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Clearly an SJ voice was the goal, given that Altman asked her to do it, asked her a second time just two days before the ChatGPT-4o release, and then tweeted "h

Clearly an SJ voice was the goal, given that Altman asked her to do it, asked her a second time just two days before the ChatGPT-4o release, and then tweeted "her" on the release day. The next day Karpathy, recently ex-OpenAI, then tweets "The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson". Altman appears to be an habitual liar. Note his recent claim not to be aware of the non-disparagement and claw-back terms he had departing employees agree to. Are we supposed to believe that the company lawyer or head of HR did this without consulting (or more likely being instructed by) the co-founder and CEO?!

tptacek 2y ago
They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ. The reaction on this site to the news that this story was false is kind of mindbending.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  Sure, no-one is disputing that, and despite this Altman then contacts SJ again two days before release asking her to reconsider, then tweets "her" to remind the public what he was shooting for. The goal could have just been ChatGPT with a voice interface, but instead Altman himself is saying the the goal was specifically to copy "her".
  - jackothy 2y ago
    He's not necessarily saying that was the goal from the start. All he is admitting with that tweet is that it is indeed (he finds it to be) reminiscent of "Her".
    - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
      Well, from the start, Altman wanted SJ to do the voice. Perhaps he'd never seen or heard of the movie "her", and the association is just coincidental? After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. I guess that's just the kind of voice he likes. So, Altman has forgotten about SJ, has 5 voice talents in the bag, and is good to go, right? But then, 2 days(!) before the release he calls SJ again, asking her to reconsider (getting nervous about what he's about to release, perhaps?). But still, maybe we should give Altman the benefit of the doubt, and assume he wanted SJ so badly because he had a crush on her or something? Then on release day, Altman tweets "her", and reveals a demo not of a sober AI assistant with a voice interface, but of a cringe-inducing AI girlfriend trying to be flirty and emotional. He could have picked any of the five voices for the demo, but you know ... But as you say, he's not admitting anything. When he tweeted "her" maybe it was because he saw the movie for the first time the night before?
      - LocalPCGuy 2y ago
        > After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. According to the article, the word After here is incorrect. It states the voice actor was hired months before the first contact with SJ. They might be lying, but when they hired the voice actor seems like it would be a verifiable fact that has contracts and other documentation. And like others, not defending OpenAI, but that timeline does tend to break the narrative you put forth in this post.
      - joshjob42 2y ago
        Sky has been in the app for many months, the release last week didn't add the voice, it merely is for a mode which allows a much more natural back and forth and interaction via voice, which is, indeed, fairly reminiscent of the voice interface in "her". He probably just really wants to actually have SJ's voice from the film. But SJ doesn't really have a right to arbitrary west coast vocal fry female voices. Without the "disembodied voice of an AI" element, I don't think most people would note "Oh she sounds like SJ". In fact, that's what the voice actress herself has said -- she hadn't gotten compared to SJ before this.
        realfeel78 2y ago
        If down was up and blue was red then blueberries on the floor would be strawberries on the ceiling.
      - jackothy 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - throwthrowuknow 2y ago
        The 2 days thing won’t fly. The omni model can probably produce any voice when led with a few seconds of audio. Meta developed a similar model a while back but didn’t open source it out of fear of deepfakes and there are commercial offerings like elevenlabs and open source ones like bark et al. So the last minute ask wasn’t nerves but a last ditch attempt to score a rebound for the launch.
    - Beldin 2y ago
      And if you commision an artist to draw a black-leather tight-fit clad red-head superspy in an ad for tour product, it need not look like Black Widow from the MCU. But if it does look very much like her, it doesn't really matter whether you never intended to.
      - jackothy 2y ago
        You can see plenty of discussion elsewhere in this thread regarding how similar the result actually ended up being. All I'm saying in the comment you are replying to is that it's incorrect to claim that Altman's saying that "the goal was specifically to copy 'Her'".
    - nomel 2y ago
      The voice, or the plot/concept of the movie? Her was a bout an AI having enough realism that someone could become emotionally attached to it. It was not a movie about Scarlett Johansson's voice. Any flirty female voice would be appropriator a "her" tweet.
      - jackothy 2y ago
        Exactly, just reminiscent of the movie. So the tweet really proves nothing in this case, unlike what some people seem to believe.
      - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
        Maybe, but that isn't what Altman did. He specifically tried to hire SJ. Twice.
        nomel 2y ago
        And, hired a voice actress that sounds exactly like Rashida Jones [1] rather than SJ, 6 months before. These don't have to be related. Maybe they are, but the confidence that they are is silly, since having a big celebrity name as the voice is a desirable thing, great marketing, especially one that did the voice acting for a movie about AI. My mind was completely changed when I actually listened to the voice comparison for myself [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - tptacek 2y ago
    Lots of people are disputing it.
    - Repulsion9513 2y ago
      Where has anyone disputed "that they hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ"? Links preferred please.
