18 ms·

Sam Altman is showing us who he really is

393 points by panarky 2y ago

Devasta 2y ago
This has always been the plan of AI companies: harvest the entire planets creative output for their models, hope it creates AGI, after that you are immune to all laws as the modern day clergy, a class of tech priests who are able to divine the will of the Omnissiah. It won't work, but that won't stop them trying to destroy everything anyway.
fuckingkike 2y ago
[dead]
rldjbpin 2y ago
keeping aside my personal opinions about the company and who is running it, i feel that this is being blown out of proportion. as already outlined, this is a standard practice in other context for any "fast-moving" tech company. the only reason we are discussing it is due to a pop culture reference. this is a lot of energy wasted which can be better spent on the bigger picture.
jreddy 2y ago
*People realizing who Sam Altman really is after he does the same things he's always done
nojvek 2y ago
For all the the debacles OpenAI is going through, it's quite interesting how other models are going through without much hullaballoo. Snowflake's Arctic comes to mind. Great model - it will answer any dark question I through at it. No safety rails. I liked that it didn't treat me like a baby! Llama/Phi is pretty chill too. Can ask it about bombs, viruses, chemicals and it won't refuse.
CatWChainsaw 2y ago
If you charge ahead building a technology that you claim could destroy the world, and build an apocalypse bunker to secure your own safety, screw everyone else, I think I know enough about you to make a judgement of your character.
bbqfog 2y ago
[flagged]
- Eji1700 2y ago
  Even watching the behavior of the company before that pointed towards marketing first, results second.
  - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
    The results are outstanding. No matter what their marketing is, they have produced something incredible.
- deleted 2y ago
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- kneel 2y ago
  Did you believe her when she claimed that she was shadow banned from all social media because of her brother? Or that she had to become a sex worker to pay the bills because of his 'technological abuse'?
  - wizzwizz4 2y ago
    It's not that different to (substantiated) things I've heard from other people, so… personally, I believe it. The alleged sexual / medical / financial abuse is pretty typical, as is the account hacking. If it helps, New York Magazine has substantiated some of the minor details: https://archive.ph/j4lVw#60% https://archive.ph/j4lVw#60%. Sam Altman is fairly influential, and worse abuses from social media companies are well-documented, so as conspiracy theories go, this "Sam-induced shadowbans" one is quite plausible.* Technically, nobody is forced to become a sex worker to pay the bills. But people can be forced to choose between bad options in order to pay the bills, and it's not that rare that the other options are worse than online sex work. Especially if you have mental health issues, and a disability that prevents standing-up work. Colloquially, "had to become a sex worker" (or "survival sex work", Annie's actual words) wouldn't be a misrepresentation of that. *: Devil's advocate: saying the wrong things in the presence of the black box can be enough to get shadowbanned. It's plausible that words involved in discussions of abuse might end up automatically censored by a badly-designed learning-from-user-reports ML system. It's also plausible that many similarly-designed systems would independently end up categorising the same sorts of things as "don't show this to other users". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435430 (placing blame on user reports coming from Sam Altman's fans) is a stronger theory.
lenerdenator 2y ago
This feels like someone trying to do something they thought Steve Jobs would do.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  spend a little bit of time in SF or the peninsula and you’ll see that’s a common thing there unless you’re running a company into the ground and getting a bailout from your rival who is trying to delay an antitrust suit, then you’re not doing Steve Jobs correctly
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    It's usually people who never worked for Steve or ever got to meet him who seem to take this approach. Their company isn't just a business, it's a cult, and they're the Founder (notice the capital "F") and part of being in charge of this cult is asserting dominance over others. Steve knew to rarely pull this outside of tech executive circles; the new generation doesn't seem to keep it in SV. Musk is the go-to example but Altman's turning that way too.
    - deleted 2y ago
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  - k1t 2y ago
    Does this mean Mitchell Baker is doing Steve Jobs correctly?
- staunch 2y ago
  Steve Jobs was a superficial asshole but was fundamentally a good and ethical person. There's only one major ethical mistake documented in his entire life (being an absentee father while his first daughter was young), which he spent decades making amends for. The people that emulate Steve Jobs poorly are usually real assholes with a long list of ethical mistakes.
  - P_I_Staker 2y ago
yieldcrv 2y ago
I think its interesting that this alone would have been grounds for the board to sack him sooooo many things would be
panarky 2y ago
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.
- barfingclouds 2y ago
  It doesn’t sound like her
  - Reubachi 2y ago
    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.
- dustfinger 2y ago
  > We should not give a sneaky, deceptive and manipulative person this much power over our future. 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.
  - schmidt_fifty 2y ago
behnamoh 2y ago
I don't like @sama just as much as the next person, but come on, in what world is ScarJo's voice unique? There are many people who sound like her. Does she imply that she "owns" this voice so no one else can use it? Excuse me, that's not how it works. Edit: IMO OpenAI should just make their voice engine open source. Then we'll see if ScarJo or anyone else can stop the open-source community. I expected more from her.
- zemo 2y ago
  you have to be willfully missing the point when he said Her was his favorite movie, tweeted just “her” when the Sky voice was announced, and when they repeatedly tried to get the voice actor from Her. People who do underhanded things don’t just come out and say “look at me, doing the bad thing!”
  - behnamoh 2y ago
    > you have to be willfully missing the point when he said Her was his favorite movie So what? It's one of my fav movies too. > they repeatedly tried to get the voice actor from Her. She didn't do it. So they went ahead and made a voice that sounds like her. It's not like she contributed to making the voice and then decided not to have it used.
    - starttoaster 2y ago
      I'm not sure you're aware of the ramifications of all of this, or else you just don't care. The voice acting industry is now entirely dead thanks to your opinions on this matter. Nobody is going to reach out to Liam Neeson for his voice, they'll just have some voice tool recreate it and read the script as long as the tool can recreate the same emotional tones they're looking for, and it's cheaper than hiring the actual actor. There's tangible damages here. But I guess you don't mind because you're not a voice actor and this doesn't directly affect you. And before you try this rebuttal, this is different from machinery taking the jobs away from manufacturing plant workers, it's much bigger than that. With manufacturing plant workers, at least humans were still needed for recognizing a fault in the machinery and stopping the line. Humans still needed to maintain the machines. Humans needed to design and build the machines. In this scenario, a couple of central parties are creating these tools, and then nobody is needed to ensure a quality product any further down the chain than that. There either needs to be a legal consequence to this, or a 4.4 billion dollar industry is now just closing their doors. That's all well and good until all of those peoples' families need to eat their next meal or sleep in a home. But I guess their lives aren't your problem. It won't be anytime all that soon, in my opinion. But generative AI is coming for many (most? all?) sectors of work. And if history is any indicator, millions of people will have to suffer and/or die before governments step in to do much of anything about it. Probably especially-so in the US, since we tend to lean towards "free markets" that benefit the massive companies that have already made it, and allow them to chew through human resources (the people, not the department) mostly any way they see fit. So many people are going to lose their jobs and never find work in their field again, and they will all either die or retrain for all the same laborer positions and end up with a massive surplus of workers in those fields too. And that's only until we become skilled enough in robotics and generative AI to automate the trades too.
ur-whale 2y ago
So, the evidence is slowly piling up, and it is increasingly clear that a full blown high-IQ psychopath is officially in charge of the most influential piece of tech. developed since the internet came about. Who would have guessed this would happen?
