8 ms·

The Midler case is readily distinguishable. From Wikipedia: > Ford Motor created an ad campaign for the Mercury Sable that specifically was meant to inspire no

The Midler case is readily distinguishable. From Wikipedia: > Ford Motor created an ad campaign for the Mercury Sable that specifically was meant to inspire nostalgic sentiments through the use of famous songs from the 1970s sung by their original artists. When the original artists refused to accept, impersonators were used to sing the original songs for the commercials. Midler was asked to sing a famous song of hers for the commercial and refused. Subsequently, the company hired a voice-impersonator of Midler and carried on with using the song for the commercial, since it had been approved by the copyright-holder. [1] If you ask an artist to sing a famous song of hers, she says no, and you get someone else to impersonate her, that gets you in hot water. If you (perhaps because you are savvy) go to some unknown voice actress, have her record a voice for your chatbot, later go to a famous actress known for one time playing a chatbot in a movie, and are declined, you are in a much better position. The tweet is still a thorn in OA's side, of course, but that's not likely to be determinative IMO (IAAL). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

marcus_holmes 2y ago
The actress did impersonate Her though. It's not just a random "voice for your chatbot", it's that particularly breathy, chatty, voice that she performed for the movie. I would agree with you completely if they'd created a completely different voice. Even if they'd impersonated a different famous actress. But it's the fact that Her was about an AI, and this is an AI, and the voices are identical. It's clearly an impersonation of her work.
- z7 2y ago
  How do you explain the many people saying that the voices do not sound especially similar? "The pitch is kiiiiiind of close, but that's about it. Different cadence, different levels of vocal fry, slightly different accent if you pay close attention. Johansson drops Ts for Ds pretty frequently, Sky pronounces Ts pretty sharply. A linguist could probably break it down better than me and identify the different regions involved." https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_comparison_scarjo_vs_samantha_vs_sky/ https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_... There is also a faction claiming that Sky's voice is more similar to Rashida Jones's than Scarlett Johansson's: https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cx9t8b/vocal_comparison_rashida_jones_vs_chatgpt_sky/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cx9t8b/vocal_comp...
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    Given the breadth and range of female voices available, this is way too close to be just a coincidence.
    - jagrsw 2y ago
      There are approximately 4 billion women in the world. Given that I know a few people who sound very similar to me, I would say that there are (subjectively) perhaps 1,000 to 10,000 different types of women's voices in the world. This would mean that a celebrity could possess a voice similar to 0.5 million to 5 million other women, and potentially claim royalties if their voice is used.
      - numpad0 2y ago
        This types of estimate is sadly deeply flawed. Voices are affected not just by ethnicity but also language and culture. I know because I can feel slight noticeable differences in tones between communities just 30-50 miles apart, within same social classes and everything. Bilinguals also sound noticeably different to monolinguals even in their primary language. I think people thinks others sound same not because they're similar from beginning, but because voices must homogenize under peer pressures. There's a proverb "nails that sticks out gets hammered". Most people probably has hammered flat voices intended to not stand out.
      - marcus_holmes 2y ago
        fine. So the entire casting process for this role picked a 1 in 10,000 match for Her. That's not coincidence
    - z7 2y ago
      You first said that Sky is "clearly an impersonation" of Johansson. Now you say that it's not a coincidence they chose Sky's voice actress. These are two different claims. It may not be a coincidence in the sense that they may have chosen Sky's actress because she sounds similar to Johansson. But that alone doesn't constitute an impersonation. Impersonation means deliberately assuming the identity of another person with the intent to deceive. So you'd have to demonstrate more than a degree of similarity to make that case.
- Ukv 2y ago
  > The actress did impersonate Her though. Did she? The article claims that: 1. Multiple people agree that the casting call mentioned nothing about SJ/her 2. The voice actress claims she was not given instructions to imitate SJ/her 3. The actress's natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice I don't personally think it's anywhere near "identical" to SJ's voice. It seems most likely to me that they noticed the similarity in concept afterwards and wanted to try to capitalize on it (hence later contacting SJ), opposed to the other way around.
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    No-one had to explicitly say any of that for it to still be an impersonation. Her was a very popular film, and Johansson's voice character was very compelling. They literally could have said nothing and just chosen the voice audition closest to Her unconsciously, because of the reach of the film, and that would still be an impersonation.
    - Ukv 2y ago
      > They literally could have said nothing and just chosen the voice audition closest to Her unconsciously, because of the reach of the film, and that would still be an impersonation That's a very broad definition of impersonation, one that does not match the legal definition, and one that would would be incredibly worrying for voice actors whose natural voice happens to fall within a radius of a celebrity's natural voice ("their choice to cast you was unconsciously affected by similarity to a celebrity, therefore [...]")