      - renewiltord 2y ago
        It’s actually just a few comments away, and visible for me from the parent to your comment > Well, from the start, Altman wanted SJ to do the voice. Perhaps he'd never seen or heard of the movie "her", and the association is just coincidental? After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. I suppose some might imagine asserting the opposite as a distinct concept from disputing but there you have it. You should be able to find a link quite easily.
        Repulsion9513 2y ago
        I don't see where that quote says "they contacted SJ before they hired the actor that did the voice" or anything similar. Perhaps you need to taste it a bit more before you try again. "Whether or not Altman wanted SJ's voice" and "whether or not they got someone else to do SJ's voice before asking SJ to do it" are two completely independent matters.
        renewiltord 2y ago
        > After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. What does 'after' mean to you? Strange response.
        Repulsion9513 2y ago
        What does "picks" mean to you? Strange response. Do you think they only got one person to do it or something? If they weren't looking at multiple options then ... why did they still ask SJ? Oh right because they asked SJ because they hadn't picked yet.
- supermatt 2y ago
  Even if the voice actor was sourced before they originally contacted SJ, it was clearly the intent to sound like her. There are so many other distinctive voices they could have chosen, but instead they decided to go as close as possible to "her" as they could. Many people thought it was SJ until she stated it wasn't. I appreciate the voice actor may sound like that naturally, but its hardly coincidental that the voice that sounds most like the voice from "her" was the one chosen for their promotion. It is clearly an attempt to pass-off.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >Even if the voice actor was sourced before they originally contacted SJ, it was clearly the intent to sound like her. Her, being the voice SJ did for the movie, not SJ's conversational voice which is somewhat different. If OpenAI were smart, they did it in a chinese wall manner and looked for someone whose voice sounded like the movie without involving SJ's voice in the discussion.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    This is not a thing. They hired a voice actor, who spoke in her normal speaking voice. That voice is not SJ's intellectual property, no matter what it sounds like. Further, I don't know how you can say any intention here is "clear", especially given the track record on this particular story, which has been abysmal even after this story was published. They could have taken auditions from 50 voice actors, come across this one, thought to themselves "Hey, this sounds just like the actress in 'Her', great, let's use them" and that would be fine. Laurence Fishburne does not own his "welcome to the desert of the real" intonation; other people have it too, and they can be hired to read in it. Again: the Post has this voice actor reading in the normal voice. This wasn't an impersonator.
    - qarl 2y ago
      > They could have taken auditions from 50 voice actors, come across this one, thought to themselves "Hey, this sounds just like the actress in 'Her', great, let's use them" and that would be fine. Except that is simply not true. If their intent was to sound like Her, and then they chose someone who sounds like Her, then they're in trouble.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Yeah, but then again, I totally expected this opening the comment threads. Same happened with RMS debacle, same happened with similar events earlier, same happened on many a Musk stories. It seems that a neat narrative with clear person/object to hate, once established, is extremely resilient to facts that disprove it.
  - goatlover 2y ago
    What facts disprove OpenAI making a voice that sounds like SJ such that the movie Her is referenced by Altman, and why is that actress upset?
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      > What facts disprove OpenAI making a voice that sounds like SJ The objective parts of this are disproved in several ways by the very article under which we're commenting. The subjective parts are... subjective, but arguably demonstrated as false in the very thread, through examples of SJ vs. Sky to listen side by side. > such that the movie Her is referenced by Altman You're creating a causal connection without a proof of one. We don't know why Altman referenced "Her", but I feel it's more likely because the product works in a way eerily similar to the movie's AI, not that because it sounds like it. > and why is that actress upset? Who knows? Celebrities sue individuals and companies all the time. Sometimes for a reason, sometimes to just generate drama (and capitalize on it).
      - sanderjd 2y ago
        You want to say that the dispute here is over ignoring objective facts, but it isn't. I haven't seen anybody here ignoring the facts laid out by this article. The dispute is instead about statements just like your We don't know why Altman referenced "Her", which, on the one hand, you're right, the mind of another personally is technically unknowable, but on the other hand, no, that's total nonsense, we do indeed know exactly why he referenced the movie, because we're a social animal and we absolutely are frequently capable of reasoning out other people's motivations and intentions. This is not a court of law, we don't have a responsibility to suspend disbelief unless and until we see a piece of paper that says "I did this thing for this reason", we are free to look at a pattern of behavior and draw obvious conclusions. Indeed, if it were a court of law, that's still exactly what we'd be asked to do. Intent matters, and people usually don't spell it out in a memo, so people are asked to look at a pattern of behavior in context and use their judgement to determine what they think it demonstrates.
- mise_en_place 2y ago
  It is a curious reaction, but it starts to make sense if some of these posters are running ops for intelligence agencies. Balaji Srinivasan noted that as the US started pulling out of foreign wars, the intelligence apparatus would be turned inward domestically. Some of it can also be attributed to ideological reasons, the d/acc crowd for example. Please note I am not attacking any individual poster, but speculating on the reasons why someone might refuse to acknowledge the truth, even when presented evidence to the contrary.