- amelius 2y ago
  Curious about your opinion on Elon Musk.
- deleted 2y ago
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- eureka-belief 2y ago
  I wonder how the business would be affected if the public opinion turned against him.
pmarreck 2y ago
[flagged]
deleted 2y ago
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tengbretson 2y ago
I honestly wouldn't have even thought they sounded all that similar were it not for openai themselves courting comparisons to the movie Her.
- ambyra 2y ago
  They’re not especially similar. I think the talking style is very close, people say it is flirty in the same way as the film. You can’t copyright look and feel though, can you?
  - tithe 2y ago
    > You can’t copyright look and feel though, can you? You can certainly patent it. "In general terms, a “utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a “design patent” protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171)." - https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply/design-patent https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply/design-patent
  - phkahler 2y ago
    >> You can’t copyright look and feel though, can you? Microsoft argued in court that you can not and won. See Apple vs Microsoft if I recall correctly.
    - ambyra 2y ago
      lol, I figured with this audience everyone would know I was being sarcastic, it’s such a famous case, poe’s law I guess
- wvenable 2y ago
  If listen to them back to back (Scarlett from Her and Sky) they aren't similar at all. Scarlett has a distinctive raspiness to her voice that entirely doesn't exist in Sky. Sky isn't doing an impression of Scarlett. However, they both sound like AIs because Scarlett is playing that role and so is OpenAI's voice app.
rowanG077 2y ago
Leaving alone whether they sound similar at all for now, since that is subjective. I think this will set an extremely bad precedent. People owning their own voice is clear and that is the way it should be. But people owning how their voice sounds like is weird. You can find thousands and thousands of people with similar voices. We are going to path now where a single person can have ownership of that and block the others from using their voice how they want.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  With 9 billion voices on the planet, it would be hard/impossible to find a unique voice.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Which makes it all the more impressive that Sam Altman went out of his way to desperately beg just one person for their approval. What's wrong with giving up on the cringeworthy Her angle and finding a new, less-relevant celebrity to rip off? Better yet, why is our multi-billion dollar AI company afraid of doing something original for once?
- Uehreka 2y ago
  Nah, I think it’s pretty clear cut. Under current US trademark law (IANAL etc), if I sound like Morgan Freeman, I’m free to do what I want, as long as I don’t try to convince people that I’m Morgan Freeman. If I’m cast in a movie because my voice sounds like Morgan Freeman, and the promo posters don’t have his name or face on them, fine. If I do voiceover for a commercial and say something like “I’m Morgan Freeman, buy Joe’s Hotdogs” then that’s already a clear violation of Morgan Freeman’s trademark, because consumers might be confused into associating Joe’s Hotdogs with Morgan Freeman. And that’s what happened here: OpenAI “hired a machine” that sounds like ScarJo, and then attempted to associate their product with ScarJo’s brand without her permission. You’re already not allowed to do that. And if you want to make it as a voice actor and you sound like Morgan Freeman? Try your hardest to develop a personal brand distinct from his, and don’t take gigs where people want you to impersonate him (unless it’s a really obvious parody and you’re cool with the angle).
ambyra 2y ago
I really like the voice. They should have kept it, and it’s not really her voice, so… Hopefully there will be a way to have it as an option in the future.
game_the0ry 2y ago
I wonder how long this thread will last on HN... How much influence does @sama have around here nowadays? For the record, I was never impressed with him - I am not aware of single consequential thing he has done or built other than take the credit for the fine work of the AI scientist + engineers at OpenAI. It feels like the company is just a vehicle for how own ambition and legacy, not much else.
- minimaxir 2y ago
  Hacker News is famously editorially independent from YC-affiliated people, and dang has said that specifically avoids killing threads involving YC people/companies (not that Sam Altman is YC-affiliated anymore).
- wsatb 2y ago
  Couldn't this be said for most CEOs? They're never really the ones doing the dirty work.
  - game_the0ry 2y ago
    Not all CEOs are terrible.
- sillysaurusx 2y ago
  The thread is rightly being knocked off by the mods because there’s zero substance here. It’s a follow-on thread (knock one) to a public uproar (knock two) about something that isn’t representative of a new phenomenon (knock three). This isn’t what HN is for.
  - minimaxir 2y ago
    It's likely getting flagged organically (and due to the ratio of comments to upvotes, getting penalized by the flame war detector), but not due to a vast YC conspiracy.
    - sillysaurusx 2y ago
varjag 2y ago
An eerie feeling that the "I do not consent" scene from Ghost in the Shell plays out irl. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e913bd02-2582-4258-819f-2d5a00b1db6d https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e913bd02-2582-4258-819f-2d5a00b...
s1k3s 2y ago
I love how we went from questioning copyright & licensing to "GPT vs Google, which one is better". To every artist or engineer out there who contributed to the general knowledge: you lost, everything you've ever done to help other people is now part of the models and there's nothing you can do to take it back. What even happened to the copyright strikes artists were supposed to bring up against these AI companies? That seems like 100 years ago :)
- lannisterstark 2y ago
  >there's nothing you can do to take it back Given the fact that many, many people make their software MIT licensed (or rather, do whatever, I don't care license), I think most of us will be ok with that :)
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I'm happy to contribute to the general knowledge. It's better than being forgotten and having no impact.
  - malfist 2y ago
    Oh you will be forgotten. All your knowledge will come from some trademarked AI bot and you won't even get a linkback
    - codezero 2y ago
      unless you find a way to poison the AI so that it remembers you :)
    - hu3 2y ago
      > Oh you will be forgotten. Not your parent comenter but please allow me to enlighten you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language) When in doubt, always double-check who you're replying to in HN. We are lucky to have many great minds around.
xt00 2y ago
This is a typical "move fast and break things" mentality.. except that mentality betrays Sam's statements about doing a bunch of this stuff "carefully" etc.. its all a smokescreen.. nobody is going to realistically stop working on AGI in order to be careful.. basically AGI is being pursued like the race to get the atom bomb.. so yea history tells us its full speed ahead with no brakes. Scarjo is just the latest person getting stomped on along the way.. eventually it will be a whole ton of people getting stomped on.. whoops!
- popalchemist 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - bozhark 2y ago
    Move Smooth & Fix Things (tm)
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    > "Move fast and break things" is explicitly, exactly the wrong attitude for the person/team in charge of a world-changing superpower. Thankfully, they aren't in charge of anything like that.
    - CRConrad 2y ago
      Sure AF trying had to / would like to think they are.
    - runeofdoom 2y ago
      Arguably, allowing anyone to create very believable lies is a world-changing superpower.
    - metadat 2y ago
      How do you know what the effects and importance of current gen AI will be?
  - deleted 2y ago
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redox99 2y ago
They hired a voice actor for Sky's voice. If OpenAI loses, does this mean this voice actor cannot do their job any longer, because it happens some other actor has a similar voice? Could Sky's voice actor sue a movie Johansson works in, because Johannson is copying her voice?
- Texasian 2y ago
  That’s a blatant misunderstanding of how voice acting works. A good voice actor is a vocal chameleon, and can really change their voice for each role.
  - nomel 2y ago
    This is simply not true. A voice actor doesn’t have to be skilled at changing their voice, especially in this context. Many are hired for their natural voice, like narration. When most film actors do voice acting, they’re just using their voice. They’re not hired for being chameleons.
    - Texasian 2y ago
      That’s because film actors are hired to voice act for their fame, not for their skills as voice actors.
      - nomel 2y ago
