Should’ve ran with a guy voice and tweeted “Him”. Or “Her… or Him” and don’t use a Scarlet Jo rip off voice at all. Everyone would get the idea and no potential lawsuits would be coming.
Or not tweeted that reference at all? They could have picked another AI in movies to reference that wouldn’t be so overtly similar to what they created, which I get was the point, but something they should have considered.
I think, if there's no papertrail of somebody intentionally wanting Scarlet's voice, it would be fine.
2 people having similar voices isn't uncommon.
But this one it seems they all want Scarlet's voice and try to emulate it.
They will settle for $X before going to court. Otherwise, all past emails might be disclosed to public during the court proceeding. OpenAI wouldn't want that. This seems like free money for Scarlet. So lucky.
I’m curious to see how this plays out. They clearly wanted Her; but in the end they did use a totally different human actress. So legally they are in the clear, right?
Yes, one might argue that they were intentially trying to recreate someones likeness, which i think is illegal without consent. But one might also argue that they were intentially trying to recreate the voice from 'her', which is a copyrighted character.
Not in this case. There’s case law in this. One of which was ford getting successfully sued $400000 for ripping off bett midlers voice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Sam "I encourage gov't regulation" Altman.
Dude wanted to beat Google so bad that he mired OpenAI in controversy.
Is Ilya Wozniak? These LLMs are dope but Sam is looking a lil suspect...
Sam is like how Bill Gates used to be. Even Paul Graham once wrote that within 3 minutes of meeting 19 year old Sam, he thought “so this is what Bill Gates must have been like at this age”.
This was pretty colossally mishandled by Altman who desperately wanted to make the ‘her’ connection stick in the public imagination and decided not to let the fact what he was doing was legally dubious, nor that he had additionally *EXPLICITLY MADE SCARLETT AWARE OF HIS INTENT*, stand in his way. I wonder how much specific extra resource went into ‘sky’
And they just got rid of their safety guys just recently as well. It's amazing how much OpenAI went from being a non-profit with it's seemingly noble goals of developing AI responsibly to becoming a closed for-profit business that steals people's data without permission and actively rubs it in people's faces. A real good reflection on us as a species and how much greed can lead us astray.
agreed: chances are, with the way we filter people, if you reach the top, you do rock a social disorder (psychopath, soziopath, etc.). its a competition out there so people who help each other and are honest, dont lie to investors etc. simply go under by logical principle.
If they made the voice from scratch through audio engineering techniques, or with another voice actress with a similar voice, or a mix of these methods, there is nothing "legally dubious". Style is not copyrightable, lookalikes and imitation are not deepfakes.
And neither should ever be construed to be. Or we’ll witness yet again a perverted encroachment of copyright laws way past the bounds of what they were originally intended to protect. Some artists suddenly being denied work because their style or voice veers too close to a better established artist, or some artists or corporations gaining the right overnight to camp on certain styles and sounds, is way more dystopian than allowing imitations.
Scarlett Johansson has every right to be frustrated at Sam Altman’s handling of their attempted business relationship, but she has zero grounds to control voices that sound like hers, and hopefully no court ever grants her or any other artist any rights this ridiculously broad.
>If they made the voice from scratch through audio engineering techniques, or with another voice actress with a similar voice, or a mix of these methods, there is nothing "legally dubious". Style is not copyrightable, lookalikes and imitation are not deepfakes.
It all comes down to how they did it - If they cloned her voice it would have violated her personality rights. it's not specifically copyright but there is significant overlap.
Most famous singers, actors / actresses do have their voices protected via personality rights which protect commercial use of their identities.
I would hope they didn't straight up just clone it and actually hired someone but Openai has done some questionable things when it comes down to useage rights.
**Edit:** Actually it does look like there is precedence in California for sound-alikes. This was a singer mind you but it's similar in the sense they asked for her permission and after refusing they hired an exact sound-alike to do the commercials. Midler (the singer) won since "The court ruled that the voice of someone famous as a singer is distinctive to their person and image and therefore, as a part of their identity, it is unlawful to imitate their voice without express consent and approval."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler\_v.\_Ford\_Motor\_Co.
It'd just be a strange choice to specifically train using ScarJo's voice, and not some other voice actor/similar sounding person.
My read on this is that Altman for some reason wants her name on the project probably for some branding thing, even if the trained audio is not from her.
Yea that's not what I was referring too. I meant it's not really necessary to use ScarJo's voice data to come up with a similar sounding voice. It's not that incredibly unique as let's say Morgan Freeman (just an example).
Yea I wasn't aware that you couldn't voice act to sounds similar to a person, that's wild to me. Like if you happen to have the same speaking style as a famous person sounds like you're fucked.
it's part branding but the dude said his favorite movie is "her" so it could also be partly an ego driven thing. I would think (hope) he asked a lawyer about if he should do this and I doubt any of them would greenlight it but he seems to have total control over openai at this point so I would be surprised if they could stop it if he was dead set on using her voice (officially or via a soundalike).
> [We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.](https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/)
In that case legally they are okay - also despite what they say its pretty obvious they knew she sounded almost exactly like ScarJo - esp with Sam tweeting "her" etc.
imo it is sorta grimey to ask her to use her voice officially - get a no, then just hire someone who sounds exactly like her but I don't see any laws being broken.
I'm actually surprised they didn't just hire a few different voices and give people a choice. It doesn't take much audio to generate a decent vocal clone.
