17 ms·

When I first used ChatGPT's voice assistant's I was like "Wow, this one is clearly Scarlett Johansson from Her, they even copy her mannerisms." No amount of un

When I first used ChatGPT's voice assistant's I was like "Wow, this one is clearly Scarlett Johansson from Her, they even copy her mannerisms." No amount of unverifiable "records" (just pieces of paper provided by somebody who has a multimillion dollar incentive to show one outcome) will change my mind. But if they can produce the actual voice artist I'd be more open-minded.

flumpcakes 2y ago
As a non-American I only hear Scarlett Johansson's voice in the examples I've heard, to me it clearly is an impersonation. Maybe state-side that specific voice sound is more common and thus less recognisable as Scarlett Johansson's.
dbreunig 2y ago
This shows how bad it is. If you're proactively sharing a package of docs with the Washingington Post, you're toast. Altman's outreach, his tweet, and the thousands of tweets and comments talking about how similar Sky is to ScarJo is enough to win the case in California.
- tptacek 2y ago
  The Washington Post comprehensively refuted the story. This is like the "this is good for Bitcoin because ____" meme, but in reverse.
  - slantedview 2y ago
    They refuted it based on select documents handed to them by OpenAI.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    They literally didn't question any of OAI's claims. They just regurgitated them. They were desperate for a non-union-only actor in their casting. But repeatedly kept hitting up a union actor. What fears for the actress' safety have been portrayed such that not only does she needs to stay anonymous, but her agent does too? "Altman was not involved"... yet he personally reached out to SJ to try to close the deal?
- pc86 2y ago
  Then we can add this to the long list of insane lawsuits going the wrong way in California. They asked SJ, she said no. So they went to a voice actor and used her. Case closed, they didn't use SJ's voice without her permission. That doesn't violate any law to any reasonable person.
  - freejazz 2y ago
    "Reasonable" is doing a ton of work here.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Turing_Machine 2y ago
      "Reasonable" does a lot of work throughout the entire legal system. If there's one constant that can be relied upon, it's that "things that are reasonable to a lawyer" and "things that are reasonable to a normal human being" are essentially disjoint sets.
      - dragonwriter 2y ago
        > “Reasonable” does a lot of work throughout the entire legal system. Yes, but here it’s not being invoked in the sense of “would a reasonable person believe based on this evidence that the facts which would violate the actual law exist” but “would a ‘reasonable’ person believe the law is what the law, indisputably, actually is”. It’s being invoked to question the reality of the law itself, based on its subjective undesirability to the speaker.
      - freejazz 2y ago
        >"Reasonable" does a lot of work throughout the entire legal system. Yet it never becomes anywhere near the significant fulcrum you made it out to be here, filtering between the laws you think are good and the laws you think are bad. Further, you seem to mistake attorneys with legislators. I'd be surprised if a reasonable person thinks it is okay to profit off the likeness of others without their permission. But I guess you don't think that's reasonable. What a valuable conversation we're having.
Aunche 2y ago
I don't think the mannerisms of a performance something that's copyrightable though. It sounded like they used a voice actor who was instructed to speak with a similar intonation as Her, but Scarlet Johansson's voice is more raspy, whereas Sky just sounds like a generic valley girl.
- monocasa 2y ago
  Copyright isn't at issue here; it's instead likeness rights.
- rst 2y ago
  For a case to the contrary: Midler v. Ford -- a case in which Ford hired one of Bette Midler's ex-backup singers to duplicate one of her performances for an ad (after trying and failing to get Midler herself). Ford never said this was actually Midler -- and it wasn't -- but Midler still sued and won. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/849/460/37485/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/849...
  - BillTthree 2y ago
    Ford gave explicit instructions to imitate a copyrighted performance. Because that specific recording as owned by a record studio. If you can describe a woman's voice and mannerisms and the result sounds similar to a copyrighted performance, that is natural circumstance. If you want an example of purposefully imitating something with a copyright, look at GNU. Anyone who looked at the UNIX code was realistically prevented from writing their own kernel with similar functions. But if a handful of folks describe what the kernel ended up doing and some <random> guy in his own head comes up with some C code and assembly to do end up with the same high level functions, well thats just fine, even if you include the original name. The details matter. There is absolutely enough vocal difference, it doesn't take an audiologist to hear the two voices do sound different but very close. It would not be hard for the producers to describe "a" voice and that description would overlap heavily with ScarJo, and wow the marketing team reached out to see if she would attempt to fill the existing requirements. When she said no, they found a suitable alternative. If the intent was to have ScarJo do the voice and she said no and they did it anyways, thats illegal.