- summerlight 2y ago
  My guess: Sam wanted to imitate the voice from Her and became aware of Midler v. Ford cases so reached out to SJ. He probably didn't expect her decline. Anyway, this prior case tells that you cannot mimic other's voice without their permission and the overall timeline indicates OpenAI's "intention" of imitation. It does not matter if they used SJ's voice in the training set or not. Their intention matters.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    I cannot read the article because of it's paywall - is there actual proof OpenAI reached out to Johansson - or is it just being alleged by her lawyers? It seems she has every reason to benefit from claiming Sky sounded like her even if it was a coincidence. "Go away" payments are very common, even for celebrities - and OpenAI has deep pockets... Even so, if they got a voice actor to impersonate or sound similar to Johansson, is that something that's not allowed?
    - srockets 2y ago
      If her lawyers are half competent, then they wouldn’t lie. They may not tell the whole truth, but we’re not discussing what wasn’t said here. As for your second question, yes. Otherwise you have a perfect workaround that would mean a person likeness is free-for-all to use, but we already decided that is not acceptable.
      - Alupis 2y ago
        > Otherwise you have a perfect workaround that would mean a person likeness is free-for-all to use, but we already decided that is not acceptable That is not decided. There have been high profile cases were someone's likeness was explicitly used without permission, and they still had no recourse. It was argued the person was notable enough they could not protect their likeness. Regardless, it appears debated if Sky even sounded like Johansson, which will make this very difficult for anyone to argue (being subjective and all). If the Sky voice actor was recorded prior to engaging with Johansson (which has been claimed by OpenAI), then it seems even more difficult to argue. In the end, this will net Johansson a nice "go away" payday and then everyone will forget about it.
- ein0p 2y ago
  It’s human nature: people see others achieve what they cannot, and try to pull them down. You see this wrt Musk on this site a lot, too.
  - sanderjd 2y ago
    It has nothing to do with this. There are many successful people and businesses that I admire, and a number of notable examples of those I do not. The two your comment mentions are simply part of that latter group. I think for good reason. (But of course I would think that...)
    - ein0p 2y ago
      I’m not talking about you specifically here. What you’re saying could be true for you, and not true for the community as a whole. With the benefit of experience, I can tell for certain there’s (on average) a strong undercurrent of jealousy against people perceived as overly ambitious, particularly if they are successful in their ambitions. This is not specific to this site, of course, or even to the tech community in general.
      - sanderjd 2y ago
        You're right that it could be the case. But I disagree that it is likely to be, in this specific case, and the other specific case you cited. I think many people distrust and dislike Altman and Musk in particular because of their own specific behavior. Some people are hated because people are just jealous, but other people use that as an umbrella excuse to deflect blowback from their behavior that they entirely deserve. I believe this is one of those latter cases.
        ein0p 2y ago
        But you don’t even know what their behavior really is. What you do know is the narrative created by fake news media mostly. At best it’s lies by omission, at worst - outright smears and fabrications. Idk much about Altman, but people who worked with Musk hold him in very high regard and say he’s the real deal. Yet if you go by the narratives you’d think the exact opposite
- not2b 2y ago
  It was not claimed that they cloned ScarJo's voice. They hired a soundalike when they couldn't get the person they wanted. Use or lack of use of AI is irrelevant. As I said before, both Bette Midler and Tom Waits won similar cases. Since they withdrew the voice this will end, but if OpenAI hadn't backed off and ScarJo sued, there would be discovery, and we'd find out what her instructions were. If those instructions were "try to sound like the AI in the film Her", that would be enough for ScarJo to win. I know that the Post article claims otherwise. I'm skeptical.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > It was not claimed that they cloned ScarJo’s voice. There were some claims by some people when the issue first arose that they had specifically done a deepfake clone of SJ’s voice; probably because of the combination of apparent trading on the similarity and the nature of OpenAI’s business. That’s not the case as far as the mechanism by which the voice was produced.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
      It's technically possible that the Sky voice/persona is half voice actress and half prosody/intonation ("performance") from SJ/"her". Clearly the ChatCGT tts system is flexible enough to add emotion/drama to the underlying voice, and that aspect must also have been trained on something. Clearly a lot of people (including her "closest friends") find the ChatGPT demo to have been very similar to SJ/"her", which isn't to deny that the reporter was fed some (performance-wise) flat snippets from the voice actor's audition tape that sounded like flat sections of the ChatGPT demo. It'd be interesting to hear an in-depth comparison from a vocal expert, but it seems we're unlikey to get that.
  - nomel 2y ago
    > They hired a soundalike when they couldn't get the person they wanted. Your opinion may vary, but they don't sound alike to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695
- renewiltord 2y ago
  The population of this site reacts to all stories like this. It’s only Gell-Mann Amnesia that causes your mind to bend.
- itronitron 2y ago
  >> They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ. Are you saying that story is false?
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  Legally, the issue isn’t what they were thinking when they hired the actor, it’s what the intent and effect was when they went to market. (Even if there was documentary evidence that they actively sought out an actor for resemblance to SJ’s voice from day one, the only reason that would be relevant is because it would also support that that was there intent with the product when it was actually released, not because it is independently relevant on its own.) Whether or not they had any interest in SJ’s voice when they hired the other actor, they clearly developed such an interest before they went to market, and there is at least an evidence-based argument that could be made in court that they did, in fact, commercially leverage similarity.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    No, that's not the legal standard here.
