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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

The issue with the ScarJo case, irrespective of the facts behind the development of OpenAI's voices, is that a) ScarJo's team indicated an intent to sue and b) legal precedent exists that can give the performer ownership if it's uncannily similar.

It's not as clear cut as non-lawyer tech people say it is even if it will be an uphill battle for ScarJo, which is what makes it more interesting. She did fight Disney and won, after all.

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As far as I can tell, all of that precedent involves the "copier" of the voice giving specific instruction to the "mimic", which didn't happen here.

If the series of events was: They wanted Scar Jo, she said no. They found someone similar. That would be the end of the story. The question then was, why did they reach out to her again immediately before putting it out there? That seems pretty strange to me.

I don't have more to say here other that I'm aware of the legal precedent being discussed here, read 2 cases, and in both the fact pattern cited in the decision involved specific instruction for the performer to mimic someone else's performance. That's all.

They made a voice model from Scarlett Johansson recordings and hoped she would change her mind maybe.

They did no such thing. The Washington Post found the voice actor they used, it's her natural speaking voice, she was not asked to perform ScarJo, and the movie "Her" wasn't mentioned.

Sky was 1 voice model. OpenAI made and released 4 others. It is plausible they made and did not release at least 1.

> The Washington Post found the voice actor they used

They found the voice actor? Or OpenAI produced the actor's agent?

Is there reporting about this happening, or is this simply something you think could have happened? Because a lot of things could have happened.

What does maybe mean?

They said it seemed strange OpenAI contacted Johansson when they did. I countered this assumption.

I believe an unreleased Scarlett Johansson voice model would not infringe her publicity rights. Do you disagree?

parallel construction?

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