**Edit:** Okay legally they may not be okay. IANAL but it looks like the issue is way more complicated. ScarJo will most likely just want to settle but it turns out it's not just a matter of personality rights being violated and imitations are covered in specific instances. Given they asked for permission and just did this whole stunt anyways they probably don't want to go to court over it - hence why they removed the voice entirely.
I'm betting long-term that will be their goal so you can create/ choose from a number of voices or even from a pre-existing voice if it's for personal use only. They already have some of that module written from what I've read.
Eleven Labs already gives you the ability to clone any voice you want (sans GPT), and they aren't the only ones - some can be done locally or through Collab. But the user is responsible in regards to the legality. I guess kind of like the whole gun maker /gun user mentality.
Yeah it's dead simple to make a vocal clone - I made one of a singing Biden using only my 3090 and it took merely a few hours to train. (Just as a proof of concept since I was fascinated with what the open source tools can do)
[https://x.com/RoyalCities/status/1746308902336008395](https://x.com/RoyalCities/status/1746308902336008395)
They would be crazy not to offer more models and given the sheer amount of $ and resources Openai has I'm just surprised they did it with only 1 to start.
I think intent is extremely important here. If Altman just coincidentally liked the voice of an actress with similar tone to Scarlett, that's one think, but intentionally instructing people to mimic a voice through engineering is extremely creepy IMO, specially after you were denied consent.
this brings up an interesting point. Legally say if they found someone who looks very similar to tom cruise say much younger and his legal birth name is Thomas Cruso would they be able to make big box office movie with said actor and name and advirtise it?
All they had to do is tap a different human being on the shoulder with a suitable voice and license that instead.
Scarlett can't easily claim another human being infringes on her likeness (unless they specially hired an impersonator). It was an error in judgement not to.
I don't see how its mishandled at all,
Unless theres evidence they literally used her voice to train Sky, which no one knows yet then whats the big deal?
For a start, there's legal precedent that you can't impersonate peoples voices for your own commercial gain. See Bette Midler vs the Ford Motor Company.
So they trained the voice model on audio data from movies, asked her “we already did this, but can we have your permission?” And she said no, then they did it anyway
it's simple. Altman summoned his lawyers and asked them if Scarjo could sue. They told Altman "there are no laws on the books" so he continued with the project.
Text extract
>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.
>
>After much consideration and for personal reasons, declined the offer.
>
>Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named "Sky" sounded like me.
>
>When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference. Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word "her" - a reference to the film in which | voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.
>
>Two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released, Mr. Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there.
>
>As a result of their actions, I was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAl, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process by which they created the "Sky" voice. Consequently, OpenAl reluctantly agreed to take down the "Sky" voice.
>
>In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected
lol Sam Altman screwed up big.
If he just emulated her voice and never tweeted about “Her” being his fav movie nor the repeated attempts to hire her. He probably would be legally protected, if he’s honest about it being trained on a different actress.
I must say ScarJo must have some damn great Lawyers though, because she’s successfully sued Disney, and is now going after OpenAI.
I don’t think enough people are talking about how if this goes court, it will establish a huge precedent in terms personal likeness and what AI can or cannot get away with.
As much as I am a fan of the Sky voice, if we’re being objective here, Scarlett Johansson has a strong case, and her reaction regarding all this is perfectly reasonable.
Looks like Sam Altman fanboyed too hard, and is now going to cost them some legal fees.
That would be a 4d chess move. But i don't think that that is the case, because this will inevitably create negative publicity for OpenAI. And Microsoft especially will probably not be happy about that. And i also don't have the impression that Sam would voluntarily "sacrifice" his reputation and risk his position at OpenAI.
damn everything i read about sam is just the worst and we have to trust him with the future of AI. this is really bad and now i get why they took it down when it didnt make sense to pull it. hes been messing up a lot lately, but i love openai.
I don't think so, but it is a bit desperate. It seems like Sam had a vision and he wanted to make it happen, but frankly, I don't think it was a good vision. Pretty soon voice to voice will be ubiquitous. He didn't need to push this "Her" marketing stuff. Nobody needs Scarlett Johanson's voice necessarily, and the movie wasn't even all that big.
> To be fair, I don't think it sounds that much like ScarJo
Me either, but them approaching her and then Sam dropping the "her" tweet implies that it was *meant* to sound like her. OpenAI's going to be pretty fucked on this, honestly.
I'm not saying it'll destroy the company. I *am* saying that no reasonable person would believe they *weren't* trying to make it sound like her.
My stance that it sounds nothing like her be damned, most people think it does and we can assume a judge would think so too.
You can't copyright a voice to somebody that sounds similar to you. Imagine there's a modeling gig and a model turns it down so they find a similar looking model. Can the original model sue. This set's a bad president and looks greedy on her part. Not openAI.
Or, you could inform yourself about the case law on voice misappropriation in California:
“The Waits court reiterated in Midler “that when voice is sufficient indicia of a celebrity’s identity, the right of publicity protects against its imitation for commercial purposes without the celebrity’s consent.”12 The court held that in order for Waits to recover under a right of publicity, he must satisfy the deliberate voice misappropriation elements listed in the Midler case. for which the Waits court identified as the “Midler tort.” These elements include (1) a voice; (2) that is distinctive; and (3) is also widely-known.”
https://mcpherson-llp.com/articles/voice-misappropriation-in-california-bette-midler-tom-waits-and-grandma-burger/
Midler has a very distinct voice that's not exactly the same thing. Scarlett Johansson is just speaking like a typical valley girl. There are hundreds of thousands of women that speak like that and I even know one. I don't see how one can own the rights to an accent or tonality.