- foobarqux 2y ago
  I don't understand the point you are trying to make. The essential question is whether they were trying to imitate (using a voice actor or otherwise) Scarlett Johansson's voice without her permission. Nothing in the article refutes that they were; whether they sought the permission before or after they started doing the imitation is irrelevant. Others have pointed to previous case law that shows that this form of imitation is illegal. Moreover I can't see any reasonable person concluding that they were not trying to imitate her voice given that: 1. It sounds similar to her (It's unbelievable that anyone would argue that they aren't similar, moreso given #2). 2. Her voice is famous for the context in which synthetic voice is used 3. They contacted her at some point to get her permission to use her voice 4. The CEO referenced the movie which Johansson's voice is famous for (and again depicts the same context the synthetic voice is being used) shortly before they released the synthetic voice.
- deleted 2y ago
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- deleted 2y ago
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- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Tbf here Altman really screwed this over with that tweet and very sudden contacting. There probably wouldn't be much of a case otherwise. If I had to guess the best faith order of events (more than what OpenAi deserves): - someone liked Her (clearly) - they got a voice that sounded like Her, subconsciously (this is fine) - someone high up hears it and thinks "wow this sounds like SJ!" (again, fine) - they think "hey, we have money. Why not get THE SJ?!" - they contact SJ, she refuses and they realize money's isn't enough (still fine. But this is definitely some schadenfreude here) - marketing starts semi-indepenently, and they make references to Her, becsuse famous AI voice (here's where the cracks start to form. Sadly the marketer may not have even realized what talks went on). - someone at OpenAi makes one last hail Mary before the release and contacts SJ again (this is where the trouble starts. MAYBE they didn't know about SJ refusing, but someone in the pipeline should have) - Altman, who definitely should have been aware of these contacts, makes that tweet. Maybe they forgot, maybe they didn't realize the implications. But the lawyer's room is now on fire So yeah, hanlon's razor. Thus could he a good faith mistake, but OpenAi's done a good job before this PR disaster ruining their goodwill. Again, sweet Schadenfreude even if we are assuming none of this was intentional.
  - BeefWellington 2y ago
    Just how many "Good faith mistakes" is a company / CEO permitted to make before a person stops believing the good faith part?
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      I'm a pretty forgiving person, I don't really mind mistakes as long they are 1) admitted to 2) steps are taken to actively reverse course, and 3) guidelines are taken to prevent the same mistakes from happening. But you more or less drain thst good faith when you are caught with your pants down and decide instead to double down. So I was pretty much against OpenAI ever since the whole "paying for training data is expensive" response during the NYT trials. ---- In general, the populace can be pretty unforgiving (sometimes justified, sometimes not). It really only takes one PR blunder to tank thst good faith. And much longer to restore it.
    - 2y ago
- Repulsion9513 2y ago
  Except the story isn't false? They wanted her voice, they got her voice*, they did marketing around her voice, but it's not her voice, she didn't want to give them her voice. Notice how the only asterisk there is "it's technically not her voice, it's just someone who they picked because she sounded just like her"
- benzible 2y ago
  Your immediate acceptance that a timeline that represents the best spin of a deep-pocketed company in full crisis PR mode proves the story "false", full stop, no caveats is... I wouldn't say mind-bending, but quite credulous at a minimum. The timeline they present could be accurate but the full picture could still be quite damning. As Casey Newton wrote today [1]: > Of course, this explanation only goes so far. We don’t know whether anyone involved in choosing Sky’s voice noted the similarity to Johansson’s, for example. And given how close the two voices sound to most ears, it might have seemed strange for the company to offer both the Sky voice and the Johansson voice, should the latter actor have chosen to participate in the project. [...] And I still don’t understand why Altman reportedly reached out to Johansson just two days before the demonstration to ask her to reconsider. They absolutely have not earned the benefit of the doubt. Just look at their reaction to the NDA / equity clawback fiasco [2], and their focus on lifelong non-disparagement clauses. There's a lot of smoke there... [1] https://www.platformer.news/openai-scarlett-johansson-chatgpt-voice-her-altman https://www.platformer.news/openai-scarlett-johansson-chatgp... [2] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/351132/openai-vested-equity-nda-sam-altman-documents-employees https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/351132/openai-vested-equi...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- rgrs 2y ago
  If they gor the voice anyway why did they contact her?
- koolala 2y ago
  thats even extra flattery for her
- munksbeer 2y ago
  >They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ. The reaction on this site to the news that this story was false is kind of mindbending. People lose their rational mind when it comes to people they hate (or the opposite I suppose). I don't care for Sam Altman, or OpenAI one way or another, so it was quite amusing to watch the absolute outrage the story generated, with people so certain about their views.
s0lar 2y ago
It could have simply been the other way around: they auditioned some unknown voice actors, then someone noted that one of them sounded like Scarlett Johansson. They optimistically contacted SJ, assuming she would agree, but then had to back off.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
> Are we supposed to believe that the company lawyer or head of HR did this without consulting (or more likely being instructed by) the co-founder and CEO?! Yes this is pretty typical. The CEO doesn’t make all decisions. They hire people to make decisions. A company’s head of legal could definitely make decisions about what standard language to use in documents on their own.