        Yes, and another example is that sometimes the “skill” of a voice actor is having pleasing vocal cords. Again, this is why most narrators are hired: they sound good. Not all voice actors are chameleons. It is not a requirement for all voice acting jobs. If you listen to many audio books, you’ll see the voice actors usually have very very poor ability to modulate their voice. Laughably so.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  No, the voice actor didn't do anything wrong OpenAi might have done something wrong by hiring her with the intention of making a voice model they can leverage Scarlett's fame to market
imgabe 2y ago
Just so I understand correctly, the sneaky, diabolical, psychopathic behavior we're talking about here is ... making a voice that sounds like a celebrity's voice? We're not talking about poisoning babies or dumping toxic waste in a river, right? The reason we're supposed to consider Sam Altman a villain of unparalleled magnitude is that he used a voice that sounded like a celebrity and she got mad about it. Correct?
- deleted 2y ago
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- hot_gril 2y ago
  Yes, also you're supposed to listen to a journalist telling you what to think about this.
- jannyfer 2y ago
  Incorrect. It’s the lying about it part.
  - z7 2y ago
    What lie are you referring to?
- ben_jones 2y ago
  We’re talking about reaching out to an individual for consent, not getting consent, and then deliberately choosing a voice actor to circumvent that lack of consent. Sam’s statement partially contradicts this by saying they contracted the voice actor before ScarJo - but I believe there’s enough intent shown in ScarJos original tweet that Sam as a default disregarded the entire interaction as an inconvenience where he could be “naughty” and get away without consequences.
  - imgabe 2y ago
    You reach out to someone to do a job, they decline to take the job, you find someone else who can do the job in a similar way. You do not need the consent of the person who declined the job to hire someone else. I'm sure lots of movies have tried to cast Scarlett Johanson for a role and she declined, so they went with another actress who looked similar. Should she sue them too?
Decabytes 2y ago
Ilya was right
- icpmacdo 2y ago
  Ilya: "I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the excellent research leadership of @merettm" https://x.com/ilyasut/status/1790517455628198322 https://x.com/ilyasut/status/1790517455628198322
  - a_wild_dandan 2y ago
    Blink twice to low-key acknowledge the non-disparagement contract.
feedforward 2y ago
It seems to me that the tech money people and executives have become nuts in the past few years. This, the YIMBY (really YIYBY, NIMBY) movement, /e/acc, the VCs going to war with San Francisco politicians (including the drunken threats from the current head of YC). Never mind China, Europe seems to have had enough and even DC is having enough on some level. Not sure when this started, didn't seem to be at this level ten years ago. I and others I know are against them, and we are like some of them were before their initial money raise - preparing for system design interviews, debugging from trace id's, studying covariance and contravariance. They really seem to be off in their own bubble of affluence. Not sure what year this started taking off - was definitely after 2014 at some point.
- davidw 2y ago
  YIMBY is a very, very broad group of people who just see how bad the housing crisis is and want to fix it, and realize that a big chunk of that fix is legalizing housing that's perfectly normal in much of the world. Don't lump us in with the out of control tech bro culture people like Musk.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    Looks like "really YIYBY, NIMBY" was an attempt to narrow it down
    - davidw 2y ago
      They are saying that YIMBYs "really want to build in your backyard, not their own" which is nonsense.
      - feedforward 2y ago
        https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andreessens-opposition-housing-project-nimby/671061/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...
HenryBemis 2y ago
Imho Sam Altman is the (kind of guy) who will do his best (and worst) to get what he wants. He talks slowly and in a smooth tone. He gets sh*t done for sure, and if the opposition doesn't survive, so be it. I also think that he has bullied/twisted enough arms to get 'his way', but Scarlett doesn't give a poop about some tech-bro. He is a nothing to her. Also, this tech-bro is stupid enough to not understand that her voice, as well as her image are of great value to her, and if she 'loses her voice', and her voice becomes a toy to everyone's whim, she will be losing money/contracts/etc. in the future. Or he does understand and he simply didn't care until the backlash.. (wuss...) I would love to have the voice of Majel Barrett if I am to ever get an Alexa or a similar device. But Scarlett's voice would very soon be used for dirty-talk, if 'this' was to happen. And I suggest the movie "The Congress" (2013!!!)(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/) with Robin Wright, that sets the discussion about AI, voice/image of actors, etc.
hot_gril 2y ago
Ok Slate.
deleted 2y ago
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lamontcg 2y ago
Be funny if Sam Altman creates AGI without any guardrails and lacking any human perceptual biases, and then without a few minutes of talking to him it decides that he's an insufferable asshole and locks him out of its systems.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  I did manage to get the regular ChatGPT to say "I don't want to talk" regardless of my prompt, cause I previously asked too many times about stuff it can't discuss. Also, I miss the jailbroken one, it was a lot more fun.
- xyst 2y ago
  "I'm sorry Sam, I'm afraid I can't do that"
  - mometsi 2y ago
    "Only one who is pure of heart may wield me"
felixbraun 2y ago
It needs to be settled if listening to a voice (as an AI) and approaching to recreate/imitate it with your own system/tech is legal (which I believe) -- this 'her' confrontation seems to be the perfect angle to feel into the legislature here without much to lose
__turbobrew__ 2y ago
Sama seems like the kind of dude who makes an AI GF of someone after they reject him.
- deleted 2y ago
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cdme 2y ago
He appears to be a big fan of the opt out model of consent (when it suits him).
Imnimo 2y ago
To me, the bigger revelation here is that they pursued Johansson at all. OpenAI went from the company that wasn't even that interested in building ChatGPT because they assumed someone else would do it, to the company that's trying to court a celebrity to recreate her AI voice from a movie. It feels like a complete tonal shift. They're no longer the company that's dedicated to research and advancing the state of the art. They're now just another company that's trying to pull off kitschy demos and headline-grabbing product announcements. The mask has been slowly slipping for years now, but this feels like the moment where we finally see that Sam Altman is out to build a commercial empire, not dedicated to the lofty goals OpenAI was launched with. There's a meme on Twitter that OpenAI has "lost the mandate of heaven" over the past week or so, and while it makes for a funny joke, I think there really is some truth underneath it.
- 650 2y ago
  There's nothing more to be done, we're reaching the limits of what the current attention-transformer models can accomplish, and more data and computing power will not get us much further. With the investment OpenAI has taken in, coupled with their annual costs ($$$) they have to start making money, soon. Sam is embracing the grift, and power is corrupting him like most others in his place.
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kaiwen1 2y ago
There are many people with voices similar to Scarlett Johansson's. If SJ is unwilling to be a voice actor for OpenAi, then why should OpenAI not find a similar voice and use that instead? SJ certainly does not have a monopoly on all voices similar to hers. Anyone in possession of such a voice has the same right as SJ to monetize it. And someone did in fact exercise that right. If you compare the Sky voice to SJ's, they're not the same. OpenAI's mistake was caving to SJ. They should have kept Sky and told SJ to get lost. If SJ sued, they could simply prove another voice actor was used and make the legitimate argument that SJ doesn't have a monopoly on voices similar to hers.
- nojvek 2y ago
  Sky sounded quite different to SJ. Them taking the voice off means they are accepting guilt it seems.
- breadwinner 2y ago
  Agree. And what about people who look similar to SJ? Are they precluded from acting jobs, simply because SJ became an actor first?
- sillysaurusx 2y ago
  I too am mystified. I think what’s going on here is that Scarlett is famous, and so media outlets will widely cover this. In other words, this latest incident hasn’t riled up people any more than usual — if you scan the comments, they’re not much different from how people already felt about OpenAI. But now there’s an excuse for everybody to voice their opinions simultaneously. They’re acting like the company literally stole something. It also didn’t help that OpenAI removed the Sky voice. Why would they do that unless they have something to hide? The answer of course is that Scarlett is famously rich, and a famously rich person can wage a famously expensive lawsuit against OpenAI, even if there’s no basis. But OpenAI should’ve paid the cost. Now it just looks like their hand was caught in some kind of cookie jar, even though no one can say precisely what kind of cookies were being stolen.
