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Comment by giobox | Hacker News Reader

The Movie Her predates all of this by years, and Sam Altman even tweeted "her"! The OpenAI team are clearly well aware of Scarlett's voice (its inconceivable the majority of the team at OpenAI haven't at least seen part of the film that almost defined their industry). The movie predates all of this by years - of course they knew.

When auditioning actors "months before" they can still look for an actor who guess what? Sounds like SJ, even "before the first time SJ was contacted".

As the actor - I'd likely also be looking to emulate SJ in Her - its clearly what the client was looking for.

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> its inconceivable the majority of the team at OpenAI haven't at least seen part of the film that almost defined their industry

Let's not exaggerate. It was a somewhat popular movie, yes, but not really defining and far from the first example of conversational AI speaking woman's voice. There are plenty of examples in movies and TV shows.

If anything, the seminal work in this space is Star Trek casting Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as the voice of computer systems with conversational interfaces, as early as 1987 (or 1986, if she had that role in the Original Series; I don't remember those episodes too well), all the way to ~2008 (or to 2023, if you count post-mortem use of her voice). That is one distinctive voice I'd expect people in OpenAI to be familiar with :).

Also, I can't imagine most people knowing, or caring, who voiced the computer in Her. It's not something that most people care about, especially when they're more interested in the plot itself.

What matters is whether OpenAI leadership had the movie Her in mind, and the AI in Her is more similar to LLMs than the Next Generation Star Trek main computer.

If "her" wasn't the canonical example of a near-future AI assistant in a film, why then does Sam bother to tweet the single word "her" following launch? I think that film is far more influential than you give it credit for here.

Everyone in tech who saw that tweet knew what it meant - a single word. The tweet doesn't even require additional context or explanation to almost anyone in this industry.

There is also a clear difference in the behaviour of the "computer" in Star Trek vs "her" - what OpenAI shipped is far more like the personality of "her" than the much more straight-laced examples in Star Trek, where the computer was virtually devoid of emotional-sounding responses at all.

Who cares.

Just anecdotally, I personally didn't know about the existence of that movie before this whole drama began. Sam tweeting that probably knew however.

Computers have had conversational voices at least since Lost In Space.

I think we can surely all mostly agree 'her' presents a much more realistic portrayal of a near-term future than Lost in Space et al.

I was referring to the robot's voice.

> Let's not exaggerate. It was a somewhat popular movie, yes, but not really defining and far from the first example of conversational AI speaking woman's voice. There are plenty of examples in movies and TV shows.

I'm honestly surprised so many people are making this argument, seemingly with a straight face.

It would have been a pretty weak argument even without the tweet from Altman - it is not exaggeration to say it is the canonical "AI voice companion" cultural artifact in our times, but the opposite, it requires exaggeration to downplay it - but then the CEO's own marketing of the connection weakens the argument past the point of plausibility.

Surely there are better defenses available! But with this line ... phrases like "don't piss on me and tell me it's raining" and "don't believe your lying eyes" keep popping into my mind for some reason ...

The quotation above is

> its inconceivable the majority of the team at OpenAI haven't at least seen part of the film that almost defined their industry

rather than

> It is inconsistent that Sam personally wasn't aware

(He obviously was)

I'd agree that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry is the prime example of a computer voice interface for most nerds… but then I looked up when Her was released and feel old now because "surely it's not 11 years old already!"

Even if thats true why would that be illegal or unethical? She can't possibly have a copyright on all voices that sounds like "her"

There have been cases where it was decided that a person had rights[0] to their distinctive voice, as an extension of the Right of Publicity[1]. For example Midler v. Ford Motor Co.[2], and one or two other cases I've seen mentioned but can't remember.

[0]: Though not necessarily "copyrights"?

[1]: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-o...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Midler v. Ford is a poor comparison for this case specifically because of: 1. hiring an impersonator 2. copying a song 3. intending to confuse.

If what OpenAI is saying is true, then none of the conditions apply. I'd say (1) is unlikely, (2) is very unlikely, and (3) is maybe, at least to some degree.

I would suggest that (3) is a solid "yes" given the other communications around this, and honestly the similarity of the final tone of voice.

Very little suggests an intent to confuse more than tweets from company leaders confirming that there was intent to confuse. What is left on the table is whether actual confusion occurred, which is different.

NIL rights are pretty broad, and more like trademark rights than patents or copyrights. The main test isn't similarity, it's whether there is brand confusion. Karpathy and Altman's tweets indicate brand confusion.

Still, this isn't recognized in every state or country, and there aren't many cases yet (although there are laws).

Sure, it could have happened, but it seems we don’t have evidence either way.

Tweeting “her” months later doesn’t prove anything. That Tweet might superficially look like evidence of intent, but if you think about it, it’s not.

Counterpoint: if you think about it, yes it is.

To spell it out, based on the date, it's very weak evidence for something that happened many months before.

To spell it out in the way that doesn't require a crazy level of suspension of disbelief:

Based on the date (right after the public release of the assistant), it is actually very strong evidence for "we thought it would be awesome to have an AI voice companion that sounds like the one in Her", which, combined with the (undisputed) revelation that they indeed tried (twice) to get the person who did that voice, is a very strong indicator of the intent of the thing that happened many months before.

Yes, actually trying to hire Scarlett Johansson is very good evidence that they thought it would be awesome if they succeeded in hiring her as a celebrity voice. A one-word tweet adds nothing to that.

Sure it does. Intent is all about a pattern of behavior. It's part of the pattern.

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