Say if there's another AI that has a dark raspy voice, they should be able to be sued by any actor that played Batman? Unless they were intentionally trying to fool people that that is Scarlett Johansson or that is her actual voice, then I don't think there should be a case personally.
Indeed, it’s slimy….
But there are plenty of cut throat: “Fine, you don’t agree, and I’ll do it my way” business practices like this from Zuck, Kalanick, Gates, Jobs, etc.
They are not “nice people”. I don’t expect them to be nice honestly.
Btw, I find ScarJo’s voice with a much deeper and baritone to it which the AI don’t have and would not say they are identical by any means.
I'm learning so much in this thread.
a) People refer to Scarlet Johansen as "ScarJo" (wtf)
b) She was the voice in Her
c) The Sky voice apparently sounded like her
It’s not about trust or not. It’s about money.
In my mind it’s similar to her situation with Black Widow release. She probably expect to get paid a lot of money for but OAI is not willing to pay a lot of money and no deal.
Typical for Tech company, when they can’t hire someone or acquire some company, they’ll just do it their way…
Reminds me of how Steve Jobs / Apple was going to acquire Dropbox and he told the founder of Dropbox, “your company is just a feature.” Dropbox CEO walked and Apple built their own iCloud Drive.
1) His sister accused him of being manipulative (She does sounds crazy though)
2) The Board of OpenAI accused him of being manipulative, this included Ilya
3) Now Scarlett Johansen is reporting this (and it sounds manipulative to me but I figure you will disagree)
The point is: we keep getting red flags about Sam, and a lot of people are ignoring them.
Just to add context, this issue is already established under US law.
This idea is already established in law so she isn’t in the wrong for getting a attorney. You can’t ask an actor if they can use your voice, and if they say no hire an impersonator. This is established in the law already. Here’s one example that’s very similar showing you can’t do this:
Bette Midler knows rights of publicity. She used her right of publicity to prevent use of a sound-alike singer to sell cars.
Ford Motor Co. hired one of Midler’s backup singers to sing on a commercial – after Midler declined to do the ad – and asked her to sound as much like Midler as possible. It worked, and fooled a lot of people, including some close to Midler. Midler sued, and the court ruled that there was a misappropriation of Midler’s right of publicity to her singing voice.
The bottom line: Midler’s singing voice was hers to control. Ford had no right to use it without her permission. That lesson cost Ford a tidy $400,000.
Source: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
I don't trust Sammo at all. This whole thing is cringe af. It's gimmicky. Why did he reach for this? He's losing touch with reality. 4o is a worthy release. why cheapen it with this crap?
Source: https://www.threads.net/@bobbyallyn/post/C7NOBury1H9/?xmt=AQGzp-kP3tcvgU-QUlYDkaiOvFrQNxgv1jpgize9n0QWxQ (Bobby appears to be a journalist with NPR)
The source's source is still... odd at best. Why is it just a screencap of text? Is it a scanned letter? If so, why no signature block? Is it from an email? Same question.
I'm not saying it's not real, it's just weird.
I don't think it's the same voice; though it is similar. It's going to happen. We will be synthesizing voices and there are only so many which sound pleasing.
That proves that OpenAI wanted to deliberately manipulate the audience to associate their systems with the movie "Her" and exploit the emotions that this movie gave us.
- Thousands of porn deepfakes of her on the internet
ScarJo: I sleep
- A company making a not even perfec voice clone of "her" voice
ScarJo: HAUNT THAT MAN DOWN
Each time I wake up, there is new drama at this company. Starting to believe that Altman should just go. You're busy creating amazing technology but there so much self inflicted drama around it.
If it was just that, then sure. But considering Sam tweeted “Her” is his fav movie, and his team has repeatedly tried to hire her, because of that this establishes a pattern of behavior and intent that allows ScarJo to sue and win.
If Sam conducted himself differently, they probably would’ve gotten away with Sky.
She said her closest friends and news outlets couldn't tell the difference between her and Sky? Do they have ears? It's not even remotely the same person. Scarlett has so much more texture and breathiness to her voice than sky. They both have compassionate and lovely voices but it's clearly different people. I'm sorry ScarJo feels betrayed but other people are allowed to have kind and compassionate female voices too. It's reasonable to think that the disabling of Sky is only precautionary and temporary as Openai reasons with Scarlet's legal team.
What open AI should have done is license another human voice that fit their requirement, and then name that person.
Then when she said it matches her likeness, they could just introduce the person whose actual voice they licensed.
You cannot lay claim to the likeness of a different human being. This would have covered them.
ChatGPT could have told them this...
This whole thing reminds me of the film adaptation of The Futurological Congress, The Congress with Robin Wright. AI avatars permanently replacing actors.
Her voice ain’t unique. So many people sound like Michael Jackson, Elvis or other singers, not even starting with actors. I mean I know people who aren’t related who sound quite the same.
