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The thing that worried me initially was that: - the original report by Scarlett said she was approached months ago, and then two days prior to launch of GPT-4o

The thing that worried me initially was that: - the original report by Scarlett said she was approached months ago, and then two days prior to launch of GPT-4o she was approached again Because of the above, my immediate assumption was that OpenAI definitely did her dirty. But this report from WaPo debunks at least some of it, because the records they have seen show that the voice actor was contacted months in advance prior to OpenAI contacting Scarlett for the first time. (also goes to show just how many months in advance OpenAI is working on projects) However, this does not dispel the fact that OpenAI did contact Scarlett, and Sam Altman did post the tweet saying "her", and the voice has at least "some" resemblance of Scarlett's voice, at least enough to have two different groups saying that it does, and the other saying that it does not.

palad1n 2y ago
Yeah, sus af because of the call 2 days before they released it to the world. And they were just asking for it when they tweeted the frickin "her". I mean, come on.
stingraycharles 2y ago
Yes, but it changes the narrative from “they couldn’t get Scarlett to record the voice, so they copied her voice” to something much less malicious. Contacting Scarlett, when you already have voice recordings ready but would prefer someone famous, isn’t that bad of a thing imho.
- tivert 2y ago
  > Yes, but it changes the narrative from “they couldn’t get Scarlett to record the voice, so they copied her voice” to something much less malicious. I don't think it's less malicious if they decided to copy her voice without her consent, but just didn't tell her until the project was underway, then continued even after she said no. There's legal precedent that hiring a copycat is not OK, so it's not like proving it was a copycat salvages their situation. I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason they hired a copycat early is because they realized they'd need far more of Johansson's time than she'd be willing to provide, and the plan was typical SV "ask forgiveness not permission, but do it anyway regardless."
  - MattGaiser 2y ago
    They used a different person, so it is not her voice.
    - tivert 2y ago
      > They used a different person, so it is not her voice. That doesn't matter because it's an impersonation. Ford lost, even though they didn't use Bette Midler's voice either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
      - gnicholas 2y ago
        It seems like the key difference is that the advertisements in those cases involved people who sounded like particular musical artists, singing songs that those artists were well-known for singing. If you hired the woman who voiced Sky to say lines that Scarlett had in some of her movies, that would be similar. The fact that this is a chatbot makes it somewhat of an echo of those cases, but it strikes me (a former lawyer) as being a bridge too far. After all, you have to balance Scarlett's rights against the rights of someone who happens to have a voice that sounds like Scarlett's (it would be different if this were someone doing an impersonation of Scarlett, but whose natural voice sounds different).
        lupusreal 2y ago
        Tom Waits sued Frito Lay for using an impersonator to sing about Doritos.
      - frankacter 2y ago
        It's not an impersonation it is the actor using their own natural voice. "We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice — Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using *her own natural speaking voice*"
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  If the goal was to make the voice sound like the one from Her, then it's still illegal. Same way you can't get someone who sounds like a famous celebrity to do voice in a commercial and just let people think it's the famous celebrity when it's not
serial_dev 2y ago
I don't know, to me, it's just sounds like they know how to cover all their bases. To me, it sounds like they had the idea to make their AI sound like "her". For the initial version, they had a voice actor that sounds like the movie, as a proof of concept. They still liked it, so it was time to contact the real star. In the end, it's not just the voice, it would have been the brand, just imagine the buzz they would have got if Scarlett J was the official voice of the company. She said no, and they were like, "too bad, we already decided how she will sound like, the only difference is whether it will be labelled as SJ or not". In the end, someone probably felt like it's a bit too dodgy as it resemblance was uncanny, they gave it another go, probably ready to offer more money, she still refused, but in the end, it didn't change a thing.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  Agreed — seems like they had a plan, and probably talked extensively with Legal about how to develop and execute the plan to give themselves plausible deniability. The tweet was inadvisable, and undoubtedly not part of the actual plan (unless it was to get PR).
  - safety1st 2y ago
    > unless it was to get PR I think this possibility doesn't receive enough attention, there is a class of people who've figured out that they can say the most scandalous things online and it's a net positive because it generates so much exposure. (As a lowly middle class employee you can't do this - you just get fired and go broke - but at a certain level of wealth and power you're immune from that.) It is the old PT Barnum principle, "They can say whatever they want about me as long as they spell my name right." Guys like Trump and Musk know exactly what they're doing. Why wouldn't Sam? Johansson's complaint is starting to look a little shaky especially if you remove that "her" Tweet from the equation. I wouldn't put this past Altman at all, he knows exactly what happened and what didn't inside OpenAI, so maybe he knew she didn't have a case and decided to play Sociopathic 3D Chess with her (and beat her in one round)