      - calf 2y ago
        What you're arguing fails to pass the obviousness test ; if I were running the company it would be blankly obvious that the optics would be a problem, so I would start to collect a LOT of paperwork documenting that the casting selection was done without a hint of bias towards a celebrity's impression. Where is that paperwork? The obviousness puts the burden on them to show it. Otherwise your argument lets off not just this scandal but an entire conceptual category of clever sleazy moves that are done "after the fact". It's not the the Kafka trap you're making it out to be.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > The actress did impersonate Her though This is unclear. What is clear is OpenAI referenced Her in marketing it. That looks like it was a case of poor impulse control. But it's basis for a claim.
  - naasking 2y ago
    > What is clear is OpenAI referenced Her in marketing it. Because they're building a voice-mediated AI, duh.
- Havoc 2y ago
  > it's that particularly breathy, chatty, voice that she performed for the movie. Good luck proving that in court. “You’re honor our evidence is that the audio clips both sound breathy”
  - eschneider 2y ago
    That and repeated, rejected attempts to hire ScarJo to do the voice. I expect they have ample documentation on that.
    - CaptainFever 2y ago
      Did you not read the article? They did the voice months before that.
      - chx 2y ago
        Then why did they ask her two days prior launch? A potential jury would be very, very curious knowing that.
        IanCal 2y ago
        A very simple answer is that they also wanted SJ as a voice. That doesn't mean the original voice was trying to copy SJ. They had a voice, the natural comparison watching the interaction is to Her, and they there is likely still time to get actually SJs voice before a public rollout.
        chx 2y ago
        If you believe a known conman like Sam Altman didn't intend to steal SJ's voice I have a bridge to sell you. See my comment from yesterday re him being a known conman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435120
        kaashif 2y ago
- kthartic 2y ago
  In the Ford case they hired an impersonator to sing one of her copyrighted songs, so it's clearly an impersonation. In OpenAI's case the voice only sounds like her (although many disagree) but it isn't repeating some famous line of dialog from one of her movies etc, so you can't really definitively say it's impersonating SJ.
- rjzzleep 2y ago
  Can someone explain to me the outrage about mimicking a public persons voice, while half the people on hacker news argue that it's fine to steal open source code? I fail to see the logic here? Why is this more important?
moralestapia 2y ago
>The tweet is still a thorn in OA's side, of course, but that's not likely to be determinative IMO (IAAL). It amounts to nothing as it was a single word and they could spin that any way they want, it's even a generic word, lol. The "worst" interpretation on that tweet could be "we were inspired by said movie to create a relatable product" which is not an unlawful thing to do.
- Topfi 2y ago
  I see this a lot in space like HN focused on hard science and programming — this idea that judgments couldn't possibly consider things like context beyond what has been literally spelled out. To paraphrase a fitting XKCD, they have already thought of that "cool hack" you've just come up with [0]. I lack the knowledge to make a judgment one way or another about whether this will go anywhere, because I know very little about this area of law, more so in the US. However, this idea that tweeting the title of that specific movie in the context of such a product release couldn't possibly be connected to one of those voices having a similar cadence and sound of a specific actor in that same movie they approched beforehand, couldn't have no legal bearing seems naive. Is it that doubtful that a high-priced legal team couldn't bring a solid case, leading to a severe settlement, or more if she wants to create a precedent? Clichéd Mafia talk is not a foolproof way to prevent conviction in most jurisdictions. [0] https://xkcd.com/1494/ https://xkcd.com/1494/
- deleted 2y ago
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makeitdouble 2y ago
The order of the events is different, but it still comes down to whether OA had a specific voice in mind when building the chatbot. By your logic, I could go find a Tim Cook looking and sounding guy, make a promotion video with him praising my new startup, ping Tim Cook to check if by any chance he wouldn't miraculously be willing to do me a favor to avoid me all the trouble in the first place, but still go on and release my video ads without any permission. "I did all the preparation way before asking the celebrity" wouldn't be a valid defense.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  You could have an ad with a voiceover saying all sorts of positive things about your company, in a voice that sounds somewhat like Tim Cook. What you could not do is use a body double, dress someone up like him, or otherwise give the impression that your startup is loved by Tim Cook himself. He doesn’t have a monopoly on slightly southern accents.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
