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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 t

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.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Isn't it TTS + style transfer? Or is it e2e from text to waveform?
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?

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.
numpad0 2y ago
Isn't it TTS + style transfer? Or is it e2e from text to waveform?

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?