tell the person the hired to impersonate the voice from the movie? Sure, fine, I guess I'll give it to you.
But it doesn't refute "they wanted to use a voice that sounded like the one in Her", and there are a number of indications the this was indeed the case.
> When the reaction is “I don’t care that an investigation refuted some of the accusations”, it demonstrates someone isn’t openly approaching things in good faith.
When the reaction is "it doesn't matter, it's still not ok to copy someone's voice and then market it as being that person's voice or related to that person's voice" and your reaction is to cast that as being something else, it demonstrates you are not openly approaching things in good faith.
Let's note that OpenAI didn't release the names of the voice talent since they said they wanted to protect their privacy...
So, how do you think the reporter managed to get not only the identity, but also the audition tape from "Sky"? Detective work?
An interesting twist here is that WashPo is owned by Bezos, who via Amazon are backing Anthropic. I wonder how pleased he is about this piece of "investigative reporting"?
OpenAI allowed the reporter to hear some snippets from the audition tape. Not exactly my idea of an "investigation".
There are multiple parts to the voice performance of ChatGPT - the voice (vocal traits including baseline pronunciation) plus the dynamic manipulation of synthesized intonation/prosody for emotion/etc, plus the flirty persona (outside of vocal performance) they gave the assistant.
The fact that the baseline speaking voice of the audition tape matches baseline of ChatGPT-4o only shows that the underlying voice was (at least in part, maybe in whole) from the actress. However, the legal case is that OpenAI deliberately tried to copy SJ's "her" performance, and given her own close friends noting the similarity, they seem to have succeeded, regardless of how much of that is due to having chosen a baseline sound-alike (or not!) voice actress.
Have you listened to both voices in the comparisons floating around? There is no way any of SJ's closest friends or family would be fooled if that voice called them up pretending to be SJ.
> What facts disprove OpenAI making a voice that sounds like SJ
The objective parts of this are disproved in several ways by the very article under which we're commenting. The subjective parts are... subjective, but arguably demonstrated as false in the very thread, through examples of SJ vs. Sky to listen side by side.
> such that the movie Her is referenced by Altman
You're creating a causal connection without a proof of one. We don't know why Altman referenced "Her", but I feel it's more likely because the product works in a way eerily similar to the movie's AI, not that because it sounds like it.
> and why is that actress upset?
Who knows? Celebrities sue individuals and companies all the time. Sometimes for a reason, sometimes to just generate drama (and capitalize on it).
> You're creating a causal connection without a proof of one. We don't know why Altman referenced "Her", but I feel it's more likely because the product works in a way eerily similar to the movie's AI, not that because it sounds like it.
There's no proof needed. A marketer doesn't market something for no reason.
We are all capable of interpreting his statement and forming an opinion about its intent. Indeed, the entire point of making any statement is for others to form an opinion about it. That doesn't make our opinion invalid - nor does the whining and backpedaling of the person who made the statement.
Your opinion may be different than others, but I doubt that would be the case if you were truly approaching this situation in an unbiased way.
You want to say that the dispute here is over ignoring objective facts, but it isn't. I haven't seen anybody here ignoring the facts laid out by this article.
The dispute is instead about statements just like your We don't know why Altman referenced "Her", which, on the one hand, you're right, the mind of another personally is technically unknowable, but on the other hand, no, that's total nonsense, we do indeed know exactly why he referenced the movie, because we're a social animal and we absolutely are frequently capable of reasoning out other people's motivations and intentions.
This is not a court of law, we don't have a responsibility to suspend disbelief unless and until we see a piece of paper that says "I did this thing for this reason", we are free to look at a pattern of behavior and draw obvious conclusions.
Indeed, if it were a court of law, that's still exactly what we'd be asked to do. Intent matters, and people usually don't spell it out in a memo, so people are asked to look at a pattern of behavior in context and use their judgement to determine what they think it demonstrates.
The objective parts don’t disprove that OpenAI set out to make an AI that sounded like Scarlett Johanson to use as a marketing ploy. In fact, I’d argue it’s more likely that’s exactly what the evidence suggests they did. But maybe a judge will get to rule on whose interpretation of the facts is correct.
