Comment by gregw2
2 years ago
Asking someone to license their voice, getting a refusal, then asking them again two days before launch and then releasing the product without permission, then tweeting post launch that the product should remind you of that character in a movie they didn't get rights to from the actress or film company is all sketchy and -- if similar enough to the famous actress's voice, is a violation of her personality rights under California and various other jurisdictions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights
These rights should have their limits but also serve a very real purpose in that such people should have some protection from others pretending to be/sound like/etc them in porn, ads for objectionable products/organizations/etc, and all the above without compensation.
I will agree with you if
- they used Johannson's actual voice in training the text to speech model
or
- a court finds that they violated Johannson's likeness.
From hearing the demo videos, I don't think the voice sounded that similar to Johannson.
But hiring another actor to replicate someone you refused your offer is not illegal and is done all the time by hollywood.
> But hiring another actor to replicate someone you refused your offer is not illegal and is done all the time by hollywood.
Probably this could indeed make them "win" (or not lose rather) in a legal battle/courts.
But doing so will easily make them lose in the PR/public sense, as it's a shitty thing to do to another person, and hopefully not everyone is completely emotionless.
> But doing so will easily make them lose in the PR/public sense, as it's a shitty thing to do to another person, and hopefully not everyone is completely emotionless.
If an actor is saying no and you have a certain creative vision then what do you do?
Johansson doesn't own the idea of a "flirty female AI voice".
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