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Comment by JumpCrisscross

2 years ago

> it's very unlikely that precedent would be interpreted as "whoever the judge heard of first wins"

No, it's whoever's voice is famous. The voice per se isn't valuable, its fame is. Personality rights are precedented [1].

> voices being similar to each other is found to be grounds for a successful tort action then it'd establish a legal precedent

It's not about similarity. It's about property. Johansson developed her voice into a valuable asset. It's valuable because it's Scarlet Johansson's voice.

Tweeting Her explicitly tied it to Johansson, even if that wasn't the case up to that point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

9 comments

JumpCrisscross

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robertlagrant  2 years ago

> It's valuable because it's Scarlet Johansson's voice.

I think demonstrating that this is a substantial part of the attraction of OpenAI's tech will be difficult.

  • tivert  2 years ago

    >> It's valuable because it's Scarlet Johansson's voice.

    > I think demonstrating that this is a substantial part of the attraction of OpenAI's tech will be difficult.

    I think it's totally irrelevant if her voice "is a substantial part of the attraction of OpenAI's tech." What matters is they took something from her that was her valuable property (her likeness). It doesn't matter if what they took makes op 99% of the value or 0.00001%.

    • robertlagrant  2 years ago

      It does when it comes to this being a useful topic.

      They didn't take her likeness; they recorded someone else. The only claim she has is that someone who sounds like her will add value to their product more than if the person didn't sound like her. At which point the question is: how much value?

      (Even that isn't a claim in and of itself, of course, but it might be the basis for a "I'll make people not like you so pay me restitution from your marketing budget to avoid a court case" shakedown.)

      2 replies →

mike_hearn  2 years ago

Yeah, but it's not Scarlett Johansson's voice and therefore not her property. It's one that sounds similar, but is different, and thus belongs to the true voice actress.

  • JumpCrisscross  2 years ago

    > it's not Scarlett Johansson's voice and therefore not her property

    It's not her voice. But it may have been intended to sound like her voice. (I believe this less than twenty-four hours ago, but I'm hesitant to grant Altman the benefit of doubt.)

    If it were her voice, would you agree that seems distasteful?

    > one that sounds similar, but is different, and thus belongs to the true voice actress

    They marketed it as her voice when Altman tweeted Her.

    • mwigdahl  2 years ago

      > They marketed it as her voice when Altman tweeted Her.

      Even that is not open and shut. He tweeted one word. He certainly wanted an association between the product and the movie, but it is a much more specific assertion that that one word demonstrates an intent to associate the product's voice actress with the voice actress who portrayed the comparable product's voice actress in the movie.