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Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

I don't know, to me, it's just sounds like they know how to cover all their bases.

To me, it sounds like they had the idea to make their AI sound like "her". For the initial version, they had a voice actor that sounds like the movie, as a proof of concept.

They still liked it, so it was time to contact the real star. In the end, it's not just the voice, it would have been the brand, just imagine the buzz they would have got if Scarlett J was the official voice of the company. She said no, and they were like, "too bad, we already decided how she will sound like, the only difference is whether it will be labelled as SJ or not".

In the end, someone probably felt like it's a bit too dodgy as it resemblance was uncanny, they gave it another go, probably ready to offer more money, she still refused, but in the end, it didn't change a thing.

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Agreed — seems like they had a plan, and probably talked extensively with Legal about how to develop and execute the plan to give themselves plausible deniability. The tweet was inadvisable, and undoubtedly not part of the actual plan (unless it was to get PR).

> unless it was to get PR

I think this possibility doesn't receive enough attention, there is a class of people who've figured out that they can say the most scandalous things online and it's a net positive because it generates so much exposure. (As a lowly middle class employee you can't do this - you just get fired and go broke - but at a certain level of wealth and power you're immune from that.) It is the old PT Barnum principle, "They can say whatever they want about me as long as they spell my name right." Guys like Trump and Musk know exactly what they're doing. Why wouldn't Sam?

Johansson's complaint is starting to look a little shaky especially if you remove that "her" Tweet from the equation. I wouldn't put this past Altman at all, he knows exactly what happened and what didn't inside OpenAI, so maybe he knew she didn't have a case and decided to play Sociopathic 3D Chess with her (and beat her in one round)

As a lowly middle class employee it could be interpreted externally as “representing the company” which is why you see disclaimers like “all views are my own” on some social media profiles. Sam is the company, so they can’t get mad at him, and beyond that he’s a private individual saying whatever he wants on social media without lying.

In order to sue, there need to be damages, and if they didn’t copy the voice then the rest doesn’t matter, which sam and team clearly knew and were fast to work with the news. I agree that smart people take advantage of what they can get away with, but this controversy couldn’t have turned out better for increasing brand awareness good or bad (as you say, just like trump and musk know how to do)

Johansson might not win a lawsuit, but she isn't looking bad at all. She is totally standup in the Arts vs BigTech AI cultural battle. (See also, Apple's recent iPad crushes all artist material" commercial.)

Nothing in this article changes the essence of her complaint.

The only real, though partial, rebuttal to her is that OpenAI copied a work product she did for a movie, and the movie was was more than her voice, so it's not totally her own work. So maybe the movie team as a whole has a stronger complaint than the voice actor alone.

She didn't lose any game of wits. She just got done dirty by someone who got away with it. She doesn't need money from them. She has respect from people who matter, SAM and OpenAI behaved badly like big tech always does. If OpenAI permanently stops using Johansson-like Sky voice, she'll win what she wanted.

Of course, anyone whose voice sounds like an AI has the unpleasantness of that experience, and a rich person is more able to endure it than a regular Johansson.

I am sure it was for free PR. Streisand effect trap for ScarJo.

They removed ChatGPT's most popular voice in response, causing anger among many of their customers... for PR?

I can't say much about that particular voice because I almost never used chatGPT's voices. They are too slow.

I need 1.5x speeds even if I have to use a worse voice. I am a TTS power user, listening to all online text since 2010s. Maybe GPT-4o has a more flexible voice, perhaps you can just ask it to speak faster.

They also need to have a terse mode, to avoid all the throat-clearing that I've seen in videos.

A more charitable scenario might be that they hire the voice actor and it sounds a bit like her. Someone suggests why don't we just get Scarlett to do it properly, wouldn't that be cooler? They reach out and she says no. They decide to continue with the one that sounds a bit like her.

Genuine question;

Why in the world would one expect the more charitable scenario?

It's just a best practice that serves as a healthy counterbalance to cognitive biases, that might otherwise urge us to convict without evidence.

It's not necessarily what will prove true at the end of the day but I think we owe people the presumption of innocence.

