Comment by eps
2 years ago
Unless they can clearly demostrate reproducing the voice from raw voice actor recordings, this could be just a parallel construction to cover their asses for exactly this sort of case.
2 years ago
Unless they can clearly demostrate reproducing the voice from raw voice actor recordings, this could be just a parallel construction to cover their asses for exactly this sort of case.
Intent matters.
When discovery happens and there’s a trail of messages suggesting either getting ScarJo or finding someone that sounds enough like her this isn’t going to look good with all the other events in timeline.
If it goes to court, they’ll settle.
>> When discovery happens and there’s a trail of messages suggesting either getting ScarJo or finding someone that sounds enough like her this isn’t going to look good with all the other events in timeline.
I'm not a lawyer, but this seems unfair to the voice actor they did use, and paid, who happens to sound like ScarJo (or vice versa!)
So if I sound like a famous person, then I cant monetize my own voice? Who's to say it isnt the other way around, perhaps it is ScarJo that sounds like me and i'm owed money?
There isn't an unfairness to the voice actor. She did her job and got paid.
The problem here is that someone inside of OpenAI wanted to create a marketing buzz around a new product launch and capitalize on a movie. In order to do that they wanted a voice that sounded like that movie. They hired a voice actor that sounded enough like ScarJo to hedge against actually getting the actor to do it. When she declined they decided to implement their contingency plan.
If they're liable is for a jury to decide, but the case precedent that I've seen, along with the intent, wouldn't look good if I were on that jury.
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How is it unfair to the voice actor? Is she getting sued? Is she paying damages? Is she being prevented from doing her work? No.
> Who's to say it isnt the other way around, perhaps it is ScarJo that sounds like me and i'm owed money?
It seems like you don't get the fundamental principal underlying "right of publicity" laws if you are asking this question.
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Doesn't matter. Waits v Frito Lay
That's an impersonation of a parody song in his style. This is a voice actor who has a voice that's kinda similar to ScarJo and kinda similar to Rashida Jones but not quite either one doing something different.
Cases are not a spell you can cast to win arguments, especially when the facts are substantially different.
In both cases the companies are specifically trading on creating confusion of a celebrity’s likeness in an act that celebrity trades in, and with the motivation of circumventing that very celebrity’s explicit rejection of the offer for that very work.
Just because one is a singer and the other is an actor isn’t the big difference you think it is. Actors do voice over work all the time. Actors in fact get cast for their voice all the time.
Yelling, “Parody!” Isn’t some get out of jail free card, particularly where there is actual case law, even more particularly when there are actual laws to address this very act.
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Which is not as similar as people keep saying though: both that case, and Bette Midler's involved singers, who perform as themselves and are their own brand.
Consider when a company recasts a voice actor in something: i.e. the VA Rick and Morty have been replaced, Robin Williams was not the voice of genie in Aladdin 2 or the animated series.
Recasting a voice actor when there was a contract with the prior actor (and such a contract would typically allow for recasting) is one thing.
Copying a famous actor’s voice without any kind of agreement at all is something else.