7 ms·

sama is a chancer, no doubt, but I take issue with this article's angle. Clearly they wanted something reminiscend of the film "Her". Since Scarlett Johansson

by Y_Y 2y ago

sama is a chancer, no doubt, but I take issue with this article's angle. Clearly they wanted something reminiscend of the film "Her". Since Scarlett Johansson didn't want to do they voice they hired someone else. The voice they used is that of their voice actor, not Scarlett Johansson. She owns her own voice, but I don't think she has any rights to voices that merely sound like hers, when they're not being used to fraudently imply that she's involved. So movies are really influential on culture, and I think there should be broad scope for "taking inspiration" as long as it stops short of plagiarism. Think how many works you've seen that are obviously heavily inspired by e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey. I don't think the vibe of "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that" as belonging to the voice actor Douglas Rain, or Kubrick or Clark. And that's what a good thing! Producing cultural works must feed the production of future works and I'd like to permit all but the most blantant ripoffs.

camillomiller 2y ago
Why isn’t anyone stopping for a minute to think what happens in that darn movie? Why is it even ok to want your AI to sound like the AI from her? Why are the people leading AI and tech today so shallow when it comes to cultural depictions of their role? Unless they would actually like to be the villain.
- gizajob 2y ago
  Because they’re not as creative as they think they are.
- tidenly 2y ago
  I've seen this take quite a lot around Twitter recently, which is confusing to me. Do you read Her as a "AI assistants are bad" story? I thought it was a much more subtle exploration of what our world would be like if such things existed, rather than outright condemning it, but it seems like lots of people saw only horror start to finish.
  - CipherThrowaway 2y ago
    "AI assistants are bad" isn't the take. The thing making people feel icky/uncomfortable about Her - and about the 4o demos - is not the idea of Samantha but the idea of Theodore. It's about nerds' idealized AI versions of womanhood. Tirelessly flirty, giggly servants who they can interrupt and talk over as they please, that come without the inconvenient features of personhood.
    - camillomiller 2y ago
      Exactly!
- dTal 2y ago
  This observation is so widespread it now has a handy shorthand in the form of a meme, the "Torment Nexus": Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
  - dTal 2y ago
    Extending the thought, I would argue that this indicates the urgent need for more utopian speculative fiction, since it appears that as a society we tend to "steer where we're looking" even if it's straight into a pole. Cautionary tales clearly do not work - we need aspirational tales!
    - fl0id 2y ago
      Unfortunately that’s hard to write in a way that’s interesting, or at least that’s my interpretation. Maybe it would read too much like political and economic theory. And then in the cases where it is done it either leads to things like ‘get away from capitalism’ which many ppl wouldn’t like or just not discussing it much like Star Trek where supposedly there is no money but it’s not really explained how. (And I assume if it were more explicitly socialist start trek would have become as big)
      - zbentley 2y ago
        Iain Banks managed to walk the “utopian but doesn’t become a dry political treatise” line pretty well. Ironically, his works are favorites of several leaders in the torment-nexus-creation space.
      - klyrs 2y ago
        My understanding of Star Trek is that it's a post-scarcity utopia. The narrative interest comes from the strife of non-utopian societies.
    - lolc 2y ago
- CipherThrowaway 2y ago
  This is the thing that is so wild to me. Outside of tech, everyone I encounter in day-to-day life intuitively understands that tech dudes inventing AI voices to flirt with them is not awesome or cool. At this point, I have to assume that being out-of-touch is deliberate branding from OpenAI. Maybe to appeal to equally out-of-touch investors.
  - fl0id 2y ago
    It’s the tech (investor) bro appeal
- baq 2y ago
  Don't forget Frank Herbert is rolling in his grave, too. Dune's first two books could be called 'Paul is bad' and 'I guess I wasn't clear the first time'.
eqvinox 2y ago
> The voice they used is that of their voice actor, not Scarlett Johansson. If this is the case, why did they pull it? And why ask Scarlett again, just a few days before release?
- szundi 2y ago
  Someone from OpenAI wrote on Twitter that pulling this voice was in the works for a month already. Must be true, it was on the Internet.
  - whoevercares 2y ago
    Prepare the rollback/fallback pre-mortem, not surprised
- drpossum 2y ago
  You're seeing a pattern of bad faith "beg forgiveness instead of asking permission" and they got their hand caught in the cookie jar when someone insisted they didn't want part. Reddit, Stack Overflow, etc were just happy to roll over and accept the check after the fact.
- kolinko 2y ago
  Stopping behaviour is not an automatic admission of guilt.