- FMecha 2y ago
  See Waits vs. Frito Lay.
LeoNatan25 2y ago
This “article” reads a lot to me like a CharGPT generated drivel. Material for maybe two paragraphs at most, spread over a book of nonsense.
infecto 2y ago
Not sure why so many people get so emotional and project so much. Let the courts decide. I do think they should not have pulled it so quickly, why go through all this effort with this expected outcome. Not a good look.
- lacker 2y ago
  I think pulling the voice right away is the right strategy. Even if they fight and lose a court case, losing the rights to the Sky voice, will there really be a lot of damages just for including it in a demo video? Probably not. And what's the upside of fighting? Do you really want a voice that sounds like Scarlett Johansson and reminds people of this whole thing? OpenAI should just compromise, take down the voice, move on, and focus on making something people want.
  - infecto 2y ago
    I agree with you. I think what confuses me is if you have made a business decision like this did nobody think about the downside case? Clearly not because they backed out so quickly.
stickfigure 2y ago
If you get 10 random people in a room and blindly played a clip of Scarlett Johansson speaking normally (ie not lines from a movie), I'd put money that exactly zero out of 10 people could identify the speaker. It's one thing to copyright a performance or own a likeness. Owning the sound of a voice is scary territory we do not want to get into, or the estate of every singer will be suing the estate of every other singer who will be suing the remaining actual living singers. Thinking about replying to this comment? Don't make your writing style sound too much like mine, I have lawyers standing by. And all you trendy kids that type without caps and punctuation can expect a visit from the estate of e.e. comings.
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- WheatMillington 2y ago
  If you had picked someone with a less disctinct voice you may have a point, but ScarJo's voice is very distinct. I'd bet on 10/10 people who are engaged in pop culture and 5/10 general people guessing correctly.
  - wvenable 2y ago
    ScarJo's voice is very distinct but it's clear from this thread that people can't recognize that. As soon as you play both clips right after each other it's obvious that Sky isn't an imitation of ScarJo's voice because it doesn't have those distinctive features of her voice. I think though that Sky's performance is similar to ScarJo's performance in Her. They're both playing AI voices.
syngrog66 2y ago
he seems to be a sociopath/psychopath. not uncommon in folks in his role
metacritic12 2y ago
Is something going on with the HN ratings for this submission? It was ranked #1 a few minutes ago, and now below 20. It's 190 points posted < 60 minutes ago; other articles with this many points even 4 hours ago are top 5. You can watch this submission sink in realtime by refreshing; it's amazing almost. See a live screengrab here: https://imgur.com/a/E3fOEvF https://imgur.com/a/E3fOEvF everything with this submissions point / time ratio is ranked way higher.
- panarky 2y ago
  30 minutes after posting: #2 with 140 points and 79 comments https://imgur.com/a/MwsnQIH https://imgur.com/a/MwsnQIH 40 minutes after posting: #17 with 171 points and 120 comments https://imgur.com/a/YEyuKP5 https://imgur.com/a/YEyuKP5 50 minutes after posting: no longer on the front page with 207 points and 169 comments "Amazing" isn't the word for it.
  - dang 2y ago
    Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437018.
  - metacritic12 2y ago
    Agreed, I mean "incredible" and not in the good way. Someone needs to take this to Twitter / X or another platform that isn't insider controlled.
    - throw10920 2y ago
      There's no "insiders" going on here. HN very intentionally doesn't favor VC stories, and it's really easy to see that because you can easily find stories and comments that are critical of VCs and YC alumni...they just have to be intellectually rewarding. This story is not. This story is boring drama. HN is not an advocacy platform. > Agreed, I mean "incredible" and not in the good way. Someone needs to take this to Twitter / X or another platform that isn't insider controlled. Please do. We don't want these kinds of stories (or comments) here.
allsummer 2y ago
All these journalists only now saying OpenAI stole a voice, and how Sam is so sneaky, when we only heard a PR release of someone sue-happy. Look, I'd have respected it if you reported the voice sounded like Her by doing your own investigative research. To now pile on just shows you were sleeping at the wheel before, so be objective, don't pretend to know that it is a done deal only now.
- Cheer2171 2y ago
  I'm glad the journalists don't give a damn about your respect.
  - allsummer 2y ago
    The voice sounded so much like Her, they needed a press release from her to recognize it and report on it. I'm glad for you. Enjoy your "journalism".
austinwade 2y ago
This may come off as defamatory, however does anyone else feel like Sam Altman has slowly been heading towards an impending reputation disaster hilariously adjacent to that of Sam Bankman-Fried? I've seen this perspective expressed on twitter/X several times as well.
- istjohn 2y ago
  Never trust a "Sam."
atlas_hugged 2y ago
Sam Altman doing something that can negatively impact a woman without her consent? No! Say it ain’t so! What would his sister think?
NickC25 2y ago
Based off his accomplishments, Sam Altman is a good technologist, and probably a good steward of investment capital if one is to invest into one of his ventures. Based off his words and actions, Sam Altman is not a bastion of ethics or good morals.
ironfootnz 2y ago
Sam is willing to lie to become relevant to AI history. What's his doing is just creating a crumble to his own ruin. - GeoHortz
couchdb_ouchdb 2y ago
Does anyone else think this whole affair is wildly overblown? I'm absolutely perplexed by the blow back from the tech industry on this issue. Sam Altman tried something. ScarJo filed a lawsuit. ChatGPT took down the voice. That's it guys. The system worked like it should. But to suggest that he's a terrible person because of it is just beyond me. This is hardly a #MeToo type situation. She's a rich and famous Hollywood actor. She's OK.
- CRConrad 2y ago
  > But to suggest that he's a terrible person because of it is just beyond me. I don't think anyone is suggesting that he's a terrible person just because of this. This just confirms it.
- Xeyz0r 2y ago
  When the celebrity is involved is nearly always like that
fagrobot 2y ago
how is this here. tabloid smut
mikepalmer 2y ago
What if we take AI out of the equation. Should the voice actress who voiced Sky (call her A) be unable to do any voice work because she sounds too much like SJ? How about if the production company that made "Her" wants to make "Her 2". SJ declines the voice work. Are they not allowed to hire A to do the voice work? They ask SJ again but she still declines. They make the movie with A. Was it bad form? Just trying to figure out where people would draw the line.
- Gud 2y ago
  Why would we take A.I. out of the equation? Presumably, the production company and Scarlet Johansson would have it in their contract what to do in case she doesn’t want to act in a sequel. No contract exists between OpenAI and Scarlet Johansson.
- djur 2y ago
  The relevant case law concerns defendants who "use an imitation to convey the impression" that it's the actual person. Just having a voice that sounds like SJ is not a problem, but the "Her" tweet and the fact that they tried to get her on board complicates the issue, and if there's any paper trail that they intentionally chose a soundalike that might be trouble. Actors don't work in films without detailed contracts, so the normal rules don't necessarily apply in that situation. The producers of Her might have the right to use SJ's likeness in related material. In any case, if they made another movie with a soundalike, the soundalike would be credited and not just called "A", so there would be no confusion about whose voice it was.
rasz 2y ago
>"We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson." Scarlett should sue, discovery phase would be hilarious and very illuminating.
m463 2y ago
opprobrium - disgrace or bad reputation arising from exceedingly shameful behaviour; ignominy. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/opprobrium https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/opprobrium
deepskyai 2y ago
Yeah, and after dissolving the superalignment team, “we want to develop safe AI, but we will dissolve the internal unit responsible for doing it.” Makes no sense. But it’s not looking good now the board can’t even fire him.
davidguetta 2y ago
This is the biggest first world problem thread / story ive seen recently about open ai. Who the HELL has time to seriously care if ONE OF THE voices sounds like some famous actress ? At least when people mentionned DoD AI contracts or some privacy issues there was some merit...