stavros 2y ago
Funny, I'm the opposite. I saw clips from the film after the controversy (it's been ten years since I saw the film itself) and Sky sounds nothing like Johansson to me. No amount of unverifiable "records".
- glenstein 2y ago
  And then there's me, and I'm somewhere in the middle. When I first heard that voice, I didn't really think anything of it. But retrospectively given the media reporting from Sam Altman tweeting about the movie and the reports of approaching Scarlet Johansson, I can make that connection. But I would not have without the context. And without real reporting I would have dismissed it all as speculation.
- m_ke 2y ago
  1. The sky voice currently available in the app is a different model from the one they presented (one is pure TTS, the new one in GPT-4o is a proper multi modal model that can do speech in and out end to end) 2. Look at these images and tell me they didn't intend to replicate "Her": https://x.com/michalwols/status/1792709377528647995 https://x.com/michalwols/status/1792709377528647995
  - stavros 2y ago
    Which one are we saying sounds like Johansson? I'm talking about the TTS voice in the app, is everyone else talking about the multimodal voice from the 4o demos? Also, whether they *intended* to replicate Her and whether they *did* in the end are very different.
    - m_ke 2y ago
      This one: https://youtu.be/vgYi3Wr7v_g?feature=shared&t=22 https://youtu.be/vgYi3Wr7v_g?feature=shared&t=22 compare it to: https://youtu.be/GV01B5kVsC0?feature=shared&t=125 https://youtu.be/GV01B5kVsC0?feature=shared&t=125
      - 2y ago
IncreasePosts 2y ago
They voice artist put out a statement through her lawyer. She also stated her voice has never been compared to Scarlett in real life by anyone who knows her.
- eggy 2y ago
  I'd like to hear her raw voice compared to the polished product. Listen to famous singers' acoustic vs. heavily audio-engineered final cuts. Big difference. I think if you played this OpenAI "Sky" voice to a sample population and said it was a famous person's voice, SA would come up frequently.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  This is just Scarlett Johansson trying to destroy some small voice actor. I greatly dislike what OpenAI is doing, but this is just ridiculous.
  - zaat 2y ago
    Why would she?
    - beeboobaa3 2y ago
      I can't read minds unfortunately.
  - throwawaycities 2y ago
    Scarlett Johansson is apparently so devious she managed to get OpenAI to reach out to her to license her voice and likeness. She even set up the CEO by having him directly negotiate with her, which I’m sure he also did with the alleged small voice actor. Then she perfected her scheme by having that same CEO publicly tweet “her” - timed with the release of the voice product - referencing JS’s movie of the same name where she voiced a computer system with a personality. She even managed to get OpenAI to take down the voice in OpenAI’s words “out of respect” for SJ while maintaining their legal defense publicly that the voice was not based on hers.
tptacek 2y ago
They did produce the actual voice artist!
- mzs 2y ago
  I don't see that here: https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/ https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho... Is my my google-fu failing me and I'm not looking in the right place?
  - Hansenq 2y ago
    If you read the WaPo article that's the topic of this thread, you'll see that the actual voice artist is quoted in the article.
    - FireBeyond 2y ago
      No. You'll see that the anonymous artist's anonymous agent supplied a quote he got in an email to WaPo.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  Where? Right now you have "An anonymous person says that an anonymous person said this to him in an email". That's a pretty low bar for "produced the actual voice artist".
  - tptacek 2y ago
    To the Washington Post, which verified it. The Post doesn't much care if you can verify their work, because no reasonable person believes they're making this up.
    - FireBeyond 2y ago
      Words are important. The WaPo didn't verify the voice actor at all: - "The agent said the actress confirmed..." - "In a statement from the actress provided by the agent..." The WaPo hasn't spoken to or verified who the voice actor is.
jackothy 2y ago
"Her" is one of my favorite movies of all time, and not once while watching the demo did I think that it sounded specifically like ScarJo. The whole concept, of course, made me think of "Her", but not the voice itself.

