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Does that mean that the voice actress that was hired to sample "sky" has to stop working since her voice is "too similar to another famous person" ? So Scarlett Johansson owns her voice, and every single one that is "too similar to hers" (by what metric) and gets to dictate what can and cannot be done.

It's a slippery slope.

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No. There is an interview/documentary about South Park where they talk about celebrity appearances in the show. They said that they never request celebrities to play themselves in the show. If the person declines the offer, they can get into legal trouble for imitating them. If they don't ask it is fine.

The problem here is that they wanted Scarlett Johansson and imitated her when she said no.

There is also a big market for "celebrity sound alikes" in voice acting.

But in south park they would be seen to be imitating a person - there would be a character called "George Clooney" who sounded like George Clooney.

The case here is that there's a voice that sounds like Scarlett Johansson, but OpenAI are saying that its isn't her.

> but OpenAI are saying that its isn't her

The problem for them is that they've already admitted that they really wanted it to be her. They should have consulted a Hollywood lawyer for this one.

The other difference is that the creators also had his consent.

> The case here is that there's a voice that sounds like Scarlett Johansson, but OpenAI are saying that its isn't her.

Well, here's Sam Altman quite literally implying that it is her: https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666

That's a really good explanation. The South Park team works in the field and understands the rules of Hollywood and their details, OpenAI clearly does not.

The problem for OpenAI is probably that this is the first time that someone with a bit of standing caught them with their fingers in the cookie jar and not only have the balls to tell them no, but also have established rules to go after them.

> They said that they never request celebrities to play themselves in the show.

Satire has protections that other fields lack.

No, there is wider a context and nuance to the whole topic, as there always is. Jumping to hyperbolic "slippery slope" arguments doesn't add anything interesting to this discussion and instead tries to deflect it.

Issue is that they asked Scarlett beforehand and even CEO advertised it based on the fame of Scarlett. It is not about the possible voice actress anymore. It was all about Scarlett, not about the voice actress. The voice actress is just an excuse at this point.

If they would have never mentioned Scarlett or asked her, it might be different situation.

It was all about a character.

They wanted someone that would be able to perform a specific character (the AI in the movie "her"). They were looking for the right person for the fit, they got their eyes on Scarlett (of source, she played the character, originally), and when she refused they found someone else who would be able to deliver a close performance. It happens all the time.

To me, the "sky" voice is way closer to Rashida Jones rather than Scarlett Johansson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJmRaTogqrM&t=370s

I agree with this. I think the owners of the movie have more of a basis to sue than SJ. She doesn’t sound like that when speaking naturally. It’s like saying opera singers can sue each other for sounding extremely similar in their professional performances

Do we know that these voices are backed by real people? I kind of assumed that given AI tech in voice cloning, they could make a voice sound like anyone they want and don't need to go out and find someone that sounds like "the target" voice. I think it's more fair game if they actually found another human that could sound like someone famous, but if they just ran the audio of some of her movies through some AI and out popped a voice, that's a little bit less clear.

It's probably fair game if they got a similar voice by coincidence, but here they intentionally want to copy someone's voice as performed in a well known IP for pure business profit.

It always takes more effort to sound like someone else than just being born dude, stop pretending otherwise.

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