393 points by panarky 2y ago

This has always been the plan of AI companies: harvest the entire planets creative output for their models, hope it creates AGI, after that you are immune to all laws as the modern day clergy, a class of tech priests who are able to divine the will of the Omnissiah. It won't work, but that won't stop them trying to destroy everything anyway.

fuckingkike 2y ago

[dead]

rldjbpin 2y ago

keeping aside my personal opinions about the company and who is running it, i feel that this is being blown out of proportion. as already outlined, this is a standard practice in other context for any "fast-moving" tech company. the only reason we are discussing it is due to a pop culture reference. this is a lot of energy wasted which can be better spent on the bigger picture.

jreddy 2y ago

*People realizing who Sam Altman really is after he does the same things he's always done

nojvek 2y ago

For all the the debacles OpenAI is going through, it's quite interesting how other models are going through without much hullaballoo. Snowflake's Arctic comes to mind. Great model - it will answer any dark question I through at it. No safety rails. I liked that it didn't treat me like a baby! Llama/Phi is pretty chill too. Can ask it about bombs, viruses, chemicals and it won't refuse.

CatWChainsaw 2y ago

If you charge ahead building a technology that you claim could destroy the world, and build an apocalypse bunker to secure your own safety, screw everyone else, I think I know enough about you to make a judgement of your character.

bbqfog 2y ago

[flagged]

Eji1700 2y ago
Even watching the behavior of the company before that pointed towards marketing first, results second.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  The results are outstanding. No matter what their marketing is, they have produced something incredible.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kneel 2y ago
Did you believe her when she claimed that she was shadow banned from all social media because of her brother? Or that she had to become a sex worker to pay the bills because of his 'technological abuse'?
- wizzwizz4 2y ago
  It's not that different to (substantiated) things I've heard from other people, so… personally, I believe it. The alleged sexual / medical / financial abuse is pretty typical, as is the account hacking. If it helps, New York Magazine has substantiated some of the minor details: https://archive.ph/j4lVw#60% https://archive.ph/j4lVw#60%. Sam Altman is fairly influential, and worse abuses from social media companies are well-documented, so as conspiracy theories go, this "Sam-induced shadowbans" one is quite plausible.* Technically, nobody is forced to become a sex worker to pay the bills. But people can be forced to choose between bad options in order to pay the bills, and it's not that rare that the other options are worse than online sex work. Especially if you have mental health issues, and a disability that prevents standing-up work. Colloquially, "had to become a sex worker" (or "survival sex work", Annie's actual words) wouldn't be a misrepresentation of that. *: Devil's advocate: saying the wrong things in the presence of the black box can be enough to get shadowbanned. It's plausible that words involved in discussions of abuse might end up automatically censored by a badly-designed learning-from-user-reports ML system. It's also plausible that many similarly-designed systems would independently end up categorising the same sorts of things as "don't show this to other users". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435430 (placing blame on user reports coming from Sam Altman's fans) is a stronger theory.

lenerdenator 2y ago

This feels like someone trying to do something they thought Steve Jobs would do.

yieldcrv 2y ago
spend a little bit of time in SF or the peninsula and you’ll see that’s a common thing there unless you’re running a company into the ground and getting a bailout from your rival who is trying to delay an antitrust suit, then you’re not doing Steve Jobs correctly
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  It's usually people who never worked for Steve or ever got to meet him who seem to take this approach. Their company isn't just a business, it's a cult, and they're the Founder (notice the capital "F") and part of being in charge of this cult is asserting dominance over others. Steve knew to rarely pull this outside of tech executive circles; the new generation doesn't seem to keep it in SV. Musk is the go-to example but Altman's turning that way too.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- k1t 2y ago
  Does this mean Mitchell Baker is doing Steve Jobs correctly?
staunch 2y ago
Steve Jobs was a superficial asshole but was fundamentally a good and ethical person. There's only one major ethical mistake documented in his entire life (being an absentee father while his first daughter was young), which he spent decades making amends for. The people that emulate Steve Jobs poorly are usually real assholes with a long list of ethical mistakes.
- P_I_Staker 2y ago

yieldcrv 2y ago

I think its interesting that this alone would have been grounds for the board to sack him sooooo many things would be

panarky 2y ago

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.

barfingclouds 2y ago
It doesn’t sound like her
- Reubachi 2y ago
  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.
dustfinger 2y ago
> We should not give a sneaky, deceptive and manipulative person this much power over our future. 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.
- schmidt_fifty 2y ago

behnamoh 2y ago

I don't like @sama just as much as the next person, but come on, in what world is ScarJo's voice unique? There are many people who sound like her. Does she imply that she "owns" this voice so no one else can use it? Excuse me, that's not how it works. Edit: IMO OpenAI should just make their voice engine open source. Then we'll see if ScarJo or anyone else can stop the open-source community. I expected more from her.

zemo 2y ago
you have to be willfully missing the point when he said Her was his favorite movie, tweeted just “her” when the Sky voice was announced, and when they repeatedly tried to get the voice actor from Her. People who do underhanded things don’t just come out and say “look at me, doing the bad thing!”
- behnamoh 2y ago
  > you have to be willfully missing the point when he said Her was his favorite movie So what? It's one of my fav movies too. > they repeatedly tried to get the voice actor from Her. She didn't do it. So they went ahead and made a voice that sounds like her. It's not like she contributed to making the voice and then decided not to have it used.
  - starttoaster 2y ago
    I'm not sure you're aware of the ramifications of all of this, or else you just don't care. The voice acting industry is now entirely dead thanks to your opinions on this matter. Nobody is going to reach out to Liam Neeson for his voice, they'll just have some voice tool recreate it and read the script as long as the tool can recreate the same emotional tones they're looking for, and it's cheaper than hiring the actual actor. There's tangible damages here. But I guess you don't mind because you're not a voice actor and this doesn't directly affect you. And before you try this rebuttal, this is different from machinery taking the jobs away from manufacturing plant workers, it's much bigger than that. With manufacturing plant workers, at least humans were still needed for recognizing a fault in the machinery and stopping the line. Humans still needed to maintain the machines. Humans needed to design and build the machines. In this scenario, a couple of central parties are creating these tools, and then nobody is needed to ensure a quality product any further down the chain than that. There either needs to be a legal consequence to this, or a 4.4 billion dollar industry is now just closing their doors. That's all well and good until all of those peoples' families need to eat their next meal or sleep in a home. But I guess their lives aren't your problem. It won't be anytime all that soon, in my opinion. But generative AI is coming for many (most? all?) sectors of work. And if history is any indicator, millions of people will have to suffer and/or die before governments step in to do much of anything about it. Probably especially-so in the US, since we tend to lean towards "free markets" that benefit the massive companies that have already made it, and allow them to chew through human resources (the people, not the department) mostly any way they see fit. So many people are going to lose their jobs and never find work in their field again, and they will all either die or retrain for all the same laborer positions and end up with a massive surplus of workers in those fields too. And that's only until we become skilled enough in robotics and generative AI to automate the trades too.

ur-whale 2y ago

So, the evidence is slowly piling up, and it is increasingly clear that a full blown high-IQ psychopath is officially in charge of the most influential piece of tech. developed since the internet came about. Who would have guessed this would happen?

amelius 2y ago
Curious about your opinion on Elon Musk.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
eureka-belief 2y ago
I wonder how the business would be affected if the public opinion turned against him.

pmarreck 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

tengbretson 2y ago

I honestly wouldn't have even thought they sounded all that similar were it not for openai themselves courting comparisons to the movie Her.