Is it necessarily a bad bias to assume OpenAI is still behaving as it's been behaving during its entire history: recklessly taking other people's IP?

I think the way I would split the difference here is that your point should inform how we think about regulation and investigation. How we write rules, how we decide to proceed in terms of investigating things.

But when it comes to specific questions that hinge on evidence, I think you have to maintain the typical presumption of innocence, just to balance out the possibilities of mob psychology getting out of control.

Yes, because the courts have yet to decide whether OpenAI has been "recklessly taking other people's IP" in an illegal way. Right now, it's only something believed by people who wish it to be true; legally, it's not clear just yet. In contrast, actually doing SJ impersonation here would be a much clearer violation. There's a huge gap between the two deeds, and I don't see the reason to just assume OpenAI crossed it.

It's like, the people dropping leaflets in your physical mailbox are delivering spam, but you wouldn't automatically assume those same people are also trying to scam you and your neighbors by delivering you physical letters meant to trick people into parting with their savings. In both cases, the messages are spam, but one is legal, other is not, and there's a huge gap between them.

Exactly wrong; it's the job of the law to "be careful," not of the people.

Those of us accusing and talking about it have no power -- thus there is literally no harm, and possible good in, putting them on the defense about this.

edit: In fact, the First Amendment of the Constitution essentially directly upholds the idea of "people saying whatever they want" in this regard.

Yes, you owe people that.

No, you do not owe "corporations, especially those with a tendency, incentive, and history of being ruthless in this way."

Wise up, people.

I think we owe people outside of a commercial environment the presumption of innocence and benefit of the doubt. But we owe profit-seeking corporations (or their officers) neither, and the assumption should be that they are simply amorally doing whatever maximizes profit. As soon as someone hangs their shingle out there as a business, our presumptions should change.

Because it follows the legal principle of innocent untill proven guilty? Unlike the "OpenAI must have cloned Scarlett Johansson's voice" wild dystophia speculations.

This is goofy. "The law" should be careful because the law has power to do real harm.

People don't need to be careful just talking; in fact we generally support the idea of "people saying whatever" in the form of the First Amendment.

Until proven otherwise I try not to assume malice in every action.

The Principle of Charity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

That's the same thing, in fewer words. It doesn't change that the beginning and the end are still imitating the original, and this is a billion dollar corporation, not an Elvis personator doing a little show.

This will be used as a template by the entertainment industry to screw over so many people.

How? This kind of thing is already illegal. If I’m producing a commercial for Joe’s Hot Dogs, and I hire a voice actor who sounds like Morgan Freeman, and he never says “I’m Morgan Freeman” but he’s the main voice in the commercial and the cartoon character he’s voicing looks like Morgan Freeman… well, many consumers will be confused into thinking Morgan Freeman likes Joe’s Hot Dogs, and that’s a violation of Morgan Freeman’s trademark.

no, that's definitely not illegal. Voices are not trademarkable, only jingles (melody, words + tone), and of course specific recordings of voices are copyrighted. The ONLY way they get in trouble is if they claim to be Morgan Freeman.

"Trademark" is not the correct way to talk about it, but commercial use of an impersonation can be a breach of the right of publicity, even if they don't actually say they're the person.

A reasonable person would assume that the voice in the commercial is Morgan Freeman, which could be very problematic for the commercial maker.

How do commerical Elvis impersonators (or commercial Elvis impersonators in commercials) get away with it?

Because no reasonable person thinks it’s actually Elvis.

Voices may not be trademarkable but I'm pretty sure styles and intonations are.

> Voices are not trademarkable

But they are subject to right of publicity in many US jurisdictions.

Which, while more like trademark than copyright (the other thing that keeps getting raised as if it should dispose of this issue), is its own area of law, distinct from either trademark or copyright.

> The ONLY way they get in trouble is if they claim to be Morgan Freeman.

That’s…not true. Though such an explicit claim would definitely be a way that they could get in trouble.

> In the United States, no federal statute or case law recognizes the right of publicity, although federal unfair competition law recognizes a related statutory right to protection against false endorsement, association, or affiliation

https://www.inta.org/topics/right-of-publicity/#:~:text=In%2....