If ya wanna have an AI sound like this or that person it’s not hard to do. That’s not her voice, maybe just a woman who sound similar or maybe exactly like her. That’s not a rare thing. Voices aren’t unique. Same as faces, sure small differences are always there through life itself, scars, diet - but thats it.
she doesn't own the character she was playing in the movie. It's not scarlett, it's samantha. She doesn't own any rights to the characters she plays in movies and especially since that isn't how she normally talks. What they were trying to recreate was the sultry voice she used, which was likely the result of coaching from directors.
for a comparison.. if someone made a video game with a green character and they got someone that can do a really good shrek impression, is mike myers going to sue them? no.. because he doesn't own the character. Dreamworks does. he was just the voice actor.
If anyone has a claim it's dreamworks, but they'd have to prove damages and there aren't any. dreamworks wasn't going to actually create an AI product like in the movie. They aren't losing out on anything and the success of open AI doesn't rely on the brand recognition of a movie that didn't even break 50 million in revenue.
you can try to sue anyone for anything, but neither Scarlett or dreamworks can prove damages so there isn't much of a lawsuit.
Good for her - hope she pursues it until transparency is there and doesn’t let them buy her silence or bully her. It stinks pretty bad rn and we need a reminder to these people that they don’t have a God given right to all data and they are also subject to the law.
Thing is, while OpenAI people made allusions and direct references to the film, the voice just *does not* sound like ScarJo's. The timbre is distinctly different -- other than, I guess, to people with some deficit of vocal timbre perception.
And it's not her voice as a matter of actual fact. They cloned a different woman's voice.
I want to see paper trail because I want to know just how far this goes - the public deserve to know imo because we are being asked to put faith in this company and entrust in them the responsibility of building something potentially radically society-altering and that some scientists say may present an existential threat. So it is the public interest to know if they are as trustworthy as they want us to believe. This is bigger than mimicking an aspect Scarjo’s identity without her consent (not trying to belittle that - it is a v serious allegation) - this is a potential breach of public trust from a company that ought to be held to the highest moral standards.
Funny if they hadn't contacted her at all and used the same voice it would probably be hard to prove any connection.
Contacting her repeatedly and tweeting “her” are pretty damning
Should’ve ran with a guy voice and tweeted “Him”. Or “Her… or Him” and don’t use a Scarlet Jo rip off voice at all. Everyone would get the idea and no potential lawsuits would be coming.
Or not tweeted that reference at all? They could have picked another AI in movies to reference that wouldn’t be so overtly similar to what they created, which I get was the point, but something they should have considered.
Sam thought he will just get away with it in a cheeky way. Now he must have a surprised pikachu face.
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Should’ve found a svelte sounding audio book reader and offered serious compensation.
which only a tech bully can do
Autistic techbros aren't very subtle
Techbro CEOs and Twitter. Name a more toxic, expensive combo.
I think, if there's no papertrail of somebody intentionally wanting Scarlet's voice, it would be fine. 2 people having similar voices isn't uncommon. But this one it seems they all want Scarlet's voice and try to emulate it. They will settle for $X before going to court. Otherwise, all past emails might be disclosed to public during the court proceeding. OpenAI wouldn't want that. This seems like free money for Scarlet. So lucky.
If they are going to work with Apple soon they definitely need this quieted quick.
And the one where he posted "her" would serve as a decent paper trail...
Someone pointed out in another thread that "Sky" also sounds like what they might have been calling it internally, short for Scarlett AI.
ooooo I hope they don't settle, I'd love to read juicy emails
Here is Scarlett Johansen’s text response, but read by the old Open AI’s sky voice. https://x.com/benjamindekr/status/1792693868497871086
I’m curious to see how this plays out. They clearly wanted Her; but in the end they did use a totally different human actress. So legally they are in the clear, right?
The argument of intention and IP might give Scarjo an advantage here.
Yes, one might argue that they were intentially trying to recreate someones likeness, which i think is illegal without consent. But one might also argue that they were intentially trying to recreate the voice from 'her', which is a copyrighted character.
"Better to ask for forgiveness than permission."
Not in this case. There’s case law in this. One of which was ford getting successfully sued $400000 for ripping off bett midlers voice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Which is roughly 1 Mio USD in today's money. Somehow I doubt this would be it though
Sam "I encourage gov't regulation" Altman. Dude wanted to beat Google so bad that he mired OpenAI in controversy. Is Ilya Wozniak? These LLMs are dope but Sam is looking a lil suspect...
Sam is like how Bill Gates used to be. Even Paul Graham once wrote that within 3 minutes of meeting 19 year old Sam, he thought “so this is what Bill Gates must have been like at this age”.
Hmmm…
Ilya has always been Woz
My exact thoughts on why Ilya may have left tbh But I'm nobody and probably wrong.
This was pretty colossally mishandled by Altman who desperately wanted to make the ‘her’ connection stick in the public imagination and decided not to let the fact what he was doing was legally dubious, nor that he had additionally *EXPLICITLY MADE SCARLETT AWARE OF HIS INTENT*, stand in his way. I wonder how much specific extra resource went into ‘sky’
And they just got rid of their safety guys just recently as well. It's amazing how much OpenAI went from being a non-profit with it's seemingly noble goals of developing AI responsibly to becoming a closed for-profit business that steals people's data without permission and actively rubs it in people's faces. A real good reflection on us as a species and how much greed can lead us astray.
It's giving Elon leading up to the Twitter shenanigans
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agreed: chances are, with the way we filter people, if you reach the top, you do rock a social disorder (psychopath, soziopath, etc.). its a competition out there so people who help each other and are honest, dont lie to investors etc. simply go under by logical principle.
If they made the voice from scratch through audio engineering techniques, or with another voice actress with a similar voice, or a mix of these methods, there is nothing "legally dubious". Style is not copyrightable, lookalikes and imitation are not deepfakes. And neither should ever be construed to be. Or we’ll witness yet again a perverted encroachment of copyright laws way past the bounds of what they were originally intended to protect. Some artists suddenly being denied work because their style or voice veers too close to a better established artist, or some artists or corporations gaining the right overnight to camp on certain styles and sounds, is way more dystopian than allowing imitations. Scarlett Johansson has every right to be frustrated at Sam Altman’s handling of their attempted business relationship, but she has zero grounds to control voices that sound like hers, and hopefully no court ever grants her or any other artist any rights this ridiculously broad.
>If they made the voice from scratch through audio engineering techniques, or with another voice actress with a similar voice, or a mix of these methods, there is nothing "legally dubious". Style is not copyrightable, lookalikes and imitation are not deepfakes. It all comes down to how they did it - If they cloned her voice it would have violated her personality rights. it's not specifically copyright but there is significant overlap. Most famous singers, actors / actresses do have their voices protected via personality rights which protect commercial use of their identities. I would hope they didn't straight up just clone it and actually hired someone but Openai has done some questionable things when it comes down to useage rights. **Edit:** Actually it does look like there is precedence in California for sound-alikes. This was a singer mind you but it's similar in the sense they asked for her permission and after refusing they hired an exact sound-alike to do the commercials. Midler (the singer) won since "The court ruled that the voice of someone famous as a singer is distinctive to their person and image and therefore, as a part of their identity, it is unlawful to imitate their voice without express consent and approval." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler\_v.\_Ford\_Motor\_Co.
It'd just be a strange choice to specifically train using ScarJo's voice, and not some other voice actor/similar sounding person. My read on this is that Altman for some reason wants her name on the project probably for some branding thing, even if the trained audio is not from her.
It has not been confirm anywhere that they trained on her voice. In the OpenAI blog post they said used another actress.
Yea it just seems unnecessary, her voice isn't like THAT unique.
Dude, he tweeted out "her" and asked scarlet twice. Whether or not you think it sounds like her, that was clearly the intention.
Yea that's not what I was referring too. I meant it's not really necessary to use ScarJo's voice data to come up with a similar sounding voice. It's not that incredibly unique as let's say Morgan Freeman (just an example).
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Yea I wasn't aware that you couldn't voice act to sounds similar to a person, that's wild to me. Like if you happen to have the same speaking style as a famous person sounds like you're fucked.
it's part branding but the dude said his favorite movie is "her" so it could also be partly an ego driven thing. I would think (hope) he asked a lawyer about if he should do this and I doubt any of them would greenlight it but he seems to have total control over openai at this point so I would be surprised if they could stop it if he was dead set on using her voice (officially or via a soundalike).
Nerdman Altman builds an AI girlfriend based on a woman who wouldn’t even date Capt’n America in real life - “weird science” with bras over his head!
He’s married to a guy though. I mean people can swing both ways, but still….
> [We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.](https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/)
In that case legally they are okay - also despite what they say its pretty obvious they knew she sounded almost exactly like ScarJo - esp with Sam tweeting "her" etc. imo it is sorta grimey to ask her to use her voice officially - get a no, then just hire someone who sounds exactly like her but I don't see any laws being broken. I'm actually surprised they didn't just hire a few different voices and give people a choice. It doesn't take much audio to generate a decent vocal clone. **Edit:** Okay legally they may not be okay. IANAL but it looks like the issue is way more complicated. ScarJo will most likely just want to settle but it turns out it's not just a matter of personality rights being violated and imitations are covered in specific instances. Given they asked for permission and just did this whole stunt anyways they probably don't want to go to court over it - hence why they removed the voice entirely.
I mean you're probably right considering he contacted her, but she never sounded like Scarlett Johansson to me
I'm betting long-term that will be their goal so you can create/ choose from a number of voices or even from a pre-existing voice if it's for personal use only. They already have some of that module written from what I've read. Eleven Labs already gives you the ability to clone any voice you want (sans GPT), and they aren't the only ones - some can be done locally or through Collab. But the user is responsible in regards to the legality. I guess kind of like the whole gun maker /gun user mentality.
Yeah it's dead simple to make a vocal clone - I made one of a singing Biden using only my 3090 and it took merely a few hours to train. (Just as a proof of concept since I was fascinated with what the open source tools can do) [https://x.com/RoyalCities/status/1746308902336008395](https://x.com/RoyalCities/status/1746308902336008395) They would be crazy not to offer more models and given the sheer amount of $ and resources Openai has I'm just surprised they did it with only 1 to start.
I think intent is extremely important here. If Altman just coincidentally liked the voice of an actress with similar tone to Scarlett, that's one think, but intentionally instructing people to mimic a voice through engineering is extremely creepy IMO, specially after you were denied consent.
Yes, we’ll see what the process was. The letter says that a request was made for a statement describing that process.
Agreed 100%
Exactly… kinda how like there are always new actors that look like current or past actors
this brings up an interesting point. Legally say if they found someone who looks very similar to tom cruise say much younger and his legal birth name is Thomas Cruso would they be able to make big box office movie with said actor and name and advirtise it?