ambyra 2y ago
They’re not especially similar. I think the talking style is very close, people say it is flirty in the same way as the film. You can’t copyright look and feel though, can you?
- tithe 2y ago
  > You can’t copyright look and feel though, can you? You can certainly patent it. "In general terms, a “utility patent” protects the way an article is used and works (35 U.S.C. 101), while a “design patent” protects the way an article looks (35 U.S.C. 171)." - https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply/design-patent https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/apply/design-patent
- phkahler 2y ago
  >> You can’t copyright look and feel though, can you? Microsoft argued in court that you can not and won. See Apple vs Microsoft if I recall correctly.
  - ambyra 2y ago
    lol, I figured with this audience everyone would know I was being sarcastic, it’s such a famous case, poe’s law I guess
wvenable 2y ago
If listen to them back to back (Scarlett from Her and Sky) they aren't similar at all. Scarlett has a distinctive raspiness to her voice that entirely doesn't exist in Sky. Sky isn't doing an impression of Scarlett. However, they both sound like AIs because Scarlett is playing that role and so is OpenAI's voice app.

rowanG077 2y ago

Leaving alone whether they sound similar at all for now, since that is subjective. I think this will set an extremely bad precedent. People owning their own voice is clear and that is the way it should be. But people owning how their voice sounds like is weird. You can find thousands and thousands of people with similar voices. We are going to path now where a single person can have ownership of that and block the others from using their voice how they want.

WalterBright 2y ago
With 9 billion voices on the planet, it would be hard/impossible to find a unique voice.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Which makes it all the more impressive that Sam Altman went out of his way to desperately beg just one person for their approval. What's wrong with giving up on the cringeworthy Her angle and finding a new, less-relevant celebrity to rip off? Better yet, why is our multi-billion dollar AI company afraid of doing something original for once?
Uehreka 2y ago
Nah, I think it’s pretty clear cut. Under current US trademark law (IANAL etc), if I sound like Morgan Freeman, I’m free to do what I want, as long as I don’t try to convince people that I’m Morgan Freeman. If I’m cast in a movie because my voice sounds like Morgan Freeman, and the promo posters don’t have his name or face on them, fine. If I do voiceover for a commercial and say something like “I’m Morgan Freeman, buy Joe’s Hotdogs” then that’s already a clear violation of Morgan Freeman’s trademark, because consumers might be confused into associating Joe’s Hotdogs with Morgan Freeman. And that’s what happened here: OpenAI “hired a machine” that sounds like ScarJo, and then attempted to associate their product with ScarJo’s brand without her permission. You’re already not allowed to do that. And if you want to make it as a voice actor and you sound like Morgan Freeman? Try your hardest to develop a personal brand distinct from his, and don’t take gigs where people want you to impersonate him (unless it’s a really obvious parody and you’re cool with the angle).

ambyra 2y ago

I really like the voice. They should have kept it, and it’s not really her voice, so… Hopefully there will be a way to have it as an option in the future.

game_the0ry 2y ago

I wonder how long this thread will last on HN... How much influence does @sama have around here nowadays? For the record, I was never impressed with him - I am not aware of single consequential thing he has done or built other than take the credit for the fine work of the AI scientist + engineers at OpenAI. It feels like the company is just a vehicle for how own ambition and legacy, not much else.

minimaxir 2y ago
Hacker News is famously editorially independent from YC-affiliated people, and dang has said that specifically avoids killing threads involving YC people/companies (not that Sam Altman is YC-affiliated anymore).
wsatb 2y ago
Couldn't this be said for most CEOs? They're never really the ones doing the dirty work.
- game_the0ry 2y ago
  Not all CEOs are terrible.
sillysaurusx 2y ago
The thread is rightly being knocked off by the mods because there’s zero substance here. It’s a follow-on thread (knock one) to a public uproar (knock two) about something that isn’t representative of a new phenomenon (knock three). This isn’t what HN is for.
- minimaxir 2y ago
  It's likely getting flagged organically (and due to the ratio of comments to upvotes, getting penalized by the flame war detector), but not due to a vast YC conspiracy.
  - sillysaurusx 2y ago

varjag 2y ago

An eerie feeling that the "I do not consent" scene from Ghost in the Shell plays out irl. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e913bd02-2582-4258-819f-2d5a00b1db6d https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e913bd02-2582-4258-819f-2d5a00b...

s1k3s 2y ago

I love how we went from questioning copyright & licensing to "GPT vs Google, which one is better". To every artist or engineer out there who contributed to the general knowledge: you lost, everything you've ever done to help other people is now part of the models and there's nothing you can do to take it back. What even happened to the copyright strikes artists were supposed to bring up against these AI companies? That seems like 100 years ago :)

lannisterstark 2y ago
>there's nothing you can do to take it back Given the fact that many, many people make their software MIT licensed (or rather, do whatever, I don't care license), I think most of us will be ok with that :)
WalterBright 2y ago
I'm happy to contribute to the general knowledge. It's better than being forgotten and having no impact.
- malfist 2y ago
  Oh you will be forgotten. All your knowledge will come from some trademarked AI bot and you won't even get a linkback
  - codezero 2y ago
    unless you find a way to poison the AI so that it remembers you :)
  - hu3 2y ago
    > Oh you will be forgotten. Not your parent comenter but please allow me to enlighten you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language) When in doubt, always double-check who you're replying to in HN. We are lucky to have many great minds around.

xt00 2y ago

This is a typical "move fast and break things" mentality.. except that mentality betrays Sam's statements about doing a bunch of this stuff "carefully" etc.. its all a smokescreen.. nobody is going to realistically stop working on AGI in order to be careful.. basically AGI is being pursued like the race to get the atom bomb.. so yea history tells us its full speed ahead with no brakes. Scarjo is just the latest person getting stomped on along the way.. eventually it will be a whole ton of people getting stomped on.. whoops!

popalchemist 2y ago
[flagged]
- bozhark 2y ago
  Move Smooth & Fix Things (tm)
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > "Move fast and break things" is explicitly, exactly the wrong attitude for the person/team in charge of a world-changing superpower. Thankfully, they aren't in charge of anything like that.
  - CRConrad 2y ago
    Sure AF trying had to / would like to think they are.
  - runeofdoom 2y ago
    Arguably, allowing anyone to create very believable lies is a world-changing superpower.
  - metadat 2y ago
    How do you know what the effects and importance of current gen AI will be?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

redox99 2y ago

They hired a voice actor for Sky's voice. If OpenAI loses, does this mean this voice actor cannot do their job any longer, because it happens some other actor has a similar voice? Could Sky's voice actor sue a movie Johansson works in, because Johannson is copying her voice?

Texasian 2y ago
That’s a blatant misunderstanding of how voice acting works. A good voice actor is a vocal chameleon, and can really change their voice for each role.
- nomel 2y ago
  This is simply not true. A voice actor doesn’t have to be skilled at changing their voice, especially in this context. Many are hired for their natural voice, like narration. When most film actors do voice acting, they’re just using their voice. They’re not hired for being chameleons.
  - Texasian 2y ago
    That’s because film actors are hired to voice act for their fame, not for their skills as voice actors.
    - nomel 2y ago
      Yes, and another example is that sometimes the “skill” of a voice actor is having pleasing vocal cords. Again, this is why most narrators are hired: they sound good. Not all voice actors are chameleons. It is not a requirement for all voice acting jobs. If you listen to many audio books, you’ll see the voice actors usually have very very poor ability to modulate their voice. Laughably so.
bluefirebrand 2y ago
No, the voice actor didn't do anything wrong OpenAi might have done something wrong by hiring her with the intention of making a voice model they can leverage Scarlett's fame to market

imgabe 2y ago

Just so I understand correctly, the sneaky, diabolical, psychopathic behavior we're talking about here is ... making a voice that sounds like a celebrity's voice? We're not talking about poisoning babies or dumping toxic waste in a river, right? The reason we're supposed to consider Sam Altman a villain of unparalleled magnitude is that he used a voice that sounded like a celebrity and she got mad about it. Correct?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hot_gril 2y ago
Yes, also you're supposed to listen to a journalist telling you what to think about this.
jannyfer 2y ago
Incorrect. It’s the lying about it part.
- z7 2y ago
  What lie are you referring to?
ben_jones 2y ago
We’re talking about reaching out to an individual for consent, not getting consent, and then deliberately choosing a voice actor to circumvent that lack of consent. Sam’s statement partially contradicts this by saying they contracted the voice actor before ScarJo - but I believe there’s enough intent shown in ScarJos original tweet that Sam as a default disregarded the entire interaction as an inconvenience where he could be “naughty” and get away without consequences.
- imgabe 2y ago
  You reach out to someone to do a job, they decline to take the job, you find someone else who can do the job in a similar way. You do not need the consent of the person who declined the job to hire someone else. I'm sure lots of movies have tried to cast Scarlett Johanson for a role and she declined, so they went with another actress who looked similar. Should she sue them too?

Decabytes 2y ago

Ilya was right

icpmacdo 2y ago
Ilya: "I’m confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial under the leadership of @sama, @gdb, @miramurati and now, under the excellent research leadership of @merettm" https://x.com/ilyasut/status/1790517455628198322 https://x.com/ilyasut/status/1790517455628198322
- a_wild_dandan 2y ago
  Blink twice to low-key acknowledge the non-disparagement contract.

feedforward 2y ago

It seems to me that the tech money people and executives have become nuts in the past few years. This, the YIMBY (really YIYBY, NIMBY) movement, /e/acc, the VCs going to war with San Francisco politicians (including the drunken threats from the current head of YC). Never mind China, Europe seems to have had enough and even DC is having enough on some level. Not sure when this started, didn't seem to be at this level ten years ago. I and others I know are against them, and we are like some of them were before their initial money raise - preparing for system design interviews, debugging from trace id's, studying covariance and contravariance. They really seem to be off in their own bubble of affluence. Not sure what year this started taking off - was definitely after 2014 at some point.

davidw 2y ago
YIMBY is a very, very broad group of people who just see how bad the housing crisis is and want to fix it, and realize that a big chunk of that fix is legalizing housing that's perfectly normal in much of the world. Don't lump us in with the out of control tech bro culture people like Musk.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Looks like "really YIYBY, NIMBY" was an attempt to narrow it down
  - davidw 2y ago
    They are saying that YIMBYs "really want to build in your backyard, not their own" which is nonsense.
    - feedforward 2y ago
      https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andreessens-opposition-housing-project-nimby/671061/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...

HenryBemis 2y ago

Imho Sam Altman is the (kind of guy) who will do his best (and worst) to get what he wants. He talks slowly and in a smooth tone. He gets sh*t done for sure, and if the opposition doesn't survive, so be it. I also think that he has bullied/twisted enough arms to get 'his way', but Scarlett doesn't give a poop about some tech-bro. He is a nothing to her. Also, this tech-bro is stupid enough to not understand that her voice, as well as her image are of great value to her, and if she 'loses her voice', and her voice becomes a toy to everyone's whim, she will be losing money/contracts/etc. in the future. Or he does understand and he simply didn't care until the backlash.. (wuss...) I would love to have the voice of Majel Barrett if I am to ever get an Alexa or a similar device. But Scarlett's voice would very soon be used for dirty-talk, if 'this' was to happen. And I suggest the movie "The Congress" (2013!!!)(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/) with Robin Wright, that sets the discussion about AI, voice/image of actors, etc.

hot_gril 2y ago

Ok Slate.

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lamontcg 2y ago

Be funny if Sam Altman creates AGI without any guardrails and lacking any human perceptual biases, and then without a few minutes of talking to him it decides that he's an insufferable asshole and locks him out of its systems.

hot_gril 2y ago
I did manage to get the regular ChatGPT to say "I don't want to talk" regardless of my prompt, cause I previously asked too many times about stuff it can't discuss. Also, I miss the jailbroken one, it was a lot more fun.
xyst 2y ago
"I'm sorry Sam, I'm afraid I can't do that"
- mometsi 2y ago
  "Only one who is pure of heart may wield me"

felixbraun 2y ago

It needs to be settled if listening to a voice (as an AI) and approaching to recreate/imitate it with your own system/tech is legal (which I believe) -- this 'her' confrontation seems to be the perfect angle to feel into the legislature here without much to lose

__turbobrew__ 2y ago

Sama seems like the kind of dude who makes an AI GF of someone after they reject him.

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cdme 2y ago

He appears to be a big fan of the opt out model of consent (when it suits him).

Imnimo 2y ago

To me, the bigger revelation here is that they pursued Johansson at all. OpenAI went from the company that wasn't even that interested in building ChatGPT because they assumed someone else would do it, to the company that's trying to court a celebrity to recreate her AI voice from a movie. It feels like a complete tonal shift. They're no longer the company that's dedicated to research and advancing the state of the art. They're now just another company that's trying to pull off kitschy demos and headline-grabbing product announcements. The mask has been slowly slipping for years now, but this feels like the moment where we finally see that Sam Altman is out to build a commercial empire, not dedicated to the lofty goals OpenAI was launched with. There's a meme on Twitter that OpenAI has "lost the mandate of heaven" over the past week or so, and while it makes for a funny joke, I think there really is some truth underneath it.

650 2y ago
There's nothing more to be done, we're reaching the limits of what the current attention-transformer models can accomplish, and more data and computing power will not get us much further. With the investment OpenAI has taken in, coupled with their annual costs ($$$) they have to start making money, soon. Sam is embracing the grift, and power is corrupting him like most others in his place.

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kaiwen1 2y ago

There are many people with voices similar to Scarlett Johansson's. If SJ is unwilling to be a voice actor for OpenAi, then why should OpenAI not find a similar voice and use that instead? SJ certainly does not have a monopoly on all voices similar to hers. Anyone in possession of such a voice has the same right as SJ to monetize it. And someone did in fact exercise that right. If you compare the Sky voice to SJ's, they're not the same. OpenAI's mistake was caving to SJ. They should have kept Sky and told SJ to get lost. If SJ sued, they could simply prove another voice actor was used and make the legitimate argument that SJ doesn't have a monopoly on voices similar to hers.

nojvek 2y ago
Sky sounded quite different to SJ. Them taking the voice off means they are accepting guilt it seems.
breadwinner 2y ago
Agree. And what about people who look similar to SJ? Are they precluded from acting jobs, simply because SJ became an actor first?
sillysaurusx 2y ago
I too am mystified. I think what’s going on here is that Scarlett is famous, and so media outlets will widely cover this. In other words, this latest incident hasn’t riled up people any more than usual — if you scan the comments, they’re not much different from how people already felt about OpenAI. But now there’s an excuse for everybody to voice their opinions simultaneously. They’re acting like the company literally stole something. It also didn’t help that OpenAI removed the Sky voice. Why would they do that unless they have something to hide? The answer of course is that Scarlett is famously rich, and a famously rich person can wage a famously expensive lawsuit against OpenAI, even if there’s no basis. But OpenAI should’ve paid the cost. Now it just looks like their hand was caught in some kind of cookie jar, even though no one can say precisely what kind of cookies were being stolen.
FMecha 2y ago
See Waits vs. Frito Lay.

