Scarlett Johansson hits AI app with legal action for cloning her voice in an ad
theverge.com
theverge.com
You'll see the same thing in defamation cases. Someone will no doubt use AI to create someone's likeness to say something that person finds reprehensible and whoever created that AI may try to argue it's just an AI. It won't matter then either.
Where this gets more interesting is if whoever created the AI gets held responsible for what people do with it. The kneejerk reaction in the tech community will be to say "no, it's just a tool" but there's such a thing in legal terms as a reckless disregard for the consequences making you culpable.
Lots of tools can be dangerous if misused. We hold the people who misuse the tools responsible, not the people who made the tools. Why would AI be any different?
As others have commented, it would depend on the person's intent. If an explosive making company sells some explosives to a construction company for use in excavation, but then the construction company misuses the explosive and kills people, the explosive making company wouldn't be liable. But if person A makes some homemade explosives and gives them to person B to put into a bomb, and the bomb kills people, yes, we would hold person A liable. But even in that case the basis wouldn't be "reckless disregard for consequences", it would just be straight up murder.
For example, a voice cloning AI that's marketed and sold for people diagnosed with ALS to clone their voice in case they lose their ability to speak that is misused will not have any legal liability. However, if that same tool is marketed and sold to clone celebrity voices for commercials, then that company is going to have a bad time in court.
That wouldn't be "reckless disregard for consequences", though. It would be straight up fraud.
Yes, I know. There are enormous upsides to anonymity. But at the same time, so much harm would vanish, if every word written, and every deed done, was indelibly linked to the entity responsible.
I think, sadly, this is where all this will end up.
Honestly, I can't think of very many problems that would be solved by removing anonymity. There are a few, mostly related to to reducing actual criminal activity, but not enough to compensate for what we'd lose.
And hate speech/fraud/scams could be punished.
We should also expect large numbers of authorized AI endorsements. Imagine you're some actor and a foreign company wants to make a TV advert advertising yogurt and pay you $1000. Might as well say yes - as long as they use AI, you don't even need to lift a finger. In fact, you can authorize thousands of ads across the world and pull in a nice million dollars, while becoming 'the advert guy', all without doing any actual work.
re: this film -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_(2013_film)
Is it copyright?
Is it some protected legal mechanism encoded in law, or is it agreement(s) between parties (Broadcasters/TV/Film producers)?
Is it only in play if you explicitly say it's a particular person? Can you use an impersonator to voice over something without referencing the person in question/give no grounds to suggest it's a particular person? What if you hire a good lookalike? A soundalike?
[1]: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/misappropriation/
Whether a sound-alike produced with AI voice cloning with the specific explicit disclaimer on the material containing the use in this case is, under existing law, a use of protected likeness is an AI-specific question in the application of the existing right of personality laws.
It won't be the last such question, I suspect.
https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/scarlett-johansson-leg...
From the guidelines [1]:
> Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
Having something ratified as a law makes any lawsuit a slam dunk and discourages abuse even by wealthy corporations.
No, it doesn't, otherwise there would be no lawsuits proceding to trial without settlement ubder established laws.
Having law that (whether on its face or through case law) clearly applies to the situation that you claim occurred obviously helps, but it doesn't make any suit an automatic slam dunk.
We might find out that this case dies in the first phases of proceedings because the law is not on Johansson's side.
I have a feeling we will definitely need some new legislation in the next 10 years for regulating AI.
Satire is the textbook example of fair use.
I don't follow your argument. That same problem applies to legislators and regulators.
Also, I don't see any legal novelty. Same shit, different tech.
And I meant novelty for AI in general. This specific case does seem like same shit different tech.
In terms of deepfakes or crypto scams, in the end what we need it is more literacy on the matter, which won't prevent the ability for AI to do "things" but will let us acknowledge that's where we're at. Specific laws to get everyone on the same page on this is absolutely necessary.
wow this is really amateur hour for whoever did that ad without permission. It's like this person never got a letter from their cable company for bittorrenting and just had no idea anyone would mind using major film studio actors/content in their for-profit ad without paying for it.
it's like there's a reason when you go to the gym, all the music is some piped in re-recorded version of famous songs with an unknown singer doing it, rather than the actual music.