> later go to a famous actress known for one time playing a chatbot in a movie, and are declined, you are in a much better position But they asked her first!: "Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and Al. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.... https://twitter.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908 https://twitter.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908 So its: ask Johansson, get declined, ask casting directors for the type of voice actors they are interested in, listened to 400 voices, choose one that sounds like the actor, ask Johansson again, get declined again, publish with a reference to Johansson film, claim the voice has nothing todo with Johansson. [EDIT] Actually it looks like they selected the Sky actor before they asked Johansson and claim that she would have been the 6th voice, its still hard to believe they didn't intend it to sound like the voice in her though: https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/ https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho...
- kitd 2y ago
  Read the main article again. The voice actor was already auditioned and chosen before they went to Johansson. Maybe they had a change of plan and thought it would be cool to have Johansson's voice rather than an unknown actor's.
  - Beldin 2y ago
    The point isn't the time line of hiring the voice actor. The question is whether OpenAI was deliberately trying to make the voice sound like Johansson. Suppose someone asked Dall-e for an image of Black Widow like in the first Avengers movie, promoting their brand. If they then use that in advertising, Johansson's portrait rights would likely be violated. Even (especially) if they never contacted her about doing the ad herself. This is similar to that, but with voice, not portrait.
    - exe34 2y ago
ig1 2y ago
The tweet + approach is probably sufficient to bring a lawsuit and get into discovery and then it'll come down to if there's a smoking gun documents (e.g. internal emails comparing the voice to Her, etc.) It's likely that someone internally must have noticed the similarity so there's like some kind of comms around it so it very much will depend on what was written in those conversations.
weinzierl 2y ago
There are probably a number of other cases. The one I remember is when Sega asked Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite fame to use her public image for a game. Nothing come out of it but Sega made the character Ulala[1] anyway. If you grew up in the 90s the characters name was strongly connected to Lady Miss Kier's catch phrase, but unfortunately she lost the suit and had to pay more than half a million. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulala_(Space_Channel_5) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulala_(Space_Channel_5)
- brvsft 2y ago
  > Lady Miss Kier's catch phrase Not to over-analyze your use of language, but using the possessive here makes it seem like she personally owned that phrase or its use was associated with her. First, I don't know if that's true. Did she say, "Ooh la la," constantly, or is it just something she said at the beginning of the music video (and possibly studio recording) of the one hit from Deee-Lite, Groove Is In The Heart? Moreover, that phrase is a fairly well-known and widely-used one, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooh_La_La https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooh_La_La. It certainly was not original to her nor would its use indicate an association to her. To your point, its use plus the aesthetic of the character does seem like a reference to Lady Miss Kier's appearance in that music video (if not also her style and appearance more generally, I don't know if that is how she always looks). But she didn't sue everyone else on this list for the use of her supposed catch phrase, ooh la la. I hate to say one person's fame is so great that they get special or different treatment in court, but I think "Lady Miss Kier" was punching above her weight in trying to sue over use of her image. Her fame was a flash-in-the-pan one-hit-wonder in the early 90s, no offense to any Deee-Lite fans. It was certainly a great song (with some help from Herbie Hancock, Bootsy Collins, and Q-Tip). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etviGf1uWlg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etviGf1uWlg
  - weinzierl 2y ago
    Not a native speaker, so "catch phrase" is maybe not the right term or too strong. Prompted by your comment I read up about the case and from what I understand Sega wanted to use the song in a promotion and not (what I remembered) her likeness.
dghughes 2y ago
Wouldn't that apply to entertainers like Rich Little whose entire career was him doing his best to exactly impersonate famous peoples' voices and mannerisms?
- josefx 2y ago
  Parody tends to fall into various exemptions. Of course one might argue that OpenAIs work itself is a parody of AGI.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  If someone impersonates people but doesn't disguise/hide their appearance, there's no risk of confusing listeners about who is making the voice.
snowwrestler 2y ago
Pulling the voice when ScarJo complained is not a good look. I’m sure her attorneys would be very excited to do discovery around that decision should it come to trial. It won’t though, this is primarily a PR problem for OpenAI. Which is still a real problem when their future product development depends entirely on everyone giving them tons of data.
joshspankit 2y ago
Counter-intuitively, I think this puts Johansson in a stronger position. OpenAI did not want to copy her the actress, they wanted to copy HER the performance from the movie.
staticautomatic 2y ago
Also a lawyer, and the Middler case is apparently not understood so narrowly. The possible chilling effect on employability of actors who happen to look or sound just like already famous actors rankled me, too, and I really got into it with my entertainment law professor (who has had some quite high profile clients). His advice in no uncertain terms was basically “Sorry to those actors, but if you try to get away with hiring one of them knowing they’re likely to be confused with someone more famous, you’re stupid.”