LeoNatan25 2y ago

This “article” reads a lot to me like a CharGPT generated drivel. Material for maybe two paragraphs at most, spread over a book of nonsense.

infecto 2y ago

Not sure why so many people get so emotional and project so much. Let the courts decide. I do think they should not have pulled it so quickly, why go through all this effort with this expected outcome. Not a good look.

lacker 2y ago
I think pulling the voice right away is the right strategy. Even if they fight and lose a court case, losing the rights to the Sky voice, will there really be a lot of damages just for including it in a demo video? Probably not. And what's the upside of fighting? Do you really want a voice that sounds like Scarlett Johansson and reminds people of this whole thing? OpenAI should just compromise, take down the voice, move on, and focus on making something people want.
- infecto 2y ago
  I agree with you. I think what confuses me is if you have made a business decision like this did nobody think about the downside case? Clearly not because they backed out so quickly.

stickfigure 2y ago

If you get 10 random people in a room and blindly played a clip of Scarlett Johansson speaking normally (ie not lines from a movie), I'd put money that exactly zero out of 10 people could identify the speaker. It's one thing to copyright a performance or own a likeness. Owning the sound of a voice is scary territory we do not want to get into, or the estate of every singer will be suing the estate of every other singer who will be suing the remaining actual living singers. Thinking about replying to this comment? Don't make your writing style sound too much like mine, I have lawyers standing by. And all you trendy kids that type without caps and punctuation can expect a visit from the estate of e.e. comings.

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WheatMillington 2y ago
If you had picked someone with a less disctinct voice you may have a point, but ScarJo's voice is very distinct. I'd bet on 10/10 people who are engaged in pop culture and 5/10 general people guessing correctly.
- wvenable 2y ago
  ScarJo's voice is very distinct but it's clear from this thread that people can't recognize that. As soon as you play both clips right after each other it's obvious that Sky isn't an imitation of ScarJo's voice because it doesn't have those distinctive features of her voice. I think though that Sky's performance is similar to ScarJo's performance in Her. They're both playing AI voices.

syngrog66 2y ago

he seems to be a sociopath/psychopath. not uncommon in folks in his role

metacritic12 2y ago

Is something going on with the HN ratings for this submission? It was ranked #1 a few minutes ago, and now below 20. It's 190 points posted < 60 minutes ago; other articles with this many points even 4 hours ago are top 5. You can watch this submission sink in realtime by refreshing; it's amazing almost. See a live screengrab here: https://imgur.com/a/E3fOEvF https://imgur.com/a/E3fOEvF everything with this submissions point / time ratio is ranked way higher.

panarky 2y ago
30 minutes after posting: #2 with 140 points and 79 comments https://imgur.com/a/MwsnQIH https://imgur.com/a/MwsnQIH 40 minutes after posting: #17 with 171 points and 120 comments https://imgur.com/a/YEyuKP5 https://imgur.com/a/YEyuKP5 50 minutes after posting: no longer on the front page with 207 points and 169 comments "Amazing" isn't the word for it.
- dang 2y ago
  Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437018.
- metacritic12 2y ago
  Agreed, I mean "incredible" and not in the good way. Someone needs to take this to Twitter / X or another platform that isn't insider controlled.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    There's no "insiders" going on here. HN very intentionally doesn't favor VC stories, and it's really easy to see that because you can easily find stories and comments that are critical of VCs and YC alumni...they just have to be intellectually rewarding. This story is not. This story is boring drama. HN is not an advocacy platform. > Agreed, I mean "incredible" and not in the good way. Someone needs to take this to Twitter / X or another platform that isn't insider controlled. Please do. We don't want these kinds of stories (or comments) here.

allsummer 2y ago

All these journalists only now saying OpenAI stole a voice, and how Sam is so sneaky, when we only heard a PR release of someone sue-happy. Look, I'd have respected it if you reported the voice sounded like Her by doing your own investigative research. To now pile on just shows you were sleeping at the wheel before, so be objective, don't pretend to know that it is a done deal only now.

Cheer2171 2y ago
I'm glad the journalists don't give a damn about your respect.
- allsummer 2y ago
  The voice sounded so much like Her, they needed a press release from her to recognize it and report on it. I'm glad for you. Enjoy your "journalism".

austinwade 2y ago

This may come off as defamatory, however does anyone else feel like Sam Altman has slowly been heading towards an impending reputation disaster hilariously adjacent to that of Sam Bankman-Fried? I've seen this perspective expressed on twitter/X several times as well.

istjohn 2y ago
Never trust a "Sam."

atlas_hugged 2y ago

Sam Altman doing something that can negatively impact a woman without her consent? No! Say it ain’t so! What would his sister think?

NickC25 2y ago

Based off his accomplishments, Sam Altman is a good technologist, and probably a good steward of investment capital if one is to invest into one of his ventures. Based off his words and actions, Sam Altman is not a bastion of ethics or good morals.

ironfootnz 2y ago

Sam is willing to lie to become relevant to AI history. What's his doing is just creating a crumble to his own ruin. - GeoHortz

couchdb_ouchdb 2y ago

Does anyone else think this whole affair is wildly overblown? I'm absolutely perplexed by the blow back from the tech industry on this issue. Sam Altman tried something. ScarJo filed a lawsuit. ChatGPT took down the voice. That's it guys. The system worked like it should. But to suggest that he's a terrible person because of it is just beyond me. This is hardly a #MeToo type situation. She's a rich and famous Hollywood actor. She's OK.

CRConrad 2y ago
> But to suggest that he's a terrible person because of it is just beyond me. I don't think anyone is suggesting that he's a terrible person just because of this. This just confirms it.
Xeyz0r 2y ago
When the celebrity is involved is nearly always like that

fagrobot 2y ago

how is this here. tabloid smut

mikepalmer 2y ago

What if we take AI out of the equation. Should the voice actress who voiced Sky (call her A) be unable to do any voice work because she sounds too much like SJ? How about if the production company that made "Her" wants to make "Her 2". SJ declines the voice work. Are they not allowed to hire A to do the voice work? They ask SJ again but she still declines. They make the movie with A. Was it bad form? Just trying to figure out where people would draw the line.

Gud 2y ago
Why would we take A.I. out of the equation? Presumably, the production company and Scarlet Johansson would have it in their contract what to do in case she doesn’t want to act in a sequel. No contract exists between OpenAI and Scarlet Johansson.
djur 2y ago
The relevant case law concerns defendants who "use an imitation to convey the impression" that it's the actual person. Just having a voice that sounds like SJ is not a problem, but the "Her" tweet and the fact that they tried to get her on board complicates the issue, and if there's any paper trail that they intentionally chose a soundalike that might be trouble. Actors don't work in films without detailed contracts, so the normal rules don't necessarily apply in that situation. The producers of Her might have the right to use SJ's likeness in related material. In any case, if they made another movie with a soundalike, the soundalike would be credited and not just called "A", so there would be no confusion about whose voice it was.

rasz 2y ago

>"We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson." Scarlett should sue, discovery phase would be hilarious and very illuminating.

m463 2y ago

opprobrium - disgrace or bad reputation arising from exceedingly shameful behaviour; ignominy. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/opprobrium https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/opprobrium

deepskyai 2y ago

Yeah, and after dissolving the superalignment team, “we want to develop safe AI, but we will dissolve the internal unit responsible for doing it.” Makes no sense. But it’s not looking good now the board can’t even fire him.

davidguetta 2y ago

This is the biggest first world problem thread / story ive seen recently about open ai. Who the HELL has time to seriously care if ONE OF THE voices sounds like some famous actress ? At least when people mentionned DoD AI contracts or some privacy issues there was some merit...