Comment by moralestapia

> whether people like it or not. That's the reality.

That is exactly it - people do not like how OpenAI is acting. Whether or not there is legal action to be had is an interesting tangent, but not the actual point - OpenAI's actions are ticking people off. Just because something is legal does not mean it is the right thing to do.

Nobody said looking/sounding like someone else is "prosecutable", and this willfully obtuse reading is getting annoying.

Many people here, including you, seem to be under the impression that a person who sounds like a celebrity can, because they are not that celebrity, do whatever they want with their voice regardless of whether or not they seem to be passing off as or profiting from the persona of that celebrity. This is not the case.

When others point this out many people, again including you, then go "so you're saying the fact that someone sounds like a celebrity means they can't do anything with their voice - how absurd!", and that isn't the case either, and nobody is saying it.

This binary view is what I'm calling obtuse. The intent matters, and that is not clear-cut. There are some things here that seem to point to intent on OpenAI's part to replicate Her. There are other things that seem to point away from this. If this comes to a court case, a judge or jury will have to weigh these things up. It's not straightforward, and there are people far more knowledeable in these matters than me saying that she could have a strong case here.

People have now said this an absurd number of times and yet you seem to be insisting on this binary view that completely ignores intent. This is why I am calling it willfully obtuse.

If the above are misrepresentations of your argument then please clarify, but both seemed pretty clear from your posts. If instead you take the view that what matters here is whether there was intent to profit from Scarlett Johannson's public persona then we don't disagree. I have no opinions on whether they had intent or not, but I think it very much looks like they did, and whether they did would be a question for a court (alongside many others, such as whether it really does sound like her) if she were to sue, not that there is any indication she will.

Edit: And I should say IANAL of course, and these legal questions are complex and dependent on jurisdiction. California has both a statutory right and a common law one. Both, I think, require intent, but only the common law one would apply in this case as the statutory one explicity only applies to use of the person's actual voice. (That seems a bit outdated in today's deepfake ridden world, but given the common law right protected Midler from the use of an impersonator perhaps that is considered sufficient.)

https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-right-publicity-...

> You misunderstand how personality rights work .. Called it in the other thread

One of the great things about HN is you get all kinds of experts from every field imaginable.

> is not prosecutable

Yikes.

Who said it was ‘prosecutable’?

All we need is discovery. They’ll settle before that because we all know they are swimming in dirt.