Comment by helsinkiandrew
2 years ago
> later go to a famous actress known for one time playing a chatbot in a movie, and are declined, you are in a much better position
But they asked her first!:
"Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and Al. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people....
https://twitter.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908
So its: ask Johansson, get declined, ask casting directors for the type of voice actors they are interested in, listened to 400 voices, choose one that sounds like the actor, ask Johansson again, get declined again, publish with a reference to Johansson film, claim the voice has nothing todo with Johansson.
[EDIT] Actually it looks like they selected the Sky actor before they asked Johansson and claim that she would have been the 6th voice, its still hard to believe they didn't intend it to sound like the voice in her though:
https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho...
> So its: ask Johansson, get declined, ask casting directors for the type of voice actors they are interested in, listened to 400 voices, choose one that sounds like the actor
Except it doesn't sound like Johansson, I don't know why people keep saying this. At best, the voice has a couple of similar characteristics, but I didn't think for one second that it was her. Can James Earl Jones sue if someone uses a voice actor with a deep voice?
Also looking from the perspective of the lesser known voice actress, does Scarlett Johansson have the right to trample the lesser known voice artists future job opportunities by intimidating her previous employers?
Imagine being a potential future employer of the lesser known artist, would you dare hire her in the face that Johansson's lawyers might come after you?
Is this lesser known voice artist now doomed to find a job in a different sector?
Voice archetypes are much much older than Johansson, so by symmetry arguments, could those earlier in line sue Johansson in turn?
When a strong person is offered a job at the docks, but refuses, and if then later another strong person accepts the job, can the first one sue the employer for "finding another strong man"?
At some point the courts are being asked to uphold exceptionalist treatment and effectuate it on tax-payers dollars moving executive branches in case of non-compliance.
> Also looking from the perspective of the lesser known voice actress, does Scarlett Johansson have the right to trample the lesser known voice artists future job opportunities by intimidating her previous employers?
Right, it would be one thing if there was evidence that OpenAI asked the actress to imitate Johansson. But people are saying that using this voice actress at all without Johansson's permission shouldn't be legal, which is a bizarre claim. If someone thinks my voice sounds similar to a celebrities, now that celebrity owns my voice? In any other situation, everyone here would think such a standard would be completely outrageous.
(For what it's worth, I didn't find the Sky voice to sound anything like Scarlett Johannson personally)
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> Also looking from the perspective of the lesser known voice actress, does Scarlett Johansson have the right to trample the lesser known voice artists future job opportunities by intimidating her previous employers?
This is weird, if not bizarre. Scarlett didn't do anything. Literally no action besides saying no. Then a company decides to impersonate her and use her performance in a movie as implicit marketing for a product. That's the company's problem, not hers.
This is exactly the right argument. Accepting the lawsuit would give precedent to an insidious combination: Matthew+chilling effect
> Is this lesser known voice artist now doomed to find a job in a different sector?
The lesser-known voice actor is dooming themselves to find a job in a different sector by contributing to the development of technology that will almost certainly replace all voice actors.
> Except it doesn't sound like Johansson, I don't know why people keep saying this.
Would you ever say “except strawberries aren’t tasty, I don’t know why people keep saying this”?
Maybe it doesn’t sound like Johansson to you, but it does sound like her to a lot of people. Worse, evidence points to Altman wanting you to make that connection. It’s trying to sound like her performance in one specific movie.
> Maybe it doesn’t sound like Johansson to you, but it does sound like her to a lot of people.
I guarantee you that nobody who's ever heard her voice actually thinks that, go on:
https://x.com/chriswiles87/status/1792909936189378653
> Worse, evidence points to Altman wanting you to make that connection. It’s trying to sound like her performance in one specific movie.
There is no such evidence.
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>> Except it doesn't sound like Johansson, I don't know why people keep saying this. At best, the voice has a couple of similar characteristics,
To add to this, the legal standard isn't whether it sounds "like" her. It has to be a replication of her voice. Millions of people may sound or look "like" another person, that doesn't mean they are a copy of that person.