It's the real clip that'll be the basis for this court case. Actual copyright infringement.
The AI-generated portion is much more murky legal waters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
4) appropriation of name and likeness [..] violation of a right of publicity most closely aligns with appropriation. The right of publicity often is manifest in advertising or merchandise
It specifically quotes a relevant part of California's civil code:
Any person who knowingly uses another’s name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness, in any manner, on or in products, merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods or services, without such person’s prior consent [..] shall be liable for any damages sustained by the person or persons injured as a result thereof.
Wait, is that a real thing? I’ve never heard of that before.
Heh, I hate it so much when gyms play music at all that I only use gyms that don't play any.
More recently, there was the Michelob Ultra commercial that had a ton of look (and a sound) alikes, but they basically one by one said "this isn't the person you thought it was". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCk9vfbnlfA
More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38105463
Wonder how these AI celebrity clones will be regulated, if they are.
Copyright status is irrelevant to right of personality/publicity claims, which is what this lawsuit is.
It is important to note that the legal action is against the company's use of her appearance rather than the capabilities of the app itself.
However, I wonder if voice and appearance cloning capabilities are something that would be classified as unsafe by the regulations stemming from the "Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence"?
E: no it wasn't, I was thinking of "Joan is Awful"
What I think is more likely, though, is it will result in a serious increase in the rate of people withdrawing from society and community altogether.
Then publish it, with Art Imitating Life as the title.
(Cite me in your dedications, pls :-)
Maybe someone already did that?
We are, in the US anyway. It's just when you distribute IP to others that things get dicey.
It won't be too long before enough talented nobodies sell everything about themselves for personally life changing amounts, that we can create anything from scratch on the fly.
But there will always be other types of celebrities.
I imagine that it won’t be too long until you don’t need a real human anymore, and we can generate realistic human characters at will.
At that point, why would we still plug real humans into the replication machine? It will be considered old fashioned very quickly.
That's not to say that celebrity isn't a form of inequality or some perfect meritocracy, but your face and voice being used by others isn't inherently democratizing, but instead advantages bad actors.
The ad has this bit “What’s up guys? It’s Scarlett and I want you to come with me.”
That strongly suggests endorsement. It wouldn’t matter if it was AI or Human, the ad is deceptive and uses someone’s likeness without rights to represent that person.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/right-of-publicity/
There's certainly precedent for where using a visual likeness ended up being a copyright violation.
I'm not sure but this seems like an issue that shouldn't be taken for granted.
> Why does AI have less rights than humans here?
I'm sure that's not quite what you meant, because that question in itself is ridiculous. Obviously dumb bricks of plastic and silicon don't have rights.
By recreating a voice in AI the company is effectively doing the same thing - associating that celebrity with their brand without permission. That's reasonable grounds for the celebrity to use the court system to say "That's not me, and I want to be paid for the damage this association may have caused to my status."
2. The ad didn't feature images of a person that looked like her, it featured actual images of her that were manipulated to shill the product. This obviously isn't legal. You can't just cut out a picture of Tom Hanks and put him in your ad with a speech bubble saying "buy this product", what was done here is no different from that.
> The ad, reviewed by Variety, begins with an old clip of Johansson behind the scenes of Marvel’s “Black Widow.” Johansson says, “What’s up guys? It’s Scarlett and I want you to come with me…” before a graphic covers her mouth and the screen transitions into AI-generated photos that resemble the actor. A fake voice imitating Johansson then continues speaking, promoting the AI app.
Judges generally don't care about internal details of the tech involved, instead focusing on the end result, ruling no different than if a human had done the same thing with different tools. The problems come when lawyers convince the judge into misunderstanding what that end result is using false analogies and incorrect explanation of the tech.
Because "AI" is not people. "AI" is not even conscious.