... and that the Washington Post just comprehensively refuted, finding the voice actor and reviewing contemporaneous documentation showing that they were hired months before Johansson was ever contacted.
It, at best, makes it slightly less likely that the original intent was commercial imitation, but it doesn’t do anything to refute the case that that’s what the ultimate use was. Adding one extra round to the back and forth of how they got to that point doesn’t really change anything important.
You seem to be looking at this as if right of publicity were like copyright, where what is essentially protected is, well, the act of copying.
Right of publicity is a separate area of law, but it is more like trademark than copyright. The mechanism by which a resemblance which is commercially leveraged is attained is not relevant.
The Midler case was a vocal impersonation using one of Midler's songs. As discussed in the Midler case, where there's an imitation of the voice, one of the keys is also how much of the likeness/recognition/brand of the person is tied up in their voice, and that's substantially different between a singer's voice on their own song vs. an actress's voice. And given that it's not an impression/impersonation, and literally sounds more like another famous actress than it does ScarJo? This is a great example of facts you'd give to show where the Midler precedent doesn't apply — it's certainly in no way "exactly" like Midler.
Would you be willing to bet a small sum on this?
All SJ has to do is show that they wanted her and plant the idea that they may have been thinking of her when they hired the other actor. The end results sounds enough like her that I think OpenAI is going to have a very rough time in court.
I think the chances of this getting to court are almost nothing. OpenAI will replace the voice and settle with SJ.
Remember the Blurred Lines vs Got to Give It Up lawsuit? I personally think they sound way different yet Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams lost that one.
Wait, are you alleging that an individual has a right to faithful imitations of their voice, as well as to their actual performance?
So if I do a really good Morgan Freeman impression and I want to use that voice for a voiceover that I make, and I intentionally do an impression, he should have the right to tell me I cannot use the voiceover that I made, because I intended it to sound like Mr Freeman? Even if there is no intent to mislead and it's rightfully credited etc (not like the Tom Waits situation in TFA where the ad was intended to deceive)
What stops that from extending to parody? Should Sarah Palin be able to sue Tina Fey for the impression on SNL all those years ago?
If all it boils down to is >The end results sounds enough like her
this starts to sound like celebrities with sufficient popularity and clout can trademark likenesses that are sufficiently similar to them. So is the voice actor who happens to sound like Scarlett Johnansson but is insufficiently famous not allowed to use their own voice in recordings because it might sound too much like the famous person?
Absurd absurd absurd
Nobody would confuse Tina Fey for Sarah Palin, while it would be possible for someone hearing the "Sky" voice combined with the "Her" aside to assume it was SJ providing the voice.
Again it would be up to a jury to decide, but there are plenty of previous cases decided in the artists favor that any sane lawyer would be uneasy taking it in front of a jury.
Surprisingly many people think "I can see Russia from my house" is a thing the real Palin said.
That's where this has always gotten odd to me. There's obvious impersonation, sure, but what if this same actress wanted to e.g. be the Major in a new Ghost in the Shell dub? Is she responsible for making sure everyone who hires her very definitely isn't hiring her as a soundalike if she wants her work to get released?
I'm sure it would be fine in reality, but if saying "her" (when advertising an app you can have a conversation with) is enough to make this impersonation, then the same logic says she's barred from certain roles (or categories of role) because someone more famous got there first.
I’m thinking of a number, bigger, no smaller. Keep playing the game and the end result is arbitrarily close to the number you’re thinking of.
The search space for generic seductive female voice is huge and they happened to end up with one that objectively sounds like someone they tried to recruit. They can’t argue random chance at this point.
Of course they didn't mention "sound like SJ" in the casting call - it might as well say "Please violate Midler tort." Actors wouldn't do it, casting agencies wouldn't do it. She / her agency would have found out almost immediately, and C&D'd them into the ground within hours.
I'm not sure why you're believing OpenAI when they say that the voice actor is who they actually used, and not that after bringing in the voice actor, they didn't just toss the recordings aside, have an intern collect clips of SJ in interviews, and throw that in to the machine?
Altman has a long history of demonstrating incredibly poor morals. Stop taking anything he says at face value.
Yeah, not really damning evidence either way but it certainly looks like, according to their own words, OpenAI intended to use her as marketing.
He was probably not personally aware she was contacted, and it just so happened that his dumb movie reference hit a nerve.
The alternative is that he knew they were ripping off Scarlett Johansson and then publicly compared them. Which seems too stupid to be true.
People, even Silicon Valley CEOs, doing things that seem “too stupid to be true”, happens a lot more than most people think.
OK, but then they openly blast it all over Twitter? If you’re so open about what you’re trying to do with everyone in the world, yet you didn’t bother mentioning to the voice actress who’s supposedly going to implement this?
I didn’t really think it sounded much like Johansson, but it looks like OpenAI decided to pull the voice(?). They are in a better position to evaluate their liabilities (or the PR cost of having the perception that are ripping her off, whether or not it is right). Hopefully they’ll add it back, Johansson doubles down, and then we can get a court case to satisfy everybody. Both entities have plenty of money to spend on this, having them battle it out seems like a real win. (It would have been a real shame if a small no-name voice actor without the cash to fight OpenAI felt copied instead).
The voice chat didn’t seem to be particularly well publicized. People mention how after the 4o announcement, many people started voice chatting for the first time (and mistaking it for 4o voice chat) because they hadn’t realized the voice chat was there before.
OpenAI might have had a leg to stand on if their CEO hadn't gone on the internet and blasted out "Her" when advertising the Sky voice, and another co-founder had not specifically name-dropped using SJ to market their voice product. (And reading the WaPo article, they hired a film director to handle the voice recording, and the individual in charge of artistic decision-making, apparently an avid Her fan, was conveniently not made available to interview...Hm...)