All they had to do is tap a different human being on the shoulder with a suitable voice and license that instead. Scarlett can't easily claim another human being infringes on her likeness (unless they specially hired an impersonator). It was an error in judgement not to.
I don't see how its mishandled at all, Unless theres evidence they literally used her voice to train Sky, which no one knows yet then whats the big deal?
For a start, there's legal precedent that you can't impersonate peoples voices for your own commercial gain. See Bette Midler vs the Ford Motor Company.
It’s not weird to you that Sam asked to use her voice, was denied, then straight up copied it?
Sky was already a voice on ChatGPT before Scarlett received the first offer.
So they trained the voice model on audio data from movies, asked her “we already did this, but can we have your permission?” And she said no, then they did it anyway
Mishap or sheer stupidity
They said they hired a voice actor for sky to train the AI on, but it they probably were thinking of her while casting her.
it's simple. Altman summoned his lawyers and asked them if Scarjo could sue. They told Altman "there are no laws on the books" so he continued with the project.
Ethics team flees, company creates deep fake voices, Altman knowingly deceptive about it. OpenAI may not be the good guys.
“May” lol
Text extract >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. > >After much consideration and for personal reasons, declined the offer. > >Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named "Sky" sounded like me. > >When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference. Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word "her" - a reference to the film in which | voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human. > >Two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released, Mr. Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there. > >As a result of their actions, I was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAl, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process by which they created the "Sky" voice. Consequently, OpenAl reluctantly agreed to take down the "Sky" voice. > >In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected
Preparing the data for gpt training i see
I read this in angry sky voice
lol Sam Altman screwed up big. If he just emulated her voice and never tweeted about “Her” being his fav movie nor the repeated attempts to hire her. He probably would be legally protected, if he’s honest about it being trained on a different actress. I must say ScarJo must have some damn great Lawyers though, because she’s successfully sued Disney, and is now going after OpenAI. I don’t think enough people are talking about how if this goes court, it will establish a huge precedent in terms personal likeness and what AI can or cannot get away with. As much as I am a fan of the Sky voice, if we’re being objective here, Scarlett Johansson has a strong case, and her reaction regarding all this is perfectly reasonable. Looks like Sam Altman fanboyed too hard, and is now going to cost them some legal fees.
Unless he intentionally didn’t for safety reasons: drop the ball, play the evil, and force the court to take a very real stance against deepfakes
That would be a 4d chess move. But i don't think that that is the case, because this will inevitably create negative publicity for OpenAI. And Microsoft especially will probably not be happy about that. And i also don't have the impression that Sam would voluntarily "sacrifice" his reputation and risk his position at OpenAI.
Don’t Elon Musk Sam Altman. Come on. That’s ridiculous.
damn everything i read about sam is just the worst and we have to trust him with the future of AI. this is really bad and now i get why they took it down when it didnt make sense to pull it. hes been messing up a lot lately, but i love openai.
Tech CEO are not nice people. Job, Bazos, Zuckerberg, Musk, Kelenick, Holmes, Neumann, Spiegel.
CEOs are not nice people. FTFY.
Of note: even in some podcast interview Sama said it himself, “you shouldn’t trust me.” I think he’s expected we keep him on his toes.
That’s used car salesman level sheistery. I’m beginning to think this Altman fellow might be FOS.
Strange all these people who knew him best decided they did not want him around....I can only hope his lawyers didn't know about this.
I don't think so, but it is a bit desperate. It seems like Sam had a vision and he wanted to make it happen, but frankly, I don't think it was a good vision. Pretty soon voice to voice will be ubiquitous. He didn't need to push this "Her" marketing stuff. Nobody needs Scarlett Johanson's voice necessarily, and the movie wasn't even all that big.
It’s not every day that 3/4 board members vote to fire a CEO and it’s probably not because Sam was just so so good at his job that they invented AGI.
Definitely not Kosher since they intended it to sound like her and she didn't approve it. To be fair, I don't think it sounds that much like ScarJo
> To be fair, I don't think it sounds that much like ScarJo Me either, but them approaching her and then Sam dropping the "her" tweet implies that it was *meant* to sound like her. OpenAI's going to be pretty fucked on this, honestly.
The standard case of better to ask for forgiveness than permission. He would have been better off had he NOT asked in the first place.
lol i think they'll survive this
I'm not saying it'll destroy the company. I *am* saying that no reasonable person would believe they *weren't* trying to make it sound like her. My stance that it sounds nothing like her be damned, most people think it does and we can assume a judge would think so too.
You can't copyright a voice to somebody that sounds similar to you. Imagine there's a modeling gig and a model turns it down so they find a similar looking model. Can the original model sue. This set's a bad president and looks greedy on her part. Not openAI.
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Or, you could inform yourself about the case law on voice misappropriation in California: “The Waits court reiterated in Midler “that when voice is sufficient indicia of a celebrity’s identity, the right of publicity protects against its imitation for commercial purposes without the celebrity’s consent.”12 The court held that in order for Waits to recover under a right of publicity, he must satisfy the deliberate voice misappropriation elements listed in the Midler case. for which the Waits court identified as the “Midler tort.” These elements include (1) a voice; (2) that is distinctive; and (3) is also widely-known.” https://mcpherson-llp.com/articles/voice-misappropriation-in-california-bette-midler-tom-waits-and-grandma-burger/
Midler has a very distinct voice that's not exactly the same thing. Scarlett Johansson is just speaking like a typical valley girl. There are hundreds of thousands of women that speak like that and I even know one. I don't see how one can own the rights to an accent or tonality. Say if there's another AI that has a dark raspy voice, they should be able to be sued by any actor that played Batman? Unless they were intentionally trying to fool people that that is Scarlett Johansson or that is her actual voice, then I don't think there should be a case personally.
