this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
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Scarlett Johansson denied OpenAI the right to use her voice. They used it anyway. (boingboing.net)
submitted 10 months ago by Wilshire@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Nobody@lemmy.world 516 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

At first, they denied it—"OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati said the company did not pattern any ChatGPT voices on Johansson's sultry computer voice in the movie," but Altman and other OpenAI guys had let the cat out the bag on Twitter

They’re not just deliberately using her voice; they’re deliberately lying about it and bragging about what really happened in public. They’ll pay some nuisance settlement that’s a small fraction of their profit.

That’s how they treat an a list actress. Imagine how they treat everyone else. You don’t get a settlement. You just get fucked.

[–] IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 241 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, you don’t understand, these guys are tech bros, they’re special, for reasons.

[–] billiam0202@lemmy.world 244 points 10 months ago (1 children)

From the article:

they don’t just think they’re the smartest people in the world, they think that everyone else is stupid.

And that sums up techbros in one sentence.

[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 48 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

You see this in action anytime people go "no no you just don't understand how this works" as a way of sidestepping the overall issue. They try to bury you in the minutiae of it, and what's "technically" possible without acknowledging that A) what's possible will increase over time and B) the issue is not technology, it's the intention of it and the motivations of the people behind it.

It's like trying to deconstruct the concept of a gun, talking about all its potential mechanical malfunctions, its capacity limits, the fact you have to aim it, and so on, all as a way of trying to downplay the danger of it being pointed directly at you.

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[–] moon@lemmy.ml 110 points 10 months ago (1 children)

According to her statement, they were still trying to strike a deal with her within days of the release.

I can't imagine anything more shady than trying to strike a deal with someone for their likeness, all the while preparing to use it anyway and later denying it had anything to do with them

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

She is going to take them to the cleaners, and Altman and his circlejerk club will deserve every single cent of the damages they’re forced to pay. I genuinely hope she makes it an incredibly messy and eye wateringly expensive legal process for them. I’m not a ScarJo fanboy by any means, but fuck OpenAI for thinking they can get away with something so absurdly blatant and obviously unethical.

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[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 60 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (7 children)

They "let the cat out of the bag" by referencing the movie "Her" if I understand correctly. Not really an admition of guilt like the article makes it seem.

They also clearly state on their website that they used an other voice actor. If you actually compare both voices, they aren't the same just similar. They probably went with someone that sounds like her on purpose specifically because of the movie but that's fine really.

This article is emotional and manipulative. I don't think scar jo deserves to own the whole spectrum her voice belongs to just because she voiced an AI in one movie. This is how you end up with corporations owning all voices like they tried with music.

[–] Kase@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago

I wouldn't ever want someone to be able to own a tone/sound of voice. I'm with you there.

But it kinda sounds like they're trying to straight-up imitate her. Like they want people to hear this ai and think it's voiced by johanssen herself.

I don't know if that's true, or if it even makes a difference legally, it's just the impression I'm getting.

I'm not knowledgeable about any of this; any correction is welcome, lol.

[–] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 23 points 10 months ago (6 children)

In Scarlett Johansson‘s statement, she says that OpenAI approached her to voice the Sky voice.

Whether or not OpenAI hired another actress that sounded very similar to her (hah.) and they are weirdly cagey about naming or they just ripped off the audio from her movies and are lying about hiring a voice actress, is not the extent of the issue.

People sounding alike just happens. But that we know they asked to use Johansson’s voice for this. After being rebuffed, they created Sky, which sounds a lot like Sam, and made several references to the Her movie. Sky is even presented with the same ‘personality’ as Sam. They aren’t just ripping off Scarlett Johansson’s voice acting, they’re ripping off the character as a whole, and trying to associate themselves with the movie. That’s shameful and rips off Spike Jonze as well as all the other creatives who created that movie.
And for what? Because tech bros didn’t get what they wanted, so they decided to try to rip off the characters anyway? Because Her is sort of a cultural touchstone, and their product is merely well-positioned, but GPT-4o will be in a crowded market space within 6 months?

It’s sort of pathetic - pretending to lean on the relevance of a movie because your product is destined to become irrelevant.
Also - highly ironic to me that Her is (somewhat) about how you can’t own something that doesn’t consent to be owned. And those dumb bitches went and ripped it off when they didn’t get consent. Well, now Sky’s gone to join Sam in some non-corporeal reality.