tptacek 2y ago

They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ. The reaction on this site to the news that this story was false is kind of mindbending.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
Sure, no-one is disputing that, and despite this Altman then contacts SJ again two days before release asking her to reconsider, then tweets "her" to remind the public what he was shooting for. The goal could have just been ChatGPT with a voice interface, but instead Altman himself is saying the the goal was specifically to copy "her".
- jackothy 2y ago
  He's not necessarily saying that was the goal from the start. All he is admitting with that tweet is that it is indeed (he finds it to be) reminiscent of "Her".
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    Well, from the start, Altman wanted SJ to do the voice. Perhaps he'd never seen or heard of the movie "her", and the association is just coincidental? After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. I guess that's just the kind of voice he likes. So, Altman has forgotten about SJ, has 5 voice talents in the bag, and is good to go, right? But then, 2 days(!) before the release he calls SJ again, asking her to reconsider (getting nervous about what he's about to release, perhaps?). But still, maybe we should give Altman the benefit of the doubt, and assume he wanted SJ so badly because he had a crush on her or something? Then on release day, Altman tweets "her", and reveals a demo not of a sober AI assistant with a voice interface, but of a cringe-inducing AI girlfriend trying to be flirty and emotional. He could have picked any of the five voices for the demo, but you know ... But as you say, he's not admitting anything. When he tweeted "her" maybe it was because he saw the movie for the first time the night before?
    - LocalPCGuy 2y ago
      > After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. According to the article, the word After here is incorrect. It states the voice actor was hired months before the first contact with SJ. They might be lying, but when they hired the voice actor seems like it would be a verifiable fact that has contracts and other documentation. And like others, not defending OpenAI, but that timeline does tend to break the narrative you put forth in this post.
    - joshjob42 2y ago
      Sky has been in the app for many months, the release last week didn't add the voice, it merely is for a mode which allows a much more natural back and forth and interaction via voice, which is, indeed, fairly reminiscent of the voice interface in "her". He probably just really wants to actually have SJ's voice from the film. But SJ doesn't really have a right to arbitrary west coast vocal fry female voices. Without the "disembodied voice of an AI" element, I don't think most people would note "Oh she sounds like SJ". In fact, that's what the voice actress herself has said -- she hadn't gotten compared to SJ before this.
      - realfeel78 2y ago
        If down was up and blue was red then blueberries on the floor would be strawberries on the ceiling.
    - jackothy 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - throwthrowuknow 2y ago
      The 2 days thing won’t fly. The omni model can probably produce any voice when led with a few seconds of audio. Meta developed a similar model a while back but didn’t open source it out of fear of deepfakes and there are commercial offerings like elevenlabs and open source ones like bark et al. So the last minute ask wasn’t nerves but a last ditch attempt to score a rebound for the launch.
  - Beldin 2y ago
    And if you commision an artist to draw a black-leather tight-fit clad red-head superspy in an ad for tour product, it need not look like Black Widow from the MCU. But if it does look very much like her, it doesn't really matter whether you never intended to.
    - jackothy 2y ago
      You can see plenty of discussion elsewhere in this thread regarding how similar the result actually ended up being. All I'm saying in the comment you are replying to is that it's incorrect to claim that Altman's saying that "the goal was specifically to copy 'Her'".
  - nomel 2y ago
    The voice, or the plot/concept of the movie? Her was a bout an AI having enough realism that someone could become emotionally attached to it. It was not a movie about Scarlett Johansson's voice. Any flirty female voice would be appropriator a "her" tweet.
    - jackothy 2y ago
      Exactly, just reminiscent of the movie. So the tweet really proves nothing in this case, unlike what some people seem to believe.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
      Maybe, but that isn't what Altman did. He specifically tried to hire SJ. Twice.
      - nomel 2y ago
        And, hired a voice actress that sounds exactly like Rashida Jones [1] rather than SJ, 6 months before. These don't have to be related. Maybe they are, but the confidence that they are is silly, since having a big celebrity name as the voice is a desirable thing, great marketing, especially one that did the voice acting for a movie about AI. My mind was completely changed when I actually listened to the voice comparison for myself [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695
- deleted 2y ago
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- tptacek 2y ago
  Lots of people are disputing it.
  - Repulsion9513 2y ago
    Where has anyone disputed "that they hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ"? Links preferred please.
    - renewiltord 2y ago
      It’s actually just a few comments away, and visible for me from the parent to your comment > Well, from the start, Altman wanted SJ to do the voice. Perhaps he'd never seen or heard of the movie "her", and the association is just coincidental? After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. I suppose some might imagine asserting the opposite as a distinct concept from disputing but there you have it. You should be able to find a link quite easily.