marcus_holmes 2y ago

The actress did impersonate Her though. It's not just a random "voice for your chatbot", it's that particularly breathy, chatty, voice that she performed for the movie. I would agree with you completely if they'd created a completely different voice. Even if they'd impersonated a different famous actress. But it's the fact that Her was about an AI, and this is an AI, and the voices are identical. It's clearly an impersonation of her work.

z7 2y ago
How do you explain the many people saying that the voices do not sound especially similar? "The pitch is kiiiiiind of close, but that's about it. Different cadence, different levels of vocal fry, slightly different accent if you pay close attention. Johansson drops Ts for Ds pretty frequently, Sky pronounces Ts pretty sharply. A linguist could probably break it down better than me and identify the different regions involved." https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_comparison_scarjo_vs_samantha_vs_sky/ https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx24sy/vocal_... There is also a faction claiming that Sky's voice is more similar to Rashida Jones's than Scarlett Johansson's: https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cx9t8b/vocal_comparison_rashida_jones_vs_chatgpt_sky/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1cx9t8b/vocal_comp...
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  Given the breadth and range of female voices available, this is way too close to be just a coincidence.
  - jagrsw 2y ago
    There are approximately 4 billion women in the world. Given that I know a few people who sound very similar to me, I would say that there are (subjectively) perhaps 1,000 to 10,000 different types of women's voices in the world. This would mean that a celebrity could possess a voice similar to 0.5 million to 5 million other women, and potentially claim royalties if their voice is used.
    - numpad0 2y ago
      This types of estimate is sadly deeply flawed. Voices are affected not just by ethnicity but also language and culture. I know because I can feel slight noticeable differences in tones between communities just 30-50 miles apart, within same social classes and everything. Bilinguals also sound noticeably different to monolinguals even in their primary language. I think people thinks others sound same not because they're similar from beginning, but because voices must homogenize under peer pressures. There's a proverb "nails that sticks out gets hammered". Most people probably has hammered flat voices intended to not stand out.
    - marcus_holmes 2y ago
      fine. So the entire casting process for this role picked a 1 in 10,000 match for Her. That's not coincidence
  - z7 2y ago
    You first said that Sky is "clearly an impersonation" of Johansson. Now you say that it's not a coincidence they chose Sky's voice actress. These are two different claims. It may not be a coincidence in the sense that they may have chosen Sky's actress because she sounds similar to Johansson. But that alone doesn't constitute an impersonation. Impersonation means deliberately assuming the identity of another person with the intent to deceive. So you'd have to demonstrate more than a degree of similarity to make that case.
Ukv 2y ago
> The actress did impersonate Her though. Did she? The article claims that: 1. Multiple people agree that the casting call mentioned nothing about SJ/her 2. The voice actress claims she was not given instructions to imitate SJ/her 3. The actress's natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice I don't personally think it's anywhere near "identical" to SJ's voice. It seems most likely to me that they noticed the similarity in concept afterwards and wanted to try to capitalize on it (hence later contacting SJ), opposed to the other way around.
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  No-one had to explicitly say any of that for it to still be an impersonation. Her was a very popular film, and Johansson's voice character was very compelling. They literally could have said nothing and just chosen the voice audition closest to Her unconsciously, because of the reach of the film, and that would still be an impersonation.
  - Ukv 2y ago
    > They literally could have said nothing and just chosen the voice audition closest to Her unconsciously, because of the reach of the film, and that would still be an impersonation That's a very broad definition of impersonation, one that does not match the legal definition, and one that would would be incredibly worrying for voice actors whose natural voice happens to fall within a radius of a celebrity's natural voice ("their choice to cast you was unconsciously affected by similarity to a celebrity, therefore [...]")
    - calf 2y ago
      What you're arguing fails to pass the obviousness test ; if I were running the company it would be blankly obvious that the optics would be a problem, so I would start to collect a LOT of paperwork documenting that the casting selection was done without a hint of bias towards a celebrity's impression. Where is that paperwork? The obviousness puts the burden on them to show it. Otherwise your argument lets off not just this scandal but an entire conceptual category of clever sleazy moves that are done "after the fact". It's not the the Kafka trap you're making it out to be.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> The actress did impersonate Her though This is unclear. What is clear is OpenAI referenced Her in marketing it. That looks like it was a case of poor impulse control. But it's basis for a claim.
- naasking 2y ago
  > What is clear is OpenAI referenced Her in marketing it. Because they're building a voice-mediated AI, duh.
Havoc 2y ago
> it's that particularly breathy, chatty, voice that she performed for the movie. Good luck proving that in court. “You’re honor our evidence is that the audio clips both sound breathy”
- eschneider 2y ago
  That and repeated, rejected attempts to hire ScarJo to do the voice. I expect they have ample documentation on that.
  - CaptainFever 2y ago
    Did you not read the article? They did the voice months before that.
    - chx 2y ago
      Then why did they ask her two days prior launch? A potential jury would be very, very curious knowing that.
      - IanCal 2y ago
        A very simple answer is that they also wanted SJ as a voice. That doesn't mean the original voice was trying to copy SJ. They had a voice, the natural comparison watching the interaction is to Her, and they there is likely still time to get actually SJs voice before a public rollout.
        chx 2y ago
        If you believe a known conman like Sam Altman didn't intend to steal SJ's voice I have a bridge to sell you. See my comment from yesterday re him being a known conman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435120
        kaashif 2y ago
kthartic 2y ago
In the Ford case they hired an impersonator to sing one of her copyrighted songs, so it's clearly an impersonation. In OpenAI's case the voice only sounds like her (although many disagree) but it isn't repeating some famous line of dialog from one of her movies etc, so you can't really definitively say it's impersonating SJ.
rjzzleep 2y ago
Can someone explain to me the outrage about mimicking a public persons voice, while half the people on hacker news argue that it's fine to steal open source code? I fail to see the logic here? Why is this more important?

