Comment by Ukv
2 years ago
> if I were running the company it would be blankly obvious that the optics would be a problem, so I would start to collect a LOT of paperwork documenting that the casting selection was done without a hint of bias towards a celebrity's impression. Where is that paperwork? The obviousness puts the burden on them to show it.
I think optics-wise the best move at the moment is quelling the speculation that they resorted to a deepfake or impersonator of SJ after being denied by SJ herself. The article works towards this by attesting that it's a real person, speaking in her natural voice, without instruction to imitate SJ, from a casting call not mentioning specifics, casted months prior to contacting SJ. Most PR effort should probably be in giving this as much of a reach as possible among those that saw the original story.
Would those doing the casting have the foresight to predict, not just that this situation would emerge, but that there would be a group considering it impersonation for there to be any "hint of bias" towards voices naturally resembling a celebrity in selection between applicants? Moreover, would they consider it important to appeal to this group by altering the process to eliminate that possible bias and providing extensive documentation to prove they have done so, or would they instead see the group as either a small fringe or likely to just take issue to something else regardless?
> Would those doing the casting have the foresight to predict, ...
Yes, this should all have been obvious to those people. It would require a pretty high degree of obliviousness for it to not be obvious that this could all blow up in exactly this way.
It blew up by way of people believing it was an intentional SJ deepfake/soundalike hired due to being rejected by SJ. I think this article effectively refutes that.
I don't think it blew up by way of people believing simply that those doing the casting could have a hint of a subconscious bias towards voices that sound like celebrities. To me that seems like trying to find anything to still take theoretical issue in, and would've just been about something else had they made the casting selection provably unbiased and thoroughly documented.
Again, I think it requires a high degree of obliviousness to not have the foresight during casting to think, "if we use a voice that sounds anything like the voice in the famous smash hit movie that mainstreamed the idea of the kind of product we're making, without actually getting the incredibly famous voice actress from that movie to do it, people will make this connection, and that actress will be mad, and people will be sympathetic to that, and we'll look bad and may even be in legal hot water". I think all of that is easily predictable!
It seems way more likely to be a calculated risk than a failure of imagination. And this is where the "ethics" thing comes into play. They were probably right about the risk calculation! Even with this blow-up, this is not going to bring the company down, it will blow over and they'll be fine. And if it hadn't blown up, or if they had gotten her on board at any point, it would have been a very nice boon.
So while (in my view) it definitely wasn't the right thing to do from a "we're living in a society here people!" perspective, it probably wasn't even a mistake, from a "businesses take calculated risks" perspective.
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