      - Repulsion9513 2y ago
        I don't see where that quote says "they contacted SJ before they hired the actor that did the voice" or anything similar. Perhaps you need to taste it a bit more before you try again. "Whether or not Altman wanted SJ's voice" and "whether or not they got someone else to do SJ's voice before asking SJ to do it" are two completely independent matters.
        renewiltord 2y ago
        > After "she" said no, then Altman auditions a bunch of voice talent and picks someone who sounds just like SJ. What does 'after' mean to you? Strange response.
        Repulsion9513 2y ago
        What does "picks" mean to you? Strange response. Do you think they only got one person to do it or something? If they weren't looking at multiple options then ... why did they still ask SJ? Oh right because they asked SJ because they hadn't picked yet.
supermatt 2y ago
Even if the voice actor was sourced before they originally contacted SJ, it was clearly the intent to sound like her. There are so many other distinctive voices they could have chosen, but instead they decided to go as close as possible to "her" as they could. Many people thought it was SJ until she stated it wasn't. I appreciate the voice actor may sound like that naturally, but its hardly coincidental that the voice that sounds most like the voice from "her" was the one chosen for their promotion. It is clearly an attempt to pass-off.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >Even if the voice actor was sourced before they originally contacted SJ, it was clearly the intent to sound like her. Her, being the voice SJ did for the movie, not SJ's conversational voice which is somewhat different. If OpenAI were smart, they did it in a chinese wall manner and looked for someone whose voice sounded like the movie without involving SJ's voice in the discussion.
- tptacek 2y ago
  This is not a thing. They hired a voice actor, who spoke in her normal speaking voice. That voice is not SJ's intellectual property, no matter what it sounds like. Further, I don't know how you can say any intention here is "clear", especially given the track record on this particular story, which has been abysmal even after this story was published. They could have taken auditions from 50 voice actors, come across this one, thought to themselves "Hey, this sounds just like the actress in 'Her', great, let's use them" and that would be fine. Laurence Fishburne does not own his "welcome to the desert of the real" intonation; other people have it too, and they can be hired to read in it. Again: the Post has this voice actor reading in the normal voice. This wasn't an impersonator.
  - qarl 2y ago
    > They could have taken auditions from 50 voice actors, come across this one, thought to themselves "Hey, this sounds just like the actress in 'Her', great, let's use them" and that would be fine. Except that is simply not true. If their intent was to sound like Her, and then they chose someone who sounds like Her, then they're in trouble.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
Yeah, but then again, I totally expected this opening the comment threads. Same happened with RMS debacle, same happened with similar events earlier, same happened on many a Musk stories. It seems that a neat narrative with clear person/object to hate, once established, is extremely resilient to facts that disprove it.
- goatlover 2y ago
  What facts disprove OpenAI making a voice that sounds like SJ such that the movie Her is referenced by Altman, and why is that actress upset?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    > What facts disprove OpenAI making a voice that sounds like SJ The objective parts of this are disproved in several ways by the very article under which we're commenting. The subjective parts are... subjective, but arguably demonstrated as false in the very thread, through examples of SJ vs. Sky to listen side by side. > such that the movie Her is referenced by Altman You're creating a causal connection without a proof of one. We don't know why Altman referenced "Her", but I feel it's more likely because the product works in a way eerily similar to the movie's AI, not that because it sounds like it. > and why is that actress upset? Who knows? Celebrities sue individuals and companies all the time. Sometimes for a reason, sometimes to just generate drama (and capitalize on it).
    - sanderjd 2y ago
      You want to say that the dispute here is over ignoring objective facts, but it isn't. I haven't seen anybody here ignoring the facts laid out by this article. The dispute is instead about statements just like your We don't know why Altman referenced "Her", which, on the one hand, you're right, the mind of another personally is technically unknowable, but on the other hand, no, that's total nonsense, we do indeed know exactly why he referenced the movie, because we're a social animal and we absolutely are frequently capable of reasoning out other people's motivations and intentions. This is not a court of law, we don't have a responsibility to suspend disbelief unless and until we see a piece of paper that says "I did this thing for this reason", we are free to look at a pattern of behavior and draw obvious conclusions. Indeed, if it were a court of law, that's still exactly what we'd be asked to do. Intent matters, and people usually don't spell it out in a memo, so people are asked to look at a pattern of behavior in context and use their judgement to determine what they think it demonstrates.
mise_en_place 2y ago
It is a curious reaction, but it starts to make sense if some of these posters are running ops for intelligence agencies. Balaji Srinivasan noted that as the US started pulling out of foreign wars, the intelligence apparatus would be turned inward domestically. Some of it can also be attributed to ideological reasons, the d/acc crowd for example. Please note I am not attacking any individual poster, but speculating on the reasons why someone might refuse to acknowledge the truth, even when presented evidence to the contrary.
summerlight 2y ago
My guess: Sam wanted to imitate the voice from Her and became aware of Midler v. Ford cases so reached out to SJ. He probably didn't expect her decline. Anyway, this prior case tells that you cannot mimic other's voice without their permission and the overall timeline indicates OpenAI's "intention" of imitation. It does not matter if they used SJ's voice in the training set or not. Their intention matters.