moralestapia 2y ago

>The tweet is still a thorn in OA's side, of course, but that's not likely to be determinative IMO (IAAL). It amounts to nothing as it was a single word and they could spin that any way they want, it's even a generic word, lol. The "worst" interpretation on that tweet could be "we were inspired by said movie to create a relatable product" which is not an unlawful thing to do.

Topfi 2y ago
I see this a lot in space like HN focused on hard science and programming — this idea that judgments couldn't possibly consider things like context beyond what has been literally spelled out. To paraphrase a fitting XKCD, they have already thought of that "cool hack" you've just come up with [0]. I lack the knowledge to make a judgment one way or another about whether this will go anywhere, because I know very little about this area of law, more so in the US. However, this idea that tweeting the title of that specific movie in the context of such a product release couldn't possibly be connected to one of those voices having a similar cadence and sound of a specific actor in that same movie they approched beforehand, couldn't have no legal bearing seems naive. Is it that doubtful that a high-priced legal team couldn't bring a solid case, leading to a severe settlement, or more if she wants to create a precedent? Clichéd Mafia talk is not a foolproof way to prevent conviction in most jurisdictions. [0] https://xkcd.com/1494/ https://xkcd.com/1494/
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

makeitdouble 2y ago

The order of the events is different, but it still comes down to whether OA had a specific voice in mind when building the chatbot. By your logic, I could go find a Tim Cook looking and sounding guy, make a promotion video with him praising my new startup, ping Tim Cook to check if by any chance he wouldn't miraculously be willing to do me a favor to avoid me all the trouble in the first place, but still go on and release my video ads without any permission. "I did all the preparation way before asking the celebrity" wouldn't be a valid defense.

gnicholas 2y ago
You could have an ad with a voiceover saying all sorts of positive things about your company, in a voice that sounds somewhat like Tim Cook. What you could not do is use a body double, dress someone up like him, or otherwise give the impression that your startup is loved by Tim Cook himself. He doesn’t have a monopoly on slightly southern accents.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

> later go to a famous actress known for one time playing a chatbot in a movie, and are declined, you are in a much better position But they asked her first!: "Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and Al. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.... https://twitter.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908 https://twitter.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908 So its: ask Johansson, get declined, ask casting directors for the type of voice actors they are interested in, listened to 400 voices, choose one that sounds like the actor, ask Johansson again, get declined again, publish with a reference to Johansson film, claim the voice has nothing todo with Johansson. [EDIT] Actually it looks like they selected the Sky actor before they asked Johansson and claim that she would have been the 6th voice, its still hard to believe they didn't intend it to sound like the voice in her though: https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/ https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho...