The best case study in voices imho is David Attenborough. He has a distinct voice that many have sought to replicate. But you know who else had that voice? Richard Attenborough (the actor from Jurassic Park). They are brothers. Sadly, Richard recently passed. Their voices are unsurprisingly nearly interchangeable, along with a thousand other people with similar life stories. So who gets to own complete rights to the distinctive "Attenborough" voice? In any other area of intellectual property the answer is simple: nobody. It doesn't exist and/or was created by people long before any living Attenborough walked the earth.
Similarly, courts ruled that GTA did not steal from Lindsay Lohan. One cannot own the image of generic California blonde in a red bikini. So why should Johansson own sexy/breathy voice of with a nondistinctive accent?
I've been saying this for days, and I'm pretty firmly in the OpenAI critic camp.
The only reason people think it sounds like her is because they've biased themselves into it because of all the context surrounding it.
> they've biased themselves into it
Maybe the fault for that belongs to the company who tried to create the association in your mind by using a similar voice and tweeting about that one movie with the voice.
That’s basic advertising. They knew what they were doing. It’s just that it may have backfired.
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This. Its what people want to hear. If you heard that voice in a vacuum with no context and asked someone what famous person is it, I doubt many people would say Johansson. Some, sure, but not the majority.
The only thing Sam did wrong was play too fast and loose with the implication of "Her" given that he had been talking to ScarJo. Lawyers should have told him to just STFU about it.
I was confused because it doesn’t really sound much like her normal voice, and I didn’t see Her. So I looked it up—it sounds a little bit more like her voice in her… the movie where she’s adding some AI-like affectations to her voice.
I guess they decided to remove it for PR reasons or something.
If they ask James Earl Jones to do it, he says no, and then they hire someone with a deep voice in order to sound like him? Yes.
Except it doesn't sound like her, and that's not even the correct sequence of events.
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If I play the voices back to back, nobody thinks they're the same person.
If I ask which one is SJ, people that have seen her films know, those who don't, don't. (Hint, only one sounds hoarse like early smoker voice and self-assured even in the 'Her' role, only one sounds impossibly 2020s valley girl chipper and eager to please.)
Sure seems like all the dogpiling last week either didn't do a basic listen or ignored it, as it's much better for click farming to mock the cock of the walk.
> only one sounds impossibly 2020s valley girl chipper and eager to please.
I immediately thought "grade school teacher", although I was listening to the clip where she was telling a story.
Read the main article again. The voice actor was already auditioned and chosen before they went to Johansson. Maybe they had a change of plan and thought it would be cool to have Johansson's voice rather than an unknown actor's.
Not a lawyer, but wouldn't the important intent be the one when the voice is released, not the first moment someone gets hired? The economic harm happens when you publicize the voice in a way designed to gain value from Johannsen's reputation without her permission, not when you record it. The tweet and requests speak directly to that moment.
Yes, if she lost movie roles or other contracts because people assumed they could license the OpenAI voice then she could claim she was harmed. However OpenAI removed the voice and this situation is widely publicized. So it is hard to prove that she is being harmed now
Is there any quality difference between hiring a voice actor specifically to provide the voice for an AI compared to cloning an actor's voice from their movies?
Much of the coverage I've seen thorough social media on this (including Johansson's statement) gives the impression that this is what OpenAI did. If the quality of doing that would be worse than using a voice actor to imitate Johansson's voice, what is the value of the publicity which gives the impression that their technology is more advanced than it is, compared to whatever they end up settling this for?
The point isn't the time line of hiring the voice actor. The question is whether OpenAI was deliberately trying to make the voice sound like Johansson.
Suppose someone asked Dall-e for an image of Black Widow like in the first Avengers movie, promoting their brand. If they then use that in advertising, Johansson's portrait rights would likely be violated. Even (especially) if they never contacted her about doing the ad herself.
This is similar to that, but with voice, not portrait.
that's because one can make the argument that dall-e was regurgitating - it would be different if you get somebody who happens to look like her to pose in a similar way.
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> it's still hard to believe they didn't intend it to sound like the voice in her though:
Especially when you have ex-OAers, who had been working there at the time on 'J.A.R.V.I.S.', tweeting things like https://x.com/karpathy/status/1790373216537502106 "The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson."