5 ms·

Surely there’s some kind of difference between “voice impression for a two-line cameo in one episode of an animated sitcom” and “reproducing your voice as the p

• squigz 2y ago
  > for example, if a human can read one book to learn something, then it’s ok to scan millions of books into a computer system because it’s just another kind of learning. Since this comes up all the time, I ask: What exactly is the number of books a human can ingest before it becomes illegal?
  • Seattle3503 2y ago
    For a human? Whatever they can consume within their natural life.
    • gitgud 2y ago
      Does natural life still count if a person is using an artificial heart? What about if they have augmentation that allows them to read and interpret books really fast? It’s not an easy question to answer…
      • kombookcha 2y ago
        "But what if a person was so thoroughly replaced with robot parts to be just like a computer" is just "if my grandma had wheels, she would be a truck, therefore it's not so easy to say that cars aren't allowed to drive inside the old folks home". People and software are different things, and it makes total sense that there should be different rules for what they can and cannot do.
      • Dylan16807 2y ago
        Your first question doesn't change the answer, and your second question depends on a premise that isn't real. Natural life is plenty simple in this context.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • dorkwood 2y ago
    This is a bit like someone saying they don't want cars traveling down the sidewalk because they're too big and heavy, and then having someone ask how big and heavy a person needs to get before it becomes illegal for them to travel down the sidewalk. It misses the point, which is that cars aren't people. Arguments like "well a car uses friction to travel along the ground and fuel to create kinetic energy, just like humans do", aren't convincing to me. An algorithm is not a human, and we should stop pretending the same rules apply to each.
    • pests 2y ago
      Thank you, love this response.
    • Dylan16807 2y ago
      It's easy to explain the difference between a person and a car in a way that's both specific and relevant to the rules. If we're at an analogy to "cars aren't people", then it sounds like it doesn't matter how many books the AI reads, even one book would cause problems. But if that's the case, why make the argument about how many books it reads? Are you sure you're arguing the same thing as the ancestor post? Or do you merely agree with their conclusion but you're making an entirely different argument?
    • TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Then again, bicycles are neither people nor cars, and yet they make claim to both sidewalk and the road, even though they clearly are neither, and are a danger and a nuisance on both.
    • mike_hearn 2y ago
      Is that a good example? People have been arguing in court about that exact thing for years, first due to Segway and then due to e-scooters and bikes. There's plenty of people who make arguments of the form "it's not a car or a bike so I'm allowed on the sidewalk", or make arguments about limited top speeds etc.
      • dorkwood 2y ago
  • numpad0 2y ago
    Depends on similarities between existing data and generative outputs, so minimum is zero. Humans are caught plagiarizing all the time.
    • TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Plagiarism is not illegal, it's merely frowned upon, and only in specific fields. Everywhere else, it's called learning from masters and/or practicing your art.
      • numpad0 2y ago
        wtf.
        • CaptainFever 2y ago
          It's true.
        • throwaway211 2y ago
          Learning is just a conditioned response to inputs. You were conditioned to give that response. If I ask an AI about the book Walden Two, for example, it can reproduce and/or remix that. Knowing is copying. [Why Walden Two? BF Skinner. And an excellent book about how the book was lived: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Walden-Two-Behaviorist-Experimental-ebook/dp/B01LXKT57K/ https://www.amazon.com/Living-Walden-Two-Behaviorist-Experim... ]
  • yoyohello13 2y ago
    100 per second.
• maxglute 2y ago
  How unique is a voice? I'm sure there's enough people out ther who sounds like Johansson. There's probably some argument for voice + personality + face + mannerisms, some gestalt that's more comparable to copying the likeness "person". But openAI is copying a fictional character played by Johansson, it's not her. Do actor/esses get to monopolize their depiction of fictional characters? Especially when it's not tied to physical represenation. What if OpenAI associate it with an avatar that looks nothing like her. I'm sure hollywood and/or actors union is figuring this out.
  • pavlov 2y ago
    > “Do actor/esses get to monopolize their depiction of fictional characters? Especially when it's not tied to physical represenation.” If Annapurna Pictures (the production company that owns the rights to “Her”) made a sequel where the voice AI is played by someone else than Johansson but sounded the same and was marketed as a direct continuation, I think there would be a lawsuit. She didn’t write the script or develop the character, but I think there’s enough creative authorship in her voice portrayal that it would be risky for the production company.