    - repeekad 2y ago
eps 2y ago
Unless they can clearly demostrate reproducing the voice from raw voice actor recordings, this could be just a parallel construction to cover their asses for exactly this sort of case.
- jonathankoren 2y ago
  Doesn't matter. Waits v Frito Lay
  - XorNot 2y ago
    Which is not as similar as people keep saying though: both that case, and Bette Midler's involved singers, who perform as themselves and are their own brand. Consider when a company recasts a voice actor in something: i.e. the VA Rick and Morty have been replaced, Robin Williams was not the voice of genie in Aladdin 2 or the animated series.
    - bdowling 2y ago
      Recasting a voice actor when there was a contract with the prior actor (and such a contract would typically allow for recasting) is one thing. Copying a famous actor’s voice without any kind of agreement at all is something else.
  - Matticus_Rex 2y ago
    That's an impersonation of a parody song in his style. This is a voice actor who has a voice that's kinda similar to ScarJo and kinda similar to Rashida Jones but not quite either one doing something different. Cases are not a spell you can cast to win arguments, especially when the facts are substantially different.
    - jonathankoren 2y ago
      In both cases the companies are specifically trading on creating confusion of a celebrity’s likeness in an act that celebrity trades in, and with the motivation of circumventing that very celebrity’s explicit rejection of the offer for that very work. Just because one is a singer and the other is an actor isn’t the big difference you think it is. Actors do voice over work all the time. Actors in fact get cast for their voice all the time. Yelling, “Parody!” Isn’t some get out of jail free card, particularly where there is actual case law, even more particularly when there are actual laws to address this very act.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lynx23 2y ago
[flagged]
- tallytarik 2y ago
  Who slandered who?
  - lynx23 2y ago
    Those which take side in a totally unconfirmed story. If the side you are siding with isn't right, you are part of the problem.
user_7832 2y ago
I'm not sure if that's enough to protect OAI, it feels like they wanted SJ, found a similar voice actor as a version 1, tried to "officially" get SJ's voice, and when it failed instead of pulling it continued on. It still feels quite a deliberate move to use her likeness, and the "contact 2 days before" sounds like they really wanted to get her okay before using the other VA's voice.
ZooCow 2y ago
A plausible alternative explanation for asking Johansson: (1) They cast the current actor to test the technology and have a fallback. The actor sounds somewhat different from Johansson but the delivery of the lines is similar. (2) They then ask Johansson because they want to be the company that brought “Her” to life. She declines. (3) They try again shortly before the event because they really want it to happen. (4) They proceed with the original voice, and the “her” tweet happens because they want to be the ones that made it real. Asking shortly before the release is the weakest link here. It’s possible they already had a version trained or fine tuned on her voice that they could swap in at the last minute. That could explain some of the caginess. Not saying it’s what happened or is even likely, but it feels like a reasonable possibility.
- pavon 2y ago
  My unsubstantiated theory: They have a voice trained on Johansson's body of work ready to go, but didn't release it because they didn't get her permission. This explains why they were still asking her right up to the ChatGPT-4o release. Then people (including Johansson) associate this Sky voice with Johansson and Her. OpenAI realizes it looks bad, despite not being intentional, so they pull Sky for PR reasons.
JCM9 2y ago
Sounds more plausible that someone pointed out to them internally they could be in a heap of trouble if Scarlett objected after they released it. It doesn’t matter if it was actually her voice or not it matters if people think it was her voice. If someone pointed this out late in the process than yeah there would have been a mad scramble to get Scarlett to sign off. When she didn’t then that put them in a bad spot.
m3kw9 2y ago
We are just nit picking now because we are bored?
tmaly 2y ago
Why would they have taken down the voice if they were operating on a level of truth in their favor?
- KHRZ 2y ago
  "out of respect" for the angry woman rather than argue with her, you never had this problem with a wife/girlfriend?
beeboobaa3 2y ago
Is it a crime for voice actors to sound similar to, say, Darth Vader?
- CRConrad 2y ago
  ITYM > Is it a crime for voice actors to sound similar to, say, James Earl Jones? And the answer is, of course: It depends. For one thing, it depends on whether the company using the sound-alike's voice are in a business closely related to the theme of Star Wars, and whether they market whatever it is they're marketing by referring to Jones' iconic performance as Vader. ("<PANT> ... <PANT>") If they do that, then yes, it most likely is.
  - beeboobaa3 2y ago
    No, I specifically asked about Darth Vader, the fictional character that has been voiced by various voice actors (including the original trilogy, clone wars, etc). Presumably Earl Jones does not sound like Darth Vader in his day to day life, but this is not about Earl Jones, it is about the character.