The important word in that quote is “federal”. In the US, right of publicity is a state law right in many states (often of particular note because of the concentration of tech and entertainment industries, it is a state law right in California.)

Which part of that is illegal? Because I don't see anything.

It's in the very article > He compared Johansson’s case to one brought by the singer Bette Midler against the Ford Motor Company in the 1980s. Ford asked Midler to use her voice in ads. After she declined, Ford hired an impersonator. The U.S. appellate courts ruled in Midler’s favor, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized use.

There's a gray area. If Ford Motor Company hired an actor happened to sound a lot like Bette Midler using their normal speaking voice, Ford would have had a much better chance in defending their case.

As I understand it, that's essentially OpenAI's defense here.

Which they themselves have totally undermined.

So if I happen to sound like Tom Hanks, anyone recording me in passing would be breaking the law? How does anyone see that as reasonable?

That's a bit of a strawman: you're twisting the scope and arguing for it.

A more similar context would be: they ask Tom Hanks to create a voice similar to Woody, the cowboy from Toy Story . Tom Hanks says no, Disney says no. Then they ask you to voice their cowboy voice. It's obviously related: they tried the OG, failed, they're going for a copycat after.

But if never approached Tom Hanks or Disney, then there would be room for deniability - without mentions to real names, it would require someone to judge if it's an unauthorized copycat or just a random actor voicing a random cowboy voice.

It was a bad play from their part.

You're describing a situation different from the one I replied to, though... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40454969

This sort of thing happens all the time though doesn’t it? Take any animated film that get a TV show spinoff, their voice actors get replaced all the time, and I really can’t imagine that spinoff tv shows are dependent on getting all the original voice actors to grant permission. How many different actors have voiced looney toons characters over the years? Didn’t Ernie Hudson audition to play his own character for the Ghost Busters cartoon and lose out to someone else? And these are all cases where there is clear intent to sound as close to the original actor as possible.

I Am Not An Entertainment Lawyer either, so I can’t answer with too much certainty, but I’d suspect the actors have a clause in the contract they sign allowing the character to be played by someone else post-contract. Think about how many clauses were in the last employment contract you signed.

Sure, I would imagine such clauses exist to make this sort of thing a lot cleaner and easier. I also don't see how it could be reasonable to assert that in the absence of such a clause, an actor owns the rights to the voice of that character and no one else can portray that character with the same or similar voice without their express consent. Not everyone who creates something is signing Hollywood acting contracts with their hired actors, and I just can't see any court asserting that "CoolTubeProductions YouTube Channel" can't continue to produce more animations with their "Radical Rabbit" character just because they didn't have that sort of clause when they hired a voice actor at their college for the first year.

Ok got it.

So in your opinion, if a movie needs to have a tall, skinny red head, and then they approach someone who has those qualities and the role is turned down, then it would be illegal to get any other different tall skinny red head.

That sounds absurd to me. If you have a role, obviously the role has qualities and requirements.

And just because person 1 who happens to have those qualities turns you down, it is still valid to get a different person who fulfils your original requirements.

Yeah I think the person you’re responding to gave a bad example. I like to give examples involving commercials because they center the issue of celebrity endorsement of and association with a brand, which is the thing at issue in this OpenAI case (public corporate keynotes are essentially just multi-hour commercials).

> In the end, someone probably felt like it's a bit too dodgy as it resemblance was uncanny

What if it wasn’t a computer voice model but rather a real-life voice actress that you could pay a few cents to try to imitate Scarlett Johansson’s voice as best as she could?

That’s effectively what’s happening here, and it isn’t illegal.

It guess it also leads to the bigger question: do celebrities own their particular frequency range? Is no one allowed to publicly sound like them? Feels like the AACS DVD encryption key controversy all-over again.

> That’s effectively what’s happening here, and it isn’t illegal.

It is more complicated than that. Check out Midler v. Ford Motor Co, or Waits V. Frito Lay.

Ford hired impersonators, she's not an impersonator, that's her real voice.

She's allowed to be a voice actor using her real voice.

Your can point to the "Her" tweet, but it's a pretty flimsy argument.