flumpcakes 2y ago

As a non-American I only hear Scarlett Johansson's voice in the examples I've heard, to me it clearly is an impersonation. Maybe state-side that specific voice sound is more common and thus less recognisable as Scarlett Johansson's.

dbreunig 2y ago

This shows how bad it is. If you're proactively sharing a package of docs with the Washingington Post, you're toast. Altman's outreach, his tweet, and the thousands of tweets and comments talking about how similar Sky is to ScarJo is enough to win the case in California.

tptacek 2y ago
The Washington Post comprehensively refuted the story. This is like the "this is good for Bitcoin because ____" meme, but in reverse.
- slantedview 2y ago
  They refuted it based on select documents handed to them by OpenAI.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  They literally didn't question any of OAI's claims. They just regurgitated them. They were desperate for a non-union-only actor in their casting. But repeatedly kept hitting up a union actor. What fears for the actress' safety have been portrayed such that not only does she needs to stay anonymous, but her agent does too? "Altman was not involved"... yet he personally reached out to SJ to try to close the deal?
pc86 2y ago
Then we can add this to the long list of insane lawsuits going the wrong way in California. They asked SJ, she said no. So they went to a voice actor and used her. Case closed, they didn't use SJ's voice without her permission. That doesn't violate any law to any reasonable person.
- freejazz 2y ago
  "Reasonable" is doing a ton of work here.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Turing_Machine 2y ago
    "Reasonable" does a lot of work throughout the entire legal system. If there's one constant that can be relied upon, it's that "things that are reasonable to a lawyer" and "things that are reasonable to a normal human being" are essentially disjoint sets.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > “Reasonable” does a lot of work throughout the entire legal system. Yes, but here it’s not being invoked in the sense of “would a reasonable person believe based on this evidence that the facts which would violate the actual law exist” but “would a ‘reasonable’ person believe the law is what the law, indisputably, actually is”. It’s being invoked to question the reality of the law itself, based on its subjective undesirability to the speaker.
    - freejazz 2y ago
      >"Reasonable" does a lot of work throughout the entire legal system. Yet it never becomes anywhere near the significant fulcrum you made it out to be here, filtering between the laws you think are good and the laws you think are bad. Further, you seem to mistake attorneys with legislators. I'd be surprised if a reasonable person thinks it is okay to profit off the likeness of others without their permission. But I guess you don't think that's reasonable. What a valuable conversation we're having.

Aunche 2y ago

I don't think the mannerisms of a performance something that's copyrightable though. It sounded like they used a voice actor who was instructed to speak with a similar intonation as Her, but Scarlet Johansson's voice is more raspy, whereas Sky just sounds like a generic valley girl.

monocasa 2y ago
Copyright isn't at issue here; it's instead likeness rights.
rst 2y ago
For a case to the contrary: Midler v. Ford -- a case in which Ford hired one of Bette Midler's ex-backup singers to duplicate one of her performances for an ad (after trying and failing to get Midler herself). Ford never said this was actually Midler -- and it wasn't -- but Midler still sued and won. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/849/460/37485/ https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/849...
- BillTthree 2y ago
  Ford gave explicit instructions to imitate a copyrighted performance. Because that specific recording as owned by a record studio. If you can describe a woman's voice and mannerisms and the result sounds similar to a copyrighted performance, that is natural circumstance. If you want an example of purposefully imitating something with a copyright, look at GNU. Anyone who looked at the UNIX code was realistically prevented from writing their own kernel with similar functions. But if a handful of folks describe what the kernel ended up doing and some <random> guy in his own head comes up with some C code and assembly to do end up with the same high level functions, well thats just fine, even if you include the original name. The details matter. There is absolutely enough vocal difference, it doesn't take an audiologist to hear the two voices do sound different but very close. It would not be hard for the producers to describe "a" voice and that description would overlap heavily with ScarJo, and wow the marketing team reached out to see if she would attempt to fill the existing requirements. When she said no, they found a suitable alternative. If the intent was to have ScarJo do the voice and she said no and they did it anyways, thats illegal.