palad1n 2y ago

Yeah, sus af because of the call 2 days before they released it to the world. And they were just asking for it when they tweeted the frickin "her". I mean, come on.

stingraycharles 2y ago

Yes, but it changes the narrative from “they couldn’t get Scarlett to record the voice, so they copied her voice” to something much less malicious. Contacting Scarlett, when you already have voice recordings ready but would prefer someone famous, isn’t that bad of a thing imho.

tivert 2y ago
> Yes, but it changes the narrative from “they couldn’t get Scarlett to record the voice, so they copied her voice” to something much less malicious. I don't think it's less malicious if they decided to copy her voice without her consent, but just didn't tell her until the project was underway, then continued even after she said no. There's legal precedent that hiring a copycat is not OK, so it's not like proving it was a copycat salvages their situation. I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason they hired a copycat early is because they realized they'd need far more of Johansson's time than she'd be willing to provide, and the plan was typical SV "ask forgiveness not permission, but do it anyway regardless."
- MattGaiser 2y ago
  They used a different person, so it is not her voice.
  - tivert 2y ago
    > They used a different person, so it is not her voice. That doesn't matter because it's an impersonation. Ford lost, even though they didn't use Bette Midler's voice either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
    - gnicholas 2y ago
      It seems like the key difference is that the advertisements in those cases involved people who sounded like particular musical artists, singing songs that those artists were well-known for singing. If you hired the woman who voiced Sky to say lines that Scarlett had in some of her movies, that would be similar. The fact that this is a chatbot makes it somewhat of an echo of those cases, but it strikes me (a former lawyer) as being a bridge too far. After all, you have to balance Scarlett's rights against the rights of someone who happens to have a voice that sounds like Scarlett's (it would be different if this were someone doing an impersonation of Scarlett, but whose natural voice sounds different).
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        Tom Waits sued Frito Lay for using an impersonator to sing about Doritos.
    - frankacter 2y ago
      It's not an impersonation it is the actor using their own natural voice. "We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice — Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using *her own natural speaking voice*"
aprilthird2021 2y ago
If the goal was to make the voice sound like the one from Her, then it's still illegal. Same way you can't get someone who sounds like a famous celebrity to do voice in a commercial and just let people think it's the famous celebrity when it's not

serial_dev 2y ago

I don't know, to me, it's just sounds like they know how to cover all their bases. To me, it sounds like they had the idea to make their AI sound like "her". For the initial version, they had a voice actor that sounds like the movie, as a proof of concept. They still liked it, so it was time to contact the real star. In the end, it's not just the voice, it would have been the brand, just imagine the buzz they would have got if Scarlett J was the official voice of the company. She said no, and they were like, "too bad, we already decided how she will sound like, the only difference is whether it will be labelled as SJ or not". In the end, someone probably felt like it's a bit too dodgy as it resemblance was uncanny, they gave it another go, probably ready to offer more money, she still refused, but in the end, it didn't change a thing.

gnicholas 2y ago
Agreed — seems like they had a plan, and probably talked extensively with Legal about how to develop and execute the plan to give themselves plausible deniability. The tweet was inadvisable, and undoubtedly not part of the actual plan (unless it was to get PR).
- safety1st 2y ago
  > unless it was to get PR I think this possibility doesn't receive enough attention, there is a class of people who've figured out that they can say the most scandalous things online and it's a net positive because it generates so much exposure. (As a lowly middle class employee you can't do this - you just get fired and go broke - but at a certain level of wealth and power you're immune from that.) It is the old PT Barnum principle, "They can say whatever they want about me as long as they spell my name right." Guys like Trump and Musk know exactly what they're doing. Why wouldn't Sam? Johansson's complaint is starting to look a little shaky especially if you remove that "her" Tweet from the equation. I wouldn't put this past Altman at all, he knows exactly what happened and what didn't inside OpenAI, so maybe he knew she didn't have a case and decided to play Sociopathic 3D Chess with her (and beat her in one round)
  - repeekad 2y ago

eps 2y ago

Unless they can clearly demostrate reproducing the voice from raw voice actor recordings, this could be just a parallel construction to cover their asses for exactly this sort of case.

