3 ms·

Personality rights in California also cover the right to persona, as in a specific person acting as a specific character. You can sound like ScarJo to some exte

Personality rights in California also cover the right to persona, as in a specific person acting as a specific character. You can sound like ScarJo to some extent, but ScarJo does own her performance of Her and anything like that. Daniel Craig is allowed to be James Bond, but Daniel Craig is not allowed to pretend to be Sean Connery playing James Bond. And of course there can be impersonators, but there is a world of difference between hiring an impersonator for the express purpose of impersonating where everyone knows that is the case, vs. hiring an impersonator to imply commercial endorsement from the original person. A commercial endorsement does not require that it be the sole form of endorsement or that it even be financially positive. Ford was running more than one ad campaign when Bette Midler sued and won, and Frito Lay was in a similar boat with Tom Waits.

vessenes 2y ago
Yes to all this. Where we are at right now is: guy with scottish accent is available in an app and his name is "Clay". Owner of app tweets how Bond was inspiring to him making the app. If it can be shown in court that Sky is an impersonation and that SJ is ruled to have endorsed whether through tweets from Sam, or the Sky voice, and that she suffered some damage or that OpenAI benefited in some way before taking it down, then I think she would likely win some money in damages. Unless all those are true, it seems tough to get more than she already got -- a quick removal of the voice. Few people mention the existing Sky voice actor (whose agent has held her name for safety concerns) is harmed here, quite substantially, by the idea that SJ could control her own performance. At any rate, my point at the top of all this is just that this is not 'open and shut' and I'm not even sure OpenAI has been more than 'aggressive' so far in its launch; we might found out they were, but I don't think the facts on the ground show more than that right now.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  i think people don't mention the existing sky voice actor, because in these kind of cases it is never the actual impersonator getting sued or found liable. in fact, if there were something problematic here, it could be entirely possible that OpenAI kept the voice actress in the dark about the intent of the performance and they would still have a legal problem.

vessenes 2y ago

Yes to all this. Where we are at right now is: guy with scottish accent is available in an app and his name is "Clay". Owner of app tweets how Bond was inspiring to him making the app. If it can be shown in court that Sky is an impersonation and that SJ is ruled to have endorsed whether through tweets from Sam, or the Sky voice, and that she suffered some damage or that OpenAI benefited in some way before taking it down, then I think she would likely win some money in damages. Unless all those are true, it seems tough to get more than she already got -- a quick removal of the voice. Few people mention the existing Sky voice actor (whose agent has held her name for safety concerns) is harmed here, quite substantially, by the idea that SJ could control her own performance. At any rate, my point at the top of all this is just that this is not 'open and shut' and I'm not even sure OpenAI has been more than 'aggressive' so far in its launch; we might found out they were, but I don't think the facts on the ground show more than that right now.

bobthepanda 2y ago
i think people don't mention the existing sky voice actor, because in these kind of cases it is never the actual impersonator getting sued or found liable. in fact, if there were something problematic here, it could be entirely possible that OpenAI kept the voice actress in the dark about the intent of the performance and they would still have a legal problem.