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This whole debacle has me extremely confused. I am not particularly enamored with OpenAI, especially the Sam Altman helmed version of it - I have all the usual
by cthalupa 2y ago
This whole debacle has me extremely confused. I am not particularly enamored with OpenAI, especially the Sam Altman helmed version of it - I have all the usual "Actually ClosedAI," etc. complaints about it. I was hoping the governance structure was enough to force them to be a unique company last year. I think Altman is a snake oil salesman that has failed upwards.
But the Sky voice does not sound like it was trained off of ScarJo, or even off of someone who sounded a whole lot like her. There are some similarities, but, the voice sounds as close to, say, Rashida Jones as it does ScarJo. Yes, Altman posted a dumb tweet referencing Her which obviously looks to be in very poor taste, and yes they obviously wanted ScarJo herself, but does that mean they should not be allowed to have a voice that sounds even remotely similar to her?
It is standard and accepted practice for scriptwriters or directors to have a preferred casting in mind for a role, and when that person isn't able to be cast for whatever reason, for them to pick a person that fits similar criteria. What is different here?
The voices are different enough that I do not believe anyone as close to her as she claims would confuse the two. I pulled up a episode of Jimmy Fallon where she was on and compared the voice to one of the clearest audio videos of the Sky voice from the 4o demos, and they have different pitches, frequently different cadences to speech, etc. There are some similar mannerisms - there's a reason people see the resemblance - but if you isolate the audio of the two I don't think the majority of people would listen to them and go "Yep that's gotta be the same person," especially without all this context biasing their opinions.
- evanmoran 2y agoThey pulled the voice because it sounds similar enough, even if you don’t hear it. There are also several long form articles about it this morning to confirm further that it’s resonating as a major tech story because of those similarities. Probably most importantly the “voice of Her” is probably the #1 voice you shouldn’t try to emulate without permission (with Samuel L Jackson next). It is wild this has happened honestly, but I don’t think people are wrong about who it sounds like.
- qarl 2y agoThe only reason for using a voice that sounds like ScarJo is to create an association between the product and the character in "Her". There is no other reason. And whether you think it's fair or not, intentionally trying to tie your product to a celebrity without their permission is not permitted by the courts. See the Midler case. See the Watts case. Making fun of Darth Vader on Saturday Night Live is fair use. Using Darth Vader to sell your cars is not.
- cthalupa 2y agoThe Midler case is someone that sounded far closer to Midler in an ad that was drawing multiple parallels to Midler. If it is distinguishable to be a different person, courts have ruled that it's fine, see https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/435/711/95750/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/435...
- qarl 2y agoYou don't think being a flirtatious, newly invented voice-only artificial intelligence is a parallel? Hm.
- cthalupa 2y agoYour question is answered in the case I linked. But no, that level of parallel was not enough in the Sinatra vs. Goodyear case.
- qarl 2y agoThe Sinatra vs. Goodyear is completely different. In that case, the company had licensed the rights from the rights owner (which happened to be someone other than Sinatra.) If OpenAI had written Spike Jones a check, it would be similar, but they did not. You had said there were no parallels in this ScarJo situation and I'm merely pointing out that there are.
- 2y ago