jonathankoren 2y ago
Doesn't matter. Waits v Frito Lay
- XorNot 2y ago
  Which is not as similar as people keep saying though: both that case, and Bette Midler's involved singers, who perform as themselves and are their own brand. Consider when a company recasts a voice actor in something: i.e. the VA Rick and Morty have been replaced, Robin Williams was not the voice of genie in Aladdin 2 or the animated series.
  - bdowling 2y ago
    Recasting a voice actor when there was a contract with the prior actor (and such a contract would typically allow for recasting) is one thing. Copying a famous actor’s voice without any kind of agreement at all is something else.
- Matticus_Rex 2y ago
  That's an impersonation of a parody song in his style. This is a voice actor who has a voice that's kinda similar to ScarJo and kinda similar to Rashida Jones but not quite either one doing something different. Cases are not a spell you can cast to win arguments, especially when the facts are substantially different.
  - jonathankoren 2y ago
    In both cases the companies are specifically trading on creating confusion of a celebrity’s likeness in an act that celebrity trades in, and with the motivation of circumventing that very celebrity’s explicit rejection of the offer for that very work. Just because one is a singer and the other is an actor isn’t the big difference you think it is. Actors do voice over work all the time. Actors in fact get cast for their voice all the time. Yelling, “Parody!” Isn’t some get out of jail free card, particularly where there is actual case law, even more particularly when there are actual laws to address this very act.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lynx23 2y ago

[flagged]

tallytarik 2y ago
Who slandered who?
- lynx23 2y ago
  Those which take side in a totally unconfirmed story. If the side you are siding with isn't right, you are part of the problem.

user_7832 2y ago

I'm not sure if that's enough to protect OAI, it feels like they wanted SJ, found a similar voice actor as a version 1, tried to "officially" get SJ's voice, and when it failed instead of pulling it continued on. It still feels quite a deliberate move to use her likeness, and the "contact 2 days before" sounds like they really wanted to get her okay before using the other VA's voice.

ZooCow 2y ago

A plausible alternative explanation for asking Johansson: (1) They cast the current actor to test the technology and have a fallback. The actor sounds somewhat different from Johansson but the delivery of the lines is similar. (2) They then ask Johansson because they want to be the company that brought “Her” to life. She declines. (3) They try again shortly before the event because they really want it to happen. (4) They proceed with the original voice, and the “her” tweet happens because they want to be the ones that made it real. Asking shortly before the release is the weakest link here. It’s possible they already had a version trained or fine tuned on her voice that they could swap in at the last minute. That could explain some of the caginess. Not saying it’s what happened or is even likely, but it feels like a reasonable possibility.

pavon 2y ago
My unsubstantiated theory: They have a voice trained on Johansson's body of work ready to go, but didn't release it because they didn't get her permission. This explains why they were still asking her right up to the ChatGPT-4o release. Then people (including Johansson) associate this Sky voice with Johansson and Her. OpenAI realizes it looks bad, despite not being intentional, so they pull Sky for PR reasons.

JCM9 2y ago

Sounds more plausible that someone pointed out to them internally they could be in a heap of trouble if Scarlett objected after they released it. It doesn’t matter if it was actually her voice or not it matters if people think it was her voice. If someone pointed this out late in the process than yeah there would have been a mad scramble to get Scarlett to sign off. When she didn’t then that put them in a bad spot.

m3kw9 2y ago

We are just nit picking now because we are bored?

tmaly 2y ago

Why would they have taken down the voice if they were operating on a level of truth in their favor?

KHRZ 2y ago
"out of respect" for the angry woman rather than argue with her, you never had this problem with a wife/girlfriend?

beeboobaa3 2y ago

Is it a crime for voice actors to sound similar to, say, Darth Vader?

CRConrad 2y ago
ITYM > Is it a crime for voice actors to sound similar to, say, James Earl Jones? And the answer is, of course: It depends. For one thing, it depends on whether the company using the sound-alike's voice are in a business closely related to the theme of Star Wars, and whether they market whatever it is they're marketing by referring to Jones' iconic performance as Vader. ("<PANT> ... <PANT>") If they do that, then yes, it most likely is.
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  No, I specifically asked about Darth Vader, the fictional character that has been voiced by various voice actors (including the original trilogy, clone wars, etc). Presumably Earl Jones does not sound like Darth Vader in his day to day life, but this is not about Earl Jones, it is about the character.