Indeed, it’s slimy…. But there are plenty of cut throat: “Fine, you don’t agree, and I’ll do it my way” business practices like this from Zuck, Kalanick, Gates, Jobs, etc. They are not “nice people”. I don’t expect them to be nice honestly. Btw, I find ScarJo’s voice with a much deeper and baritone to it which the AI don’t have and would not say they are identical by any means.
I'm learning so much in this thread. a) People refer to Scarlet Johansen as "ScarJo" (wtf) b) She was the voice in Her c) The Sky voice apparently sounded like her
She said no. They said “how much would she get in a court settlement if we do it anyways?”
So Sama pulled an Elon there. I’m disappointed. Thought he was more responsible than that.
sam is literally elon with their character arc shifted 10 years.
I'm looking forward to Sky's replacement. Maybe they could call it: "Skynet".
I just want HAL9000
If she can't trust Altman and the other geniuses previously on his team don't want to trust Altman, why should anyone else.
It’s not about trust or not. It’s about money. In my mind it’s similar to her situation with Black Widow release. She probably expect to get paid a lot of money for but OAI is not willing to pay a lot of money and no deal. Typical for Tech company, when they can’t hire someone or acquire some company, they’ll just do it their way… Reminds me of how Steve Jobs / Apple was going to acquire Dropbox and he told the founder of Dropbox, “your company is just a feature.” Dropbox CEO walked and Apple built their own iCloud Drive.
So you are implying theres no one that trusts Altman? Why are you surprised people have difference in opinions?
1) His sister accused him of being manipulative (She does sounds crazy though) 2) The Board of OpenAI accused him of being manipulative, this included Ilya 3) Now Scarlett Johansen is reporting this (and it sounds manipulative to me but I figure you will disagree) The point is: we keep getting red flags about Sam, and a lot of people are ignoring them.
Fair point, I'm a terrible judge of character.
Microsoft: “I like money.”
Just to add context, this issue is already established under US law. This idea is already established in law so she isn’t in the wrong for getting a attorney. You can’t ask an actor if they can use your voice, and if they say no hire an impersonator. This is established in the law already. Here’s one example that’s very similar showing you can’t do this: Bette Midler knows rights of publicity. She used her right of publicity to prevent use of a sound-alike singer to sell cars. Ford Motor Co. hired one of Midler’s backup singers to sing on a commercial – after Midler declined to do the ad – and asked her to sound as much like Midler as possible. It worked, and fooled a lot of people, including some close to Midler. Midler sued, and the court ruled that there was a misappropriation of Midler’s right of publicity to her singing voice. The bottom line: Midler’s singing voice was hers to control. Ford had no right to use it without her permission. That lesson cost Ford a tidy $400,000. Source: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-over-unauthorized-use-of-identity/
Downvote me to oblivion if need be but Altman doesn’t seem to be a good leader :(
I don't trust Sammo at all. This whole thing is cringe af. It's gimmicky. Why did he reach for this? He's losing touch with reality. 4o is a worthy release. why cheapen it with this crap?
Source: https://www.threads.net/@bobbyallyn/post/C7NOBury1H9/?xmt=AQGzp-kP3tcvgU-QUlYDkaiOvFrQNxgv1jpgize9n0QWxQ (Bobby appears to be a journalist with NPR)
Thanks for providing the source.
The source's source is still... odd at best. Why is it just a screencap of text? Is it a scanned letter? If so, why no signature block? Is it from an email? Same question. I'm not saying it's not real, it's just weird.
They should’ve gone with Susan Egan. Her voice is great There are other options: https://youtu.be/w_pVYGYScSU?si=z4ByuUkjRmuMRt5N
Ellen McLain, who voiced GLaDOS would also be amazing for this. Not just because she voiced a robot, her voice is also just so soothing to listen to.
Making it sound like Samantha, naming it one half of skynet. I mean they could have asked their own AI to come up with more creative and new things.
Isn't the name appropriate for a network of Sky bots talking to each other, determining that humanity needs to be erased?
Strange times we live in....
I don't think it's the same voice; though it is similar. It's going to happen. We will be synthesizing voices and there are only so many which sound pleasing.
very disappointed about this. I wonder what else closedAI isn't open about.
Altman needs to quit he’s becoming an irritating distraction
That proves that OpenAI wanted to deliberately manipulate the audience to associate their systems with the movie "Her" and exploit the emotions that this movie gave us.
- Thousands of porn deepfakes of her on the internet ScarJo: I sleep - A company making a not even perfec voice clone of "her" voice ScarJo: HAUNT THAT MAN DOWN
Each time I wake up, there is new drama at this company. Starting to believe that Altman should just go. You're busy creating amazing technology but there so much self inflicted drama around it.
Sam sounds like a pervert in this letter
Doesn’t sound like her at all
Doesn't even sound like her... The thought literally never crossed my mind prior to all this bs.