- Alupis 2y ago
  I cannot read the article because of it's paywall - is there actual proof OpenAI reached out to Johansson - or is it just being alleged by her lawyers? It seems she has every reason to benefit from claiming Sky sounded like her even if it was a coincidence. "Go away" payments are very common, even for celebrities - and OpenAI has deep pockets... Even so, if they got a voice actor to impersonate or sound similar to Johansson, is that something that's not allowed?
  - srockets 2y ago
    If her lawyers are half competent, then they wouldn’t lie. They may not tell the whole truth, but we’re not discussing what wasn’t said here. As for your second question, yes. Otherwise you have a perfect workaround that would mean a person likeness is free-for-all to use, but we already decided that is not acceptable.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      > Otherwise you have a perfect workaround that would mean a person likeness is free-for-all to use, but we already decided that is not acceptable That is not decided. There have been high profile cases were someone's likeness was explicitly used without permission, and they still had no recourse. It was argued the person was notable enough they could not protect their likeness. Regardless, it appears debated if Sky even sounded like Johansson, which will make this very difficult for anyone to argue (being subjective and all). If the Sky voice actor was recorded prior to engaging with Johansson (which has been claimed by OpenAI), then it seems even more difficult to argue. In the end, this will net Johansson a nice "go away" payday and then everyone will forget about it.
ein0p 2y ago
It’s human nature: people see others achieve what they cannot, and try to pull them down. You see this wrt Musk on this site a lot, too.
- sanderjd 2y ago
  It has nothing to do with this. There are many successful people and businesses that I admire, and a number of notable examples of those I do not. The two your comment mentions are simply part of that latter group. I think for good reason. (But of course I would think that...)
  - ein0p 2y ago
    I’m not talking about you specifically here. What you’re saying could be true for you, and not true for the community as a whole. With the benefit of experience, I can tell for certain there’s (on average) a strong undercurrent of jealousy against people perceived as overly ambitious, particularly if they are successful in their ambitions. This is not specific to this site, of course, or even to the tech community in general.
    - sanderjd 2y ago
      You're right that it could be the case. But I disagree that it is likely to be, in this specific case, and the other specific case you cited. I think many people distrust and dislike Altman and Musk in particular because of their own specific behavior. Some people are hated because people are just jealous, but other people use that as an umbrella excuse to deflect blowback from their behavior that they entirely deserve. I believe this is one of those latter cases.
      - ein0p 2y ago
        But you don’t even know what their behavior really is. What you do know is the narrative created by fake news media mostly. At best it’s lies by omission, at worst - outright smears and fabrications. Idk much about Altman, but people who worked with Musk hold him in very high regard and say he’s the real deal. Yet if you go by the narratives you’d think the exact opposite
not2b 2y ago
It was not claimed that they cloned ScarJo's voice. They hired a soundalike when they couldn't get the person they wanted. Use or lack of use of AI is irrelevant. As I said before, both Bette Midler and Tom Waits won similar cases. Since they withdrew the voice this will end, but if OpenAI hadn't backed off and ScarJo sued, there would be discovery, and we'd find out what her instructions were. If those instructions were "try to sound like the AI in the film Her", that would be enough for ScarJo to win. I know that the Post article claims otherwise. I'm skeptical.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > It was not claimed that they cloned ScarJo’s voice. There were some claims by some people when the issue first arose that they had specifically done a deepfake clone of SJ’s voice; probably because of the combination of apparent trading on the similarity and the nature of OpenAI’s business. That’s not the case as far as the mechanism by which the voice was produced.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
    It's technically possible that the Sky voice/persona is half voice actress and half prosody/intonation ("performance") from SJ/"her". Clearly the ChatCGT tts system is flexible enough to add emotion/drama to the underlying voice, and that aspect must also have been trained on something. Clearly a lot of people (including her "closest friends") find the ChatGPT demo to have been very similar to SJ/"her", which isn't to deny that the reporter was fed some (performance-wise) flat snippets from the voice actor's audition tape that sounded like flat sections of the ChatGPT demo. It'd be interesting to hear an in-depth comparison from a vocal expert, but it seems we're unlikey to get that.
- nomel 2y ago
  > They hired a soundalike when they couldn't get the person they wanted. Your opinion may vary, but they don't sound alike to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435695
renewiltord 2y ago
The population of this site reacts to all stories like this. It’s only Gell-Mann Amnesia that causes your mind to bend.
itronitron 2y ago
>> They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ. Are you saying that story is false?
dragonwriter 2y ago
Legally, the issue isn’t what they were thinking when they hired the actor, it’s what the intent and effect was when they went to market. (Even if there was documentary evidence that they actively sought out an actor for resemblance to SJ’s voice from day one, the only reason that would be relevant is because it would also support that that was there intent with the product when it was actually released, not because it is independently relevant on its own.) Whether or not they had any interest in SJ’s voice when they hired the other actor, they clearly developed such an interest before they went to market, and there is at least an evidence-based argument that could be made in court that they did, in fact, commercially leverage similarity.
- tptacek 2y ago
  No, that's not the legal standard here.
foobarqux 2y ago
I don't understand the point you are trying to make. The essential question is whether they were trying to imitate (using a voice actor or otherwise) Scarlett Johansson's voice without her permission. Nothing in the article refutes that they were; whether they sought the permission before or after they started doing the imitation is irrelevant. Others have pointed to previous case law that shows that this form of imitation is illegal. Moreover I can't see any reasonable person concluding that they were not trying to imitate her voice given that: 1. It sounds similar to her (It's unbelievable that anyone would argue that they aren't similar, moreso given #2). 2. Her voice is famous for the context in which synthetic voice is used 3. They contacted her at some point to get her permission to use her voice 4. The CEO referenced the movie which Johansson's voice is famous for (and again depicts the same context the synthetic voice is being used) shortly before they released the synthetic voice.
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johnnyanmac 2y ago
Tbf here Altman really screwed this over with that tweet and very sudden contacting. There probably wouldn't be much of a case otherwise. If I had to guess the best faith order of events (more than what OpenAi deserves): - someone liked Her (clearly) - they got a voice that sounded like Her, subconsciously (this is fine) - someone high up hears it and thinks "wow this sounds like SJ!" (again, fine) - they think "hey, we have money. Why not get THE SJ?!" - they contact SJ, she refuses and they realize money's isn't enough (still fine. But this is definitely some schadenfreude here) - marketing starts semi-indepenently, and they make references to Her, becsuse famous AI voice (here's where the cracks start to form. Sadly the marketer may not have even realized what talks went on). - someone at OpenAi makes one last hail Mary before the release and contacts SJ again (this is where the trouble starts. MAYBE they didn't know about SJ refusing, but someone in the pipeline should have) - Altman, who definitely should have been aware of these contacts, makes that tweet. Maybe they forgot, maybe they didn't realize the implications. But the lawyer's room is now on fire So yeah, hanlon's razor. Thus could he a good faith mistake, but OpenAi's done a good job before this PR disaster ruining their goodwill. Again, sweet Schadenfreude even if we are assuming none of this was intentional.
- BeefWellington 2y ago
  Just how many "Good faith mistakes" is a company / CEO permitted to make before a person stops believing the good faith part?
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I'm a pretty forgiving person, I don't really mind mistakes as long they are 1) admitted to 2) steps are taken to actively reverse course, and 3) guidelines are taken to prevent the same mistakes from happening. But you more or less drain thst good faith when you are caught with your pants down and decide instead to double down. So I was pretty much against OpenAI ever since the whole "paying for training data is expensive" response during the NYT trials. ---- In general, the populace can be pretty unforgiving (sometimes justified, sometimes not). It really only takes one PR blunder to tank thst good faith. And much longer to restore it.
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Repulsion9513 2y ago
Except the story isn't false? They wanted her voice, they got her voice*, they did marketing around her voice, but it's not her voice, she didn't want to give them her voice. Notice how the only asterisk there is "it's technically not her voice, it's just someone who they picked because she sounded just like her"
benzible 2y ago
Your immediate acceptance that a timeline that represents the best spin of a deep-pocketed company in full crisis PR mode proves the story "false", full stop, no caveats is... I wouldn't say mind-bending, but quite credulous at a minimum. The timeline they present could be accurate but the full picture could still be quite damning. As Casey Newton wrote today [1]: > Of course, this explanation only goes so far. We don’t know whether anyone involved in choosing Sky’s voice noted the similarity to Johansson’s, for example. And given how close the two voices sound to most ears, it might have seemed strange for the company to offer both the Sky voice and the Johansson voice, should the latter actor have chosen to participate in the project. [...] And I still don’t understand why Altman reportedly reached out to Johansson just two days before the demonstration to ask her to reconsider. They absolutely have not earned the benefit of the doubt. Just look at their reaction to the NDA / equity clawback fiasco [2], and their focus on lifelong non-disparagement clauses. There's a lot of smoke there... [1] https://www.platformer.news/openai-scarlett-johansson-chatgpt-voice-her-altman https://www.platformer.news/openai-scarlett-johansson-chatgp... [2] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/351132/openai-vested-equity-nda-sam-altman-documents-employees https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/351132/openai-vested-equi...
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rgrs 2y ago
If they gor the voice anyway why did they contact her?
koolala 2y ago
thats even extra flattery for her
munksbeer 2y ago
>They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ. The reaction on this site to the news that this story was false is kind of mindbending. People lose their rational mind when it comes to people they hate (or the opposite I suppose). I don't care for Sam Altman, or OpenAI one way or another, so it was quite amusing to watch the absolute outrage the story generated, with people so certain about their views.

s0lar 2y ago

It could have simply been the other way around: they auditioned some unknown voice actors, then someone noted that one of them sounded like Scarlett Johansson. They optimistically contacted SJ, assuming she would agree, but then had to back off.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

> Are we supposed to believe that the company lawyer or head of HR did this without consulting (or more likely being instructed by) the co-founder and CEO?! Yes this is pretty typical. The CEO doesn’t make all decisions. They hire people to make decisions. A company’s head of legal could definitely make decisions about what standard language to use in documents on their own.