I also see this dynamic on these same kinds of threads, but what I see is that one side is very sure that the facts disprove something, and the other side is very sure they don't. I've been on both sides of this, on different questions. I don't think there is anything weird about this, it's just a dispute over what a given fact pattern demonstrates. It's totally normal for people to disagree about that. It's why we put a fairly large number of people on a jury... People just see different things differently.
It's unhelpful because the massive comment chains don't bring anything to the "discussion" (this is literal celebrity gossip so I'm having a hard time using 'discussion', but wait this isn't Reddit how could I forget, we're the enlightened HN.) It just devolves into ones' priors: do you hate or love OpenAI and sama for unrelated reasons. It's just a sports bar with the audience a few drinks in.
I mostly agree with you, but would ask: Why are you here, reading this thread? This isn't, like, a thread about something interesting that is being tragically drowned out by all this gossip. It's just an entirely bad thread that we should (and probably do) all feel bad about getting sucked into.
But the tiny sliver of disagreement I have with "this is a bad thing to discuss here and we should all feel bad" is that some people who frequent this site are sometimes some of the people involved in making decisions that might lead to threads like this. And it might be nice for those people to have read some comments here that push back on the narrative that it's actually fine to do stuff like this, especially if it's legal (but maybe also if it isn't, sometimes?).
The way I see this particular discussion is: outside the tech bubble, regardless of the new facts in this article, people see yet another big name tech leader doing yet another unrelatable and clearly sleazy thing. Then what I see when I come to the thread is quite a few of the tech people who frequent this site being like "I don't get it, what's the problem?" or "this article totally refutes all of the things people think are a problem with this". And I feel like it's worth saying: no, get out of the bubble!
I'm surprised by many people's reaction to this too, especially that IF it was possible right now, the industry would steal everybody's lunch in an instant without thinking about consequences. This case is like an appetizer to what's to come if things keep on going in this way..
> I mostly agree with you, but would ask: Why are you here, reading this thread? This isn't, like, a thread about something interesting that is being tragically drowned out by all this gossip. It's just an entirely bad thread that we should (and probably do) all feel bad about getting sucked into.
I was just reading the comments after reading the article to see if anything new came up, and was pretty appalled at the quality of commentary here. I'm not participating in the thread more because it's not worth it.
> But the tiny sliver of disagreement I have with "this is a bad thing to discuss here and we should all feel bad" is that some people who frequent this site are sometimes some of the people involved in making decisions that might lead to threads like this. And it might be nice for those people to have read some comments here that push back on the narrative that it's actually fine to do stuff like this, especially if it's legal (but maybe also if it isn't, sometimes?).
I've been involved in big decisions in other Big Tech companies. I'm proud of having fought to preserve Tor access to our offerings because I believe in Tor despite the spam and attacks it brings. I don't know about other folks in these positions, but if I were to read discussion like this, I'd roll my eyes and close the thread. If a random incoherent drunk ranter told me something was wrong with my ideas, I'd dismiss them without much hesitation.
> The way I see this particular discussion is: outside the tech bubble, regardless of the new facts in this article, people see yet another big name tech leader doing yet another unrelatable and clearly sleazy thing.
Because journalists know there is anti-tech sentiment among a segment of the population and so they stoke it. I don't know that much about this case, but a different story I've been following for a while now is the California Forever creation of a new city adjacent to the Bay Area. Pretty much every article written about it calls the city a "libertarian city" or "libertarian, billionaire dream". I'm involved in local planning conversations. I've read over their proposals and communications. They never, ever, mention anything about libertarianism. They're not proposing anything libertarian. They're working with existing incorporation laws; they're literally acting as a real-estate developer the same as any other suburban tract developer anywhere else in the US. But the press, desperate to get clicks on the story, bills it as some "libertarian city".
This "bubble" that you speak of is literally just a bubble created by journalists. I'm not saying that tech hasn't created some new, big, real problems nor that we shouldn't discuss these problems, but we need to recognize low-effort clickbait where we see it. This [1,2] article and thread talks about the reasons why, and it's not simple or straightforward, but at this point I consider most (not all) tech journalism to basically be tabloid journalism. It's meant specifically to drive clicks.