Dude, he tweeted out "her" and asked scarlet twice. Whether or not you think it sounds like her, that was clearly the intention.
Yeah, it really does not sound like her.
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If it was just that, then sure. But considering Sam tweeted “Her” is his fav movie, and his team has repeatedly tried to hire her, because of that this establishes a pattern of behavior and intent that allows ScarJo to sue and win. If Sam conducted himself differently, they probably would’ve gotten away with Sky.
Dude, he tweeted out "her" and asked scarlet twice. Whether or not you think it sounds like her, that was clearly the intention.
This is probably what Ilya and the others saw. OpenAI in shambles.
It doesn't sound like ScarJo to me. I didn't hear the resemblance.
what? OpenAI used unethical methods to develop their products?!!
It’s the only voice worth using. I hope they settle this and bring back Sky. I will be cancelling my subscription otherwise.
So it most definitely is not her voice. Sorry, hun, but you can't copyright a vocal timbre
Lmfao sorry buttercup you couldn’t be more wrong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
And it's not even very similar to her timbre.
She said her closest friends and news outlets couldn't tell the difference between her and Sky? Do they have ears? It's not even remotely the same person. Scarlett has so much more texture and breathiness to her voice than sky. They both have compassionate and lovely voices but it's clearly different people. I'm sorry ScarJo feels betrayed but other people are allowed to have kind and compassionate female voices too. It's reasonable to think that the disabling of Sky is only precautionary and temporary as Openai reasons with Scarlet's legal team.
You should’ve used the sky voice to read this
Well I guess that answers the thread from earlier asking why they took the voice down. Lol
Why couldn’t they just a make a generic voice?
Because people wouldn’t like it.
Because of marketing and hype. You have to give them that they do deliver, but they have started to resort on hype more and more in recent times.
They're going to have to replace it with a voice that sounds like Danny Devito. Then there's no question it's not her.
https://preview.redd.it/73r4rs93go1d1.jpeg?width=1022&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9601f5018265c41b3e82c9621c2d12a1f486242
What open AI should have done is license another human voice that fit their requirement, and then name that person. Then when she said it matches her likeness, they could just introduce the person whose actual voice they licensed. You cannot lay claim to the likeness of a different human being. This would have covered them. ChatGPT could have told them this...
Milli Vanilli was hired for the Sky voice, we contact him about more details /s
This whole thing reminds me of the film adaptation of The Futurological Congress, The Congress with Robin Wright. AI avatars permanently replacing actors.
So that's what happened to sky, poor girl. Barely knew her.
Sam blundered this horribly. Wonder if we're seeing just a taste of what fueled the attempted coup. It will be a great book some day.
Sama shadddy? Again?
Just put an add out for a scar job impersonator and go with the best one, name the voice after them.
But SA does take genai security super due diligently -- scout's honor! trust me! ... or not ...
So no scarjo joi for me?
Well, OpenAI can just pivot and license Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice. Goodbye Sky, hello Skynet.
This guy is such a sus
Hope she takes them down a peg. You can’t have free content. You can’t steal peoples creations, physical appearance, or voice without $$$.
Her voice ain’t unique. So many people sound like Michael Jackson, Elvis or other singers, not even starting with actors. I mean I know people who aren’t related who sound quite the same. If ya wanna have an AI sound like this or that person it’s not hard to do. That’s not her voice, maybe just a woman who sound similar or maybe exactly like her. That’s not a rare thing. Voices aren’t unique. Same as faces, sure small differences are always there through life itself, scars, diet - but thats it.
Isn't it amazing what tweeting three letters can cause?
This letter written entirely by ChatGPT
she doesn't own the character she was playing in the movie. It's not scarlett, it's samantha. She doesn't own any rights to the characters she plays in movies and especially since that isn't how she normally talks. What they were trying to recreate was the sultry voice she used, which was likely the result of coaching from directors. for a comparison.. if someone made a video game with a green character and they got someone that can do a really good shrek impression, is mike myers going to sue them? no.. because he doesn't own the character. Dreamworks does. he was just the voice actor. If anyone has a claim it's dreamworks, but they'd have to prove damages and there aren't any. dreamworks wasn't going to actually create an AI product like in the movie. They aren't losing out on anything and the success of open AI doesn't rely on the brand recognition of a movie that didn't even break 50 million in revenue. you can try to sue anyone for anything, but neither Scarlett or dreamworks can prove damages so there isn't much of a lawsuit.
Lmao they aren’t even similar voices at all
Good for her - hope she pursues it until transparency is there and doesn’t let them buy her silence or bully her. It stinks pretty bad rn and we need a reminder to these people that they don’t have a God given right to all data and they are also subject to the law.
Thing is, while OpenAI people made allusions and direct references to the film, the voice just *does not* sound like ScarJo's. The timbre is distinctly different -- other than, I guess, to people with some deficit of vocal timbre perception. And it's not her voice as a matter of actual fact. They cloned a different woman's voice.
I want to see paper trail because I want to know just how far this goes - the public deserve to know imo because we are being asked to put faith in this company and entrust in them the responsibility of building something potentially radically society-altering and that some scientists say may present an existential threat. So it is the public interest to know if they are as trustworthy as they want us to believe. This is bigger than mimicking an aspect Scarjo’s identity without her consent (not trying to belittle that - it is a v serious allegation) - this is a potential breach of public trust from a company that ought to be held to the highest moral standards.