kitd 2y ago
Read the main article again. The voice actor was already auditioned and chosen before they went to Johansson. Maybe they had a change of plan and thought it would be cool to have Johansson's voice rather than an unknown actor's.
- Beldin 2y ago
  The point isn't the time line of hiring the voice actor. The question is whether OpenAI was deliberately trying to make the voice sound like Johansson. Suppose someone asked Dall-e for an image of Black Widow like in the first Avengers movie, promoting their brand. If they then use that in advertising, Johansson's portrait rights would likely be violated. Even (especially) if they never contacted her about doing the ad herself. This is similar to that, but with voice, not portrait.
  - exe34 2y ago

ig1 2y ago

The tweet + approach is probably sufficient to bring a lawsuit and get into discovery and then it'll come down to if there's a smoking gun documents (e.g. internal emails comparing the voice to Her, etc.) It's likely that someone internally must have noticed the similarity so there's like some kind of comms around it so it very much will depend on what was written in those conversations.

weinzierl 2y ago

There are probably a number of other cases. The one I remember is when Sega asked Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite fame to use her public image for a game. Nothing come out of it but Sega made the character Ulala[1] anyway. If you grew up in the 90s the characters name was strongly connected to Lady Miss Kier's catch phrase, but unfortunately she lost the suit and had to pay more than half a million. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulala_(Space_Channel_5) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulala_(Space_Channel_5)

brvsft 2y ago
> Lady Miss Kier's catch phrase Not to over-analyze your use of language, but using the possessive here makes it seem like she personally owned that phrase or its use was associated with her. First, I don't know if that's true. Did she say, "Ooh la la," constantly, or is it just something she said at the beginning of the music video (and possibly studio recording) of the one hit from Deee-Lite, Groove Is In The Heart? Moreover, that phrase is a fairly well-known and widely-used one, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooh_La_La https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooh_La_La. It certainly was not original to her nor would its use indicate an association to her. To your point, its use plus the aesthetic of the character does seem like a reference to Lady Miss Kier's appearance in that music video (if not also her style and appearance more generally, I don't know if that is how she always looks). But she didn't sue everyone else on this list for the use of her supposed catch phrase, ooh la la. I hate to say one person's fame is so great that they get special or different treatment in court, but I think "Lady Miss Kier" was punching above her weight in trying to sue over use of her image. Her fame was a flash-in-the-pan one-hit-wonder in the early 90s, no offense to any Deee-Lite fans. It was certainly a great song (with some help from Herbie Hancock, Bootsy Collins, and Q-Tip). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etviGf1uWlg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etviGf1uWlg
- weinzierl 2y ago
  Not a native speaker, so "catch phrase" is maybe not the right term or too strong. Prompted by your comment I read up about the case and from what I understand Sega wanted to use the song in a promotion and not (what I remembered) her likeness.

dghughes 2y ago

Wouldn't that apply to entertainers like Rich Little whose entire career was him doing his best to exactly impersonate famous peoples' voices and mannerisms?

josefx 2y ago
Parody tends to fall into various exemptions. Of course one might argue that OpenAIs work itself is a parody of AGI.
gnicholas 2y ago
If someone impersonates people but doesn't disguise/hide their appearance, there's no risk of confusing listeners about who is making the voice.

snowwrestler 2y ago

Pulling the voice when ScarJo complained is not a good look. I’m sure her attorneys would be very excited to do discovery around that decision should it come to trial. It won’t though, this is primarily a PR problem for OpenAI. Which is still a real problem when their future product development depends entirely on everyone giving them tons of data.

joshspankit 2y ago

Counter-intuitively, I think this puts Johansson in a stronger position. OpenAI did not want to copy her the actress, they wanted to copy HER the performance from the movie.

staticautomatic 2y ago

Also a lawyer, and the Middler case is apparently not understood so narrowly. The possible chilling effect on employability of actors who happen to look or sound just like already famous actors rankled me, too, and I really got into it with my entertainment law professor (who has had some quite high profile clients). His advice in no uncertain terms was basically “Sorry to those actors, but if you try to get away with hiring one of them knowing they’re likely to be confused with someone more famous, you’re stupid.”