Whether the actor was an impersonator or not is still up to debate. I can see an argument being made when you consider the entire context.

I don't see any argument considering the entire context, care to explain?

This is correct, and is very different from both the Midler and Waits cases. The courts are never going to tell a voice actor she can't use her real voice because she sounds too much like a famous person.

And besides, it sounds more like Rashida Jones anyway. It's clearly not an impersonation.

They are unlikely to tell the voice actor anything, since OpenAI is the problematic party here.

> Your can point to the "Her" tweet, but it's a pretty flimsy argument.

I'm not making arguments which are not already explicitly written in my post.

My argument is simple: jorvi commented that you can hire "a real-life voice actress" to "try to imitate Scarlett Johansson’s voice as best as she could", and that is not illegal.

I said that the legality of that is more complicated. What jorvi describes might or might not be illegal based on various factors. And I pointed them towards the two references to support my argument.

I explicitly didn't say in that comment anything about the OpenAI/ScarJo case. You are reacting as if you think that I have some opinion about it. You are wrong, and it would be better if you would not try to guess my state of mind. If I have some opinion about something you will know because I will explicitly state it.

>guess it also leads to the bigger question

people are allowed to sound like other people. But if you go to actor 1 and say we want to use your voice for our product, and then they say no, and then you go to actor 2 and tell them I want you to sound like actor 1 for our product, and then you release a statement hey you know that popular movie by actor 1 that just used their voice in a context extremely reminiscent of our product?!? Well, listen to what we got: (actor 2 voice presented)

Then you may run into legal problems.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

on edit: assuming that reports I am reading that the actress used for the voicework claimed not to have been instructed to sound like Her vocal work it sounds like it is probably not likely that a suit would be successful.

The other actress wasn't the only one involved in the production; she provided input but OpenAI building a voice model would involve a lot of data and input. They had to have a model of her ready to go when they asked her for permission immediately before launching; possibly they had one that had been built from her, and another legal-approved that they had converged to be close to the first one but that didn't include her as a direct source.

> What if it wasn’t a computer voice model but rather a real-life voice actress that you could pay a few cents to try to imitate Scarlett Johansson’s voice as best as she could?

> That’s effectively what’s happening here, and it isn’t illegal.

Profiting from someone else's likeness is illegal.

Right of publicity. Profiting of their image without their permission will get you sued. Even if you use an impersonator. If there is a chance the public will connect it with them, you are probably screwed.

e.g.

Vanna White vs Samsung - https://w.wiki/AAUR

Crispin Glover Back to the Future 2 lawsuit - https://w.wiki/AAUT#Back_to_the_Future_Part_II_lawsuit

> they gave it another go, probably ready to offer more money, she still refused, but in the end, it didn't change a thing.

That's not what she said happened. She said they released it anyway before she and Sam could connect, after Sam had reached out, for the second time, two days prior to the release.

> In the end, someone probably felt like it's a bit too dodgy as it resemblance was uncanny, they gave it another go, probably ready to offer more money, she still refused,

That was just a few days before launch, right? What was their plan if she said yes at that point? Continue using the "not-her" voice but say it was her? Or did they also have her voice already cloned by then and just needed to flip a switch?

> Continue using the "not-her" voice but say it was her? Or did they also have her voice already cloned by then and just needed to flip a switch?

One or the other. It doesn't really matter as SJ herself would not have necessarily been able to make sure it is not her and not a glitch in how the tech work with her voice.

Sky doesn't sound like the movie, much less "uncanny".

I think it sounds overly enthusiastic though, to the point that it sounds fake. Very overacted and dramatic. I wouldn't want to chat with that voice.

Though admittedly, so does Johansson in "Her". I don't think the voices are very similar but the style is.

Just imagine, if these voice chatbots get popular... they will likely change how people talk!

I think at the moment it's the opposite: It seems based on how many celebrities talk. When we watch them on TV, youtube, tiktok whatever they're not real people but just playing a role. It's not how they really are in their real life. The overacted enthusiasm is like a marketing tool.

As people tend to look up at celebrities and admire them they start associating this with good things and I think this is why they adopted such styles for chatbots.

Sure but Skye is still not SJ.

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