stavros 2y ago

Funny, I'm the opposite. I saw clips from the film after the controversy (it's been ten years since I saw the film itself) and Sky sounds nothing like Johansson to me. No amount of unverifiable "records".

glenstein 2y ago
And then there's me, and I'm somewhere in the middle. When I first heard that voice, I didn't really think anything of it. But retrospectively given the media reporting from Sam Altman tweeting about the movie and the reports of approaching Scarlet Johansson, I can make that connection. But I would not have without the context. And without real reporting I would have dismissed it all as speculation.
m_ke 2y ago
1. The sky voice currently available in the app is a different model from the one they presented (one is pure TTS, the new one in GPT-4o is a proper multi modal model that can do speech in and out end to end) 2. Look at these images and tell me they didn't intend to replicate "Her": https://x.com/michalwols/status/1792709377528647995 https://x.com/michalwols/status/1792709377528647995
- stavros 2y ago
  Which one are we saying sounds like Johansson? I'm talking about the TTS voice in the app, is everyone else talking about the multimodal voice from the 4o demos? Also, whether they *intended* to replicate Her and whether they *did* in the end are very different.
  - m_ke 2y ago
    This one: https://youtu.be/vgYi3Wr7v_g?feature=shared&t=22 https://youtu.be/vgYi3Wr7v_g?feature=shared&t=22 compare it to: https://youtu.be/GV01B5kVsC0?feature=shared&t=125 https://youtu.be/GV01B5kVsC0?feature=shared&t=125
    - 2y ago

IncreasePosts 2y ago

They voice artist put out a statement through her lawyer. She also stated her voice has never been compared to Scarlett in real life by anyone who knows her.

eggy 2y ago
I'd like to hear her raw voice compared to the polished product. Listen to famous singers' acoustic vs. heavily audio-engineered final cuts. Big difference. I think if you played this OpenAI "Sky" voice to a sample population and said it was a famous person's voice, SA would come up frequently.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
beeboobaa3 2y ago
This is just Scarlett Johansson trying to destroy some small voice actor. I greatly dislike what OpenAI is doing, but this is just ridiculous.
- zaat 2y ago
  Why would she?
  - beeboobaa3 2y ago
    I can't read minds unfortunately.
- throwawaycities 2y ago
  Scarlett Johansson is apparently so devious she managed to get OpenAI to reach out to her to license her voice and likeness. She even set up the CEO by having him directly negotiate with her, which I’m sure he also did with the alleged small voice actor. Then she perfected her scheme by having that same CEO publicly tweet “her” - timed with the release of the voice product - referencing JS’s movie of the same name where she voiced a computer system with a personality. She even managed to get OpenAI to take down the voice in OpenAI’s words “out of respect” for SJ while maintaining their legal defense publicly that the voice was not based on hers.

tptacek 2y ago

They did produce the actual voice artist!

mzs 2y ago
I don't see that here: https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/ https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho... Is my my google-fu failing me and I'm not looking in the right place?
- Hansenq 2y ago
  If you read the WaPo article that's the topic of this thread, you'll see that the actual voice artist is quoted in the article.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    No. You'll see that the anonymous artist's anonymous agent supplied a quote he got in an email to WaPo.
FireBeyond 2y ago
Where? Right now you have "An anonymous person says that an anonymous person said this to him in an email". That's a pretty low bar for "produced the actual voice artist".
- tptacek 2y ago
  To the Washington Post, which verified it. The Post doesn't much care if you can verify their work, because no reasonable person believes they're making this up.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    Words are important. The WaPo didn't verify the voice actor at all: - "The agent said the actress confirmed..." - "In a statement from the actress provided by the agent..." The WaPo hasn't spoken to or verified who the voice actor is.

jackothy 2y ago

"Her" is one of my favorite movies of all time, and not once while watching the demo did I think that it sounded specifically like ScarJo. The whole concept, of course, made me think of "Her", but not the voice itself.