  - eqvinox 2y ago
    And we're not in a court of justice here, where that distinction would be extremely important. This is all about public opinion, and they have communication managers and PR strategists. If they didn't train this voice on Scarlett Johansson, they would have had so much better of a response by not taking it offline and instead insisting it is not trained on her. The entire discourse right now would be very different. And you can't shift this back later, burned is burned. The way I see it, there's 3 options: · they did train it on Scarlett's voice · they don't know if they trained it on Scarlett's voice · their PR/communications people don't know what they're doing I don't think #2 is any better than #1. If it's #3… idk, better companies have been ruined by poor PR.
gizajob 2y ago
There’s a thing in intellectual property called “passing off” - if your logo and branding is so similar to McDonalds that consumers are likely to think that your product comes from McDonalds, then you’re in breach and will be sued. Regardless of whether they hired a different actress for the voice model, enough consumers would be convinced “ohhh it’s the same as ScarJo in Her!” which should point to there being an issue with ScarJo’s image rights and likeness, and although the law right now doesn’t explicitly cover AI voice modelling, as soon as this is tested in court it would likely set a precedent. Unless ScarJo lost that case, which seems unlikely.
- throwawaymaths 2y ago
  Think about the voice actor they hired (presuming they did so). Does she not have the right to use her own voice for money merely because she sounds like another, more famous persons?
  - mpweiher 2y ago
    She certainly does. However, the company hiring her might not have the right to use her voice with the intent purpose of passing that voice off as that of the other person. She is completely unfettered in any roles that do not have that intent.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwawaymaths 2y ago
      > However, the company hiring her might not have the right to use her voice with the intent purpose of passing that voice off as that of the other person. Please cite statute. Generally speaking malicious intent only does not an illegal act make. Last I checked a voice is rightly not a trademarkable thing (it's a quality, not a definable entity).
      - gizajob 2y ago
simion314 2y ago
I agreed with your argument before the latest revelations, so now I want a judge to order OpenAI to get clean, did they do use any second of Scarlet voice ? Because they could be lying, they could have used a different actress and also mixed some Scarlet voice into the mix.
DonHopkins 2y ago
But the clone of her voice IS being used to fraudulently imply that she's involved. https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666?lang=en https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666?lang=en "her" -Sam Altman
- chrisjj 2y ago
  No party to this matter has claimed it us a clone of her voice.
klausa 2y ago
> but I don't think she has any rights to voices that merely sound like hers She might! https://mcpherson-llp.com/articles/voice-misappropriation-in-california-bette-midler-tom-waits-and-grandma-burger/ https://mcpherson-llp.com/articles/voice-misappropriation-in...
- Y_Y 2y ago
  Good point and good reference. I see that in the first case Better Miller won a case against Ford motor company who had a "sound-alike" sing one of her songs for a commercial when she refused. The other cases are similar and my reading of the article is that the cases hinged on 1) a deliverate and explicit imitation of the famous voice concerned and 2) the voice in question being quite distinct, such that it would be very unlikely to approximate it by coincidence. In the case at hand here I think a strong argument could be made either way I both of these points and reasonable people will certainly differ.
CipherThrowaway 2y ago
> but I don't think she has any rights to voices that merely sound like hers, when they're not being used to fraudently imply that she's involved. IANAL but it's actually not that simple. There are laws and precedents around soundalikes. I think the cultural defense for this is really lame. Was there really cultural value in evoking "Her"? Because outside of the narcissistic male nerd culture of laughing at your own jokes, and fixating on your own cleverness, there doesn't seem to be. No one outside of this bubble actually thinks it's super cool and culturally valuable for tech companies to attempt reinvent - seemingly without a trace of irony or self-awareness - the cautionary tales and trappings of dystopian sci-fi. From what I have seen, the demos struck the average person as cringey and left women in particular with a deep sense of revulsion.
- fl0id 2y ago
  This so much
- Y_Y 2y ago
  Just to say, I think the demo is lame too, and the film was fine but no Black Mirror. I still think there's cultural value, even if it's not the kind of culture that appeals to me.
jacknews 2y ago
Isn't this the 'look and feel' argument? Especially if you then post references bragging that your thing either is, or is basically the same as, that other thing.

by Y_Y 2y ago

camillomiller 2y ago

Why isn’t anyone stopping for a minute to think what happens in that darn movie? Why is it even ok to want your AI to sound like the AI from her? Why are the people leading AI and tech today so shallow when it comes to cultural depictions of their role? Unless they would actually like to be the villain.

gizajob 2y ago
Because they’re not as creative as they think they are.
tidenly 2y ago
I've seen this take quite a lot around Twitter recently, which is confusing to me. Do you read Her as a "AI assistants are bad" story? I thought it was a much more subtle exploration of what our world would be like if such things existed, rather than outright condemning it, but it seems like lots of people saw only horror start to finish.
- CipherThrowaway 2y ago
  "AI assistants are bad" isn't the take. The thing making people feel icky/uncomfortable about Her - and about the 4o demos - is not the idea of Samantha but the idea of Theodore. It's about nerds' idealized AI versions of womanhood. Tirelessly flirty, giggly servants who they can interrupt and talk over as they please, that come without the inconvenient features of personhood.
  - camillomiller 2y ago
    Exactly!
dTal 2y ago
This observation is so widespread it now has a handy shorthand in the form of a meme, the "Torment Nexus": Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
- dTal 2y ago
  Extending the thought, I would argue that this indicates the urgent need for more utopian speculative fiction, since it appears that as a society we tend to "steer where we're looking" even if it's straight into a pole. Cautionary tales clearly do not work - we need aspirational tales!
  - fl0id 2y ago
    Unfortunately that’s hard to write in a way that’s interesting, or at least that’s my interpretation. Maybe it would read too much like political and economic theory. And then in the cases where it is done it either leads to things like ‘get away from capitalism’ which many ppl wouldn’t like or just not discussing it much like Star Trek where supposedly there is no money but it’s not really explained how. (And I assume if it were more explicitly socialist start trek would have become as big)
    - zbentley 2y ago
      Iain Banks managed to walk the “utopian but doesn’t become a dry political treatise” line pretty well. Ironically, his works are favorites of several leaders in the torment-nexus-creation space.
    - klyrs 2y ago
      My understanding of Star Trek is that it's a post-scarcity utopia. The narrative interest comes from the strife of non-utopian societies.
  - lolc 2y ago
CipherThrowaway 2y ago
This is the thing that is so wild to me. Outside of tech, everyone I encounter in day-to-day life intuitively understands that tech dudes inventing AI voices to flirt with them is not awesome or cool. At this point, I have to assume that being out-of-touch is deliberate branding from OpenAI. Maybe to appeal to equally out-of-touch investors.
- fl0id 2y ago
  It’s the tech (investor) bro appeal
baq 2y ago
Don't forget Frank Herbert is rolling in his grave, too. Dune's first two books could be called 'Paul is bad' and 'I guess I wasn't clear the first time'.

eqvinox 2y ago

> The voice they used is that of their voice actor, not Scarlett Johansson. If this is the case, why did they pull it? And why ask Scarlett again, just a few days before release?

szundi 2y ago
Someone from OpenAI wrote on Twitter that pulling this voice was in the works for a month already. Must be true, it was on the Internet.
- whoevercares 2y ago
  Prepare the rollback/fallback pre-mortem, not surprised
drpossum 2y ago
You're seeing a pattern of bad faith "beg forgiveness instead of asking permission" and they got their hand caught in the cookie jar when someone insisted they didn't want part. Reddit, Stack Overflow, etc were just happy to roll over and accept the check after the fact.
kolinko 2y ago
Stopping behaviour is not an automatic admission of guilt.
- eqvinox 2y ago
  And we're not in a court of justice here, where that distinction would be extremely important. This is all about public opinion, and they have communication managers and PR strategists. If they didn't train this voice on Scarlett Johansson, they would have had so much better of a response by not taking it offline and instead insisting it is not trained on her. The entire discourse right now would be very different. And you can't shift this back later, burned is burned. The way I see it, there's 3 options: · they did train it on Scarlett's voice · they don't know if they trained it on Scarlett's voice · their PR/communications people don't know what they're doing I don't think #2 is any better than #1. If it's #3… idk, better companies have been ruined by poor PR.

gizajob 2y ago

There’s a thing in intellectual property called “passing off” - if your logo and branding is so similar to McDonalds that consumers are likely to think that your product comes from McDonalds, then you’re in breach and will be sued. Regardless of whether they hired a different actress for the voice model, enough consumers would be convinced “ohhh it’s the same as ScarJo in Her!” which should point to there being an issue with ScarJo’s image rights and likeness, and although the law right now doesn’t explicitly cover AI voice modelling, as soon as this is tested in court it would likely set a precedent. Unless ScarJo lost that case, which seems unlikely.

throwawaymaths 2y ago
Think about the voice actor they hired (presuming they did so). Does she not have the right to use her own voice for money merely because she sounds like another, more famous persons?
- mpweiher 2y ago
  She certainly does. However, the company hiring her might not have the right to use her voice with the intent purpose of passing that voice off as that of the other person. She is completely unfettered in any roles that do not have that intent.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawaymaths 2y ago
    > However, the company hiring her might not have the right to use her voice with the intent purpose of passing that voice off as that of the other person. Please cite statute. Generally speaking malicious intent only does not an illegal act make. Last I checked a voice is rightly not a trademarkable thing (it's a quality, not a definable entity).
    - gizajob 2y ago

simion314 2y ago

I agreed with your argument before the latest revelations, so now I want a judge to order OpenAI to get clean, did they do use any second of Scarlet voice ? Because they could be lying, they could have used a different actress and also mixed some Scarlet voice into the mix.

DonHopkins 2y ago

But the clone of her voice IS being used to fraudulently imply that she's involved. https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666?lang=en https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666?lang=en "her" -Sam Altman

chrisjj 2y ago
No party to this matter has claimed it us a clone of her voice.

klausa 2y ago

> but I don't think she has any rights to voices that merely sound like hers She might! https://mcpherson-llp.com/articles/voice-misappropriation-in-california-bette-midler-tom-waits-and-grandma-burger/ https://mcpherson-llp.com/articles/voice-misappropriation-in...

Y_Y 2y ago
Good point and good reference. I see that in the first case Better Miller won a case against Ford motor company who had a "sound-alike" sing one of her songs for a commercial when she refused. The other cases are similar and my reading of the article is that the cases hinged on 1) a deliverate and explicit imitation of the famous voice concerned and 2) the voice in question being quite distinct, such that it would be very unlikely to approximate it by coincidence. In the case at hand here I think a strong argument could be made either way I both of these points and reasonable people will certainly differ.

CipherThrowaway 2y ago

> but I don't think she has any rights to voices that merely sound like hers, when they're not being used to fraudently imply that she's involved. IANAL but it's actually not that simple. There are laws and precedents around soundalikes. I think the cultural defense for this is really lame. Was there really cultural value in evoking "Her"? Because outside of the narcissistic male nerd culture of laughing at your own jokes, and fixating on your own cleverness, there doesn't seem to be. No one outside of this bubble actually thinks it's super cool and culturally valuable for tech companies to attempt reinvent - seemingly without a trace of irony or self-awareness - the cautionary tales and trappings of dystopian sci-fi. From what I have seen, the demos struck the average person as cringey and left women in particular with a deep sense of revulsion.

fl0id 2y ago
This so much
Y_Y 2y ago
Just to say, I think the demo is lame too, and the film was fine but no Black Mirror. I still think there's cultural value, even if it's not the kind of culture that appeals to me.

jacknews 2y ago

Isn't this the 'look and feel' argument? Especially if you then post references bragging that your thing either is, or is basically the same as, that other thing.