Sorry for the novel. I didn’t sleep well and I get weird when I’m sleep deprived.

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[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 44 points 10 months ago (5 children)

If you read another article that has more information to it, instead of just this opinion piece, it looks like they hired and paid a voice actress and that it is her natural voice (supposedly).

Which begs the question: Can a voice actor be denied work or denied the ability to have their voice used, if they sound similar to someone else who is more famous?

[–] JoeyJoeJoeJr@lemmy.ml 31 points 10 months ago (4 children)

This kind of reminds me of Crispin Glover, from Back to the Future. He tried to negotiate a higher pay for the second movie, so the producers hired a different actor to play the role, but deliberately made the actor up to look like Glover. In response, Glover sued the producers and won. It set a critical precedent for Hollywood, about using someone's likeness without consent.

The article mentions they reached out to her two days before the launch - if she had said 'OK,' there's no way they could have even recorded what they needed from her, let alone trained the model in time for the presentation. So they must have had a Scarlett Johansson voice ready to go. Other than training the model on movies (really not ideal for a high quality voice model), how would they have gotten the recordings they needed?

If they hired a "random" voice actress, they might not run into issues. But if at any point they had a job listing, a discussion with a talent manager, or anything else where they mentioned wanting a "Scarlett Johansson sound-alike," they might have dug themselves a nice hole here.

Specifically regarding your question about hiring a voice actor that sounds like someone else - this is commonly done to replace people for cartoons. I don't think it's an issue if you are playing a character. But if you deliberately impersonate a person, there might be some trouble.

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[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 37 points 10 months ago

That‘s the type of cockiness you‘d expect from scoundrels who just committed the biggest heist in history and got away with it. I‘m not surprised in the slightest.

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[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 189 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Most of AI just seems to be blatant theft and copyright issues.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That’s pretty much the whole point.

Making use of other people’s work and likeness in a way that removes any obligations you would normally have to those people.

Just clearly define “copyright violation” for them, and they’ll craft a method that technically eludes your definition.

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[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 148 points 10 months ago (8 children)

The precedent in this case already exists in Midler v. Ford Motor Co., in which when Academy Award nominated actress and singer Bette Midler sued Ford after Ford hired musical impersonators to sing famous songs for their commercials.

The court ultimately ruled in favor of Midler, because it was found that Ford gave clear instructions to the impersonating actress to sound as much like Midler as possible, and the ruling was voices, although not copyrightable, still constitutes their distinct identity and is protected against unauthorized use without permission. (Outside of satire, of course, since I doubt someone like Trump would be above suing people for making fun of him.)

I think Scarlett Johansson has a case here, but it really hinges on whether or not OpenAI actively gave the instruction specifically to impersonate Scarlett's voice in "Her", or if they used her voice inside the training data at all, since there is a difference in the "Sky" voice and the voice of Scarlett Johansson.

But then again, what do I know, I'm just here to shitpost and promote "Barbie".

[–] Ardyssian@sh.itjust.works 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This reads like a lemmy version of a shittymorph post

[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Hey, I have more than one comedy bit I do here other than something something Hell in a Cell, OK?

Speaking of which, Hell in a Cell isn't even that exciting anymore after the WWE made it an annual event and painted the cages red, and why did Seth Rollins get disqualified after he attacked "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt with a sledgehammer 2019 even though Hell in a Cell matches have always been no disqualification?

It's like their script writers don't even care about their own rules.

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[–] caveman8000@lemmy.world 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Loved you in My Name is Earl

[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 41 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That's, uh, "Jaime Pressly", who is totally not esteemed Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie doing an American Southern accent to get more work in the US.

[–] hydrospanner@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Real talk: at this point, you may be my main reason to still be active on Lemmy.

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[–] bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (10 children)

spoilerasdfasfasfasfas

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[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 17 points 10 months ago

That's probably going to be a big deal in future AI lawsuit.

If intellectual property isn't exterminated wholesale it will lead to explicitely refusing to answer any person or copyrighted works by name.