The only silly thing is some folks on HN think this site is somehow more high-brow than some general social media conversation on the news. It's the same social media as everywhere else, it's just more likely that the person talking is a software nerd, so the clickbait they fall for is different. My comment is my attempt as a community member to remind us to strive for something better. If we want to be more than just another social media site then we need to act like it. That means reading articles and not reacting to headlines, having good-faith conversations and not bringing strong priors into the conversation, and actually responding to the best interpretations of our peers' comments not just dunking on them.
> I don't know about other folks in these positions, but if I were to read discussion like this, I'd roll my eyes and close the thread.
I'm loathe to reply because I know you don't want to engage anymore, but I think it's fair to reply to your reply on this point:
I'm sure you're right that the people involved in this will be defensive and roll their eyes, and I'm sympathetic to that human reaction, but it's also why society at large will continue along this path of thinking we suck.
If we roll our eyes at their legitimate criticism of all this sleazy stuff that is going on, then they're just right to criticize us.
And sure, "we shouldn't care if people at large think we suck because we roll our eyes at their criticism of our sleaziness" is a totally valid response to that. But I'm certainly not going to take up our cause against the inevitable backlash, in that case.
> This "bubble" that you speak of is literally just a bubble created by journalists.
I don't think so. I'm honestly sympathetic to how you've become convinced of that by the California Forever thing, which I agree has gotten a raw deal in the press. But I think this tech / SV / HN bubble is nonetheless a real thing. I work inside that bubble but live outside it. I spend a decent amount of time during my days reading and (often foolishly, like today) commenting on threads here.
But I spend a lot of my evenings and weekends with friends and family (in Colorado) who are very distant from our "scene". And I'm telling you, in my twenty year career, I have lived this evaluation from from "the internet is so awesome, google search is amazing, you know how to do software, that's so cool!" to "I don't know how you can stomach working in that industry". Sure, the media has had some impact on this, but we've also been super arrogant, have screwed up tons of stuff that is visible and salient to lots of people, and have seemed completely oblivious to this.
This episode is just one more example of that trend, and I think it's crazy to think "nah, this is all fine, nothing to see here".
I'm not sure what RMS has to do with Altman. I'm also not sure why you think people just want to hate on Musk when it took a decade of his blatant lies for most people to catch on to the fact that he's a conman (remember, everyone loved him and Tesla for the first 5 or 10 years of lies). But the comparison between Musk and Altman is pretty apt, good job there.
Well not sure what you mean by 'Conman'. Wildly successful people do aim high a lot, a lot. They don't meet 80% of their goals, that is perfectly ok. Even as low as 20% success on a lot of these moonshot things sets you ahead of the masses who aim very low and get there 100% of the times.
This whole idea that some one has to comply to your idea of how one must set goals, and get there is something other people have no obligations to measure up to. Also that's the deal about his lies? He can say whatever he wants, and not get there. He is not exactly holding an oath to you or any one that he is at an error for not measuring up.
Musk might not get to Mars, he might end up mining asteroids or something. That is ok. That doesn't make him a conman.
tl;dr. Any one can say, work and fail at anything they want. And they don't owe anybody an explanation for a darn thing.
> It's not aiming high when anyone competent and informed can tell him there's no way, and he pays many competent and informed people to tell him.
You know that this is exactly how SpaceX won big? There were many a competent, credentialed people telling Musk that reusable rockets are a pipe dream, all the way to the first Falcon 9 landing and reflight. Some of them even continued giving such "competent and informed" advice for many months afterwards.
> Setting a goal is not the same as telling people the company that you are dictator of is going to do something.
> You know that this is exactly how SpaceX won big? There were many a competent, credentialed people telling Musk that reusable rockets are a pipe dream, all the way to the first Falcon 9 landing and reflight. Some of them even continued giving such "competent and informed" advice for many months afterwards.
And there were also people saying it could be done. Where were those people for self-driving? (Oh right they were in the Facebook comment section with no relevant knowledge.)
> That's literally what it means, though.
No, it's not at all.
A goal is personal, or perhaps organizational. You need not announce something on Twitter in order to set a goal for yourself or for your company.