    • phonon 2y ago
      https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/back-future-ii-a-legal-833705/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bac...
    • maxglute 2y ago
      But OpenAI isn't making a sequel to Her, which I feel like there would be prexisting legal text in contract about repraising role in event of franchise if johansson has leverage, or ability to cast close facsimile if studio has leverage. Right now Johansson has leverage in court of public opinion, not necessarily law. What if OpenAI used a cartoon cat avatar that sounded like "Her", what if they have one interaction that doesn't comport to "Her" personality from the movie, thereby indicating a different being. Is there some comprehensive method acting documentation outlining the full complexity of a fictional character. Seems like there aremany ways for openAI to make voice sound like her, but not embody "Her" but they'd rather strategically retreat out of optics. But IANAL, but I am interested in seeing how this will get resolved in court.
• yorwba 2y ago
  If famous actors could sue over the use of a less-famous actor that sounds just like them, what's to stop less-famous actors from suing over the use of a famous actor who sounds just like them in big-budget movies? ... and that's when you discover that "unique voice" is a one-in-a-million thing and thousands of people have the same voice, all asking for their payout.
  • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > what's to stop less-famous actors from suing over the use of a famous actor who sounds just like them in big-budget movies? Not having idiots (or ChatGPT) for judges.
    • tivert 2y ago
      > Not having idiots (or ChatGPT) for judges. Always the Achilles heel of software engineers' (not so) clever legal strategies.
    • mike_hearn 2y ago
      That's a common retort on HN but it's information free. Judges are at least theoretically and often in practice bound to follow both written law and logic, even if it yields apparently silly outcomes. The prevalence of openly political judgements in the news makes it seem like this isn't the case, but those judgements are newsworthy exactly because they are shocking and outrageous. If voices being similar to each other is found to be grounds for a successful tort action then it'd establish a legal precedent, and it's very unlikely that precedent would be interpreted as "whoever the judge heard of first wins".
      • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > it's very unlikely that precedent would be interpreted as "whoever the judge heard of first wins" No, it's whoever's voice is famous. The voice per se isn't valuable, its fame is. Personality rights are precedented [1]. > voices being similar to each other is found to be grounds for a successful tort action then it'd establish a legal precedent It's not about similarity. It's about property. Johansson developed her voice into a valuable asset. It's valuable because it's Scarlet Johansson's voice. Tweeting Her explicitly tied it to Johansson, even if that wasn't the case up to that point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
• tibbydudeza 2y ago
  I know there is some exceptions in US law for use of parody ???.
  • CRConrad 2y ago
    Sure, but what does that have to do with this?
• visarga 2y ago
  It's not a fallacy. Behind the AI are 180M users inputting their own problems and giving their guidance. Those millions of books only teach language skills they are not memorized verbatim except rare instances of duplicated text in the training set. There is not enough space to store 10 trillion tokens in a model. And if we wanted to replicate copyrighted text with a LLM, it would still be a bad idea, better to just find a copy online, faster and more precise, and usually free. We here are often posting paywalled articles in the comments, it's so easy to circumvent the paywalls we don't even blink twice at it. Using LLMs to infringe is not even the intended purpose, and it only happens when the user makes a special effort to prompt the model with the first paragraph. What I find offensive is restricting the circulation of ideas under the guise of copyright. In fact copyright should only protect expression not the underlying ideas and styles, those are free to learn, and AIs are just an extension of their human users.
• robertlagrant 2y ago
  > Surely there’s some kind of difference between “voice impression for a two-line cameo in one episode of an animated sitcom” and “reproducing your voice as the primary interface for a machine that could be used by billions of people and is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.” There are too many differences to understand what you're saying. Is the problem too much money is in the company doing it? Fox is also pretty wealthy. I think the pertinent question is: does having it sound like Scarlett Johansenn mean they get to access billions of people? If not, then while she might get paid out a few million, it'll be from OpenAI's marketing budget and not because of actual value added.
• johnbellone 2y ago
  Fair use[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use