So instead of "sing a song about bananas by Taylor Swift" it will be "sing a song about banana by a female singer pop singer whose songs are, on the whole, quite straightforward, primarily revolving around the saga of girl-meets-boy, boy-fails-to-live-up-to-expectations, girl-pens-another-breakup-anthem. Each track features tales of romantic entanglements and emotional rollercoasters, culminating in catchy, radio-friendly tunes that are sure to dominate the charts, accompanied by dramatic twists and heartfelt reconciliations that appear almost out of thin air."

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[–] snausagesinablanket@lemmy.world 69 points 10 months ago (5 children)

A big lawsuit is necessary to set a precedence.

[–] lorkano@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This article is bullshit man, voice is not even that similar, there is 0 proof that's her voice or even that they asked her if they can use her voice. People is blowing this out of proportion

[–] soba@lemmy.ca 52 points 10 months ago (2 children)

But they did ask if they could license her voice and she said no. Balls in your court.

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 33 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Guy you replied to did miss that part but consider the (still to be verified) facts.

  • they ask to use her voice, she declined.

  • they proceed by not using her voice. Someone else's voice instead.

oPeNaI “believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”

The end result is pretty clear here. Either this other person exist and could testify privately in court with her natural voice which she has the rights to work with OpenAi. There is a closure in law where not being able to provide evidence that the court knows must exist can make you guilty. Openai could have tried to pull a “this is a fully unique synthetic voice” but crucially they did not.

[–] lorkano@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

And they didn't use her voice. Article clearly states that she said she is shocked they choose similar voice to her after she declined. It makes sense for open Ai to choose similar one because when they were preparing list of the voices they obviously wanted voice to be of her kind. It's not like her voice is something so fucking unique she has copyright over all of the similar voices in the world

[–] soba@lemmy.ca 23 points 10 months ago (6 children)

And despite all your lame denials they are shutting that voice down. Why is that?

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[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 49 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Welp, we finally have the voice spoofer from Uplink.

"My voice is my passport, verify me."

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 25 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Fuck me sometimes I felt like I was the only person on the planet to play that game

[–] kromem@lemmy.world 35 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The reference was actually a reference to the earlier movie Sneakers which was one of the first movies about hacking.

And yeah, Uplink was awesome.

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[–] _sideffect@lemmy.world 48 points 10 months ago

Shut this shit company down

[–] lordmauve@programming.dev 42 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I doubt they are using Johansson's voice. I expect they need much more studio-quality training data than they would have for her.

The desire to create a "Her" might be real but explains why they chose a similar voice actress, made Sky the default, and continued to pursue Johansson to some day create the real thing.

Suspending the Sky voice looks guilty but it might be a temporary action while the legal team considers their response. There might be a non-zero risk of being found liable if there were directions in the voice casting process to seek a result comparable to Scarlet Johansson. You'd want to collect and assess correspondence to see if that's a possibility, which might take a while.

[–] adam_y@lemmy.world 73 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If only she was ever in a situation where her voice was professionally recorded.

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[–] CustodialTeapot@lemmy.world 59 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Wtf is this thinking.

Open Ai wouldn't use something or someone without consent? There's a plethora of lawsuits and evidence that they did that with pretty much every medium out there.

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[–] cbarrick@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago

Fine tuning a general TTS model on a specific custom voice doesn't require as much data as you think it does.

The hard part is building the foundational model that can be easily fine tuned. And OpenAI has already done that.

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[–] NounsAndWords@lemmy.world 41 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is very much the type of case that settles out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.

[–] Skates@feddit.nl 47 points 10 months ago (3 children)

It could be, if she wants it to be.

It could also be the type of case where her lawyers stop openAI from ever using her voice again, if she wants that to be the case.

Being rich opens up options. If openAI would be using my voice instead, they'd have a wildly less popular product but nobody to sue them for it, cause I'd be using my money to still dream about home ownership at some point before I die, not to hire lawyers or fight windmills.

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[–] MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world 30 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Something, something... don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. Yet, they asked for permission and were denied.

Not sure if they thought they'd get away with it or if they just wanted this publicity. I'm thinking it was their hubris.

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago

I'm much more concerned about the fact that the voice has simulated emotions behind it, leading people to trust their hallucinating AI even more.

[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago

Send a huge bill and then sue for payment. Let them fight the fight for you.

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