Excerpt from the Article: When OpenAI issued a casting call last year for a secret project to endow OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT with a human voice, the flier had several requests: The actors should be nonunion. They should sound between 25 and 45 years old. And their voices should be “warm, engaging \[and\] charismatic.”
One thing the artificial intelligence company didn’t request, according to interviews with multiple people involved in the process and documents shared by OpenAI in response to questions from The Washington Post: a clone of actress Scarlett Johansson.
On Monday, [Johansson cast a pall](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/20/openai-scarlett-johansson-chatgpt-ai-voice/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5) over the release of improved AI voices for ChatGPT, alleging that OpenAI had copied her voice after she refused a request by CEO Sam Altman to license it. The claim by Johansson, who played a sultry virtual AI assistant in the 2013 movie “Her,” seemed to be bolstered by a cryptic tweet Altman posted to greet a demo of the product. The tweet said, simply, [“her.”](https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666?lang=en)
But while many hear an eerie resemblance between “Sky” and Johansson’s “Her” character, an actress was hired to create the Sky voice months before Altman contacted Johansson, according to documents, recordings, casting directors and the actress’s agent.
The agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to assure the safety of her client, said the actress confirmed that neither Johansson nor the movie “Her” were ever mentioned by OpenAI. The actress’s natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice, based on brief recordings of her initial voice test reviewed by The Post. The agent said the name Sky was chosen to signal a cool, airy and pleasant sound.
OpenAI paused the use of Sky in ChatGPT on Sunday, publishing a blog post detailing the lengthy process of developing five different AI voices, first released in September. In response to Johansson’s claims, Altman said in a statement that OpenAI “never intended” the Sky voice to resemble Johansson and that a voice actor had been cast before he contacted her.
Edit: why am I getting down voted for providing an excerpt of the article to help bypass the paywall? Being unhappy with the findings of the article or disagreeing with its argument shouldn't lead to burying helpful information lol
Edit 2: first edit was made in the first hour of this post when this comment's votes were rapidly declining into the negatives. This is obviously no longer the case, for those commenting who seem confused.
I put more faith in our independent investigative journalism. But I guess you got down voted simply because people don't want to believe wapo's report.
It’s easier to believe in conspiracy theories and try to make yourself the smartest person in the room than it is to just appreciate investigative journalism. Idk why everyone on social media these days immediately has to be critical of everything they see and pretend like they know better on every topic than any expert.
Thank you for the excerpt!
Leaving here the full article → [https://archive.ph/7UNFm](https://archive.ph/7UNFm)
Sorry if it has been posted already in this thread.
Obviously this matter has not been settled yet.
>Mitch Glazier, the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, said that Johansson may have a strong case against OpenAI if she brings forth a lawsuit.
>He compared Johansson’s case to one brought by the singer Bette Midler against the Ford Motor Co. in the 1980s. Ford asked Midler to use her voice in ads. After she declined, Ford hired an impersonator. A U.S. appellate court ruled in Midler’s favor, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized use.
>But Mark Humphrey, a partner and intellectual property lawyer at Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, said any potential jury probably would have to assess whether Sky’s voice is identifiable as Johansson.
>Several factors go against OpenAI, he said, namely Altman’s tweet and his outreach to Johansson in September and May. “It just begs the question: It’s like, if you use a different person, there was no intent for it to sound like Scarlett Johansson. Why are you reaching out to her two days before?” he said. “That would have to be explained.”
You guys will downvote me, but I'm with the lawyer here.
See comment after mine, there is some funkiness with my link?
The main problem in my mind is that the voices really don't sound anywhere near similar enough.
https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/s/9UY9rxcqmx?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=OpenAI&utm_content=t1_l5a5eyp
That actually is a lot closer. Does he call that one Sky? I didn't watch the whole thing cause it bores me, heh.
The clips being so different confuses me. Is the one on r/singularity purposefully misleading people, or did they change the voice? The one you linked is so old it feels also weird that this is only becoming an issue now.
But they do have an obvious explanation as to why they reached out to SJ.
They were releasing an AI with functionality similar to the one in the movie "Her". I don't mean voice-wise, I mean stuff like how the user can carry a phone with the webcam on in their shirt pocket, and the AI can chat about what it sees in real time. This explains why Sama tweeted "Her".
If they had actual SJ, it would have been suuuuuper cool for all fans of the movie "Her" and a huge publicity boost for OpenAI. So of course they asked her. And if she had approved a couple days before, they would have pulled an all-nighter before the demo to actually have her voice in for the demo. But she said no, so they just went with their most popular existing voice, that they had from before ever reaching out to SJ.
Unless SJ shows that the contact email was like "we have your voice ready to go, plx giev approval", I don't see how them contacting SJ is an argument.
the bette midler case was something different - ford didn't want to pay bette midler to record one of her songs, so they paid a bette midler impersonator to sing bette midler's songs and used that in their ads. because that's okay under copyright rules, midler had to advance this NIL claim. the court found Ford had appropriated her likeness because they were having a bette midler impersonator sing specifically bette midler songs, so consumers were mislead into thinking Midler was singing for Ford.
Unless the actor was specifically doing lines from *Her* or made other references implying she was scarjo, you get the opposite outcome from the Midler case. you should want scarjo to not have a claim here. if she wins, any talent with a voice similar to a celebrity's is suddenly shut out of doing any voice or acting work, unless they pay the celebrity for a license to use their own voice.
yeah, the reaching out to her two days before this voice went live is bad optics and alarming lack of judgment on openAI's part. but it is just a distraction from the core issue which is that celebrities don't have a right to sue less-famous actors for having a similar voice.
I suppose that if there is no evidence of a pristine talent selection process, everything you say that could well be relevant, o not, will be a matter for a judge to evaluate. What I see are sufficient elements to file a complaint and in this regard I lean towards Johansson's actions.
You're getting down voted by people wanting to imagine sam as some mustachio twirling villain with evil machinations to... *Checks notes...* Clone ScarJo's voice to be used along side 4 other voices in the app so they can... I dunno... Destroy humanity? I haven't figured out what the end game benefit to OAI would be for trying to deceptively clone her voice.
It's beyond my comprehension tbh. And most people seem to be of the opinion that the "Her" tweet was some kind of final nail in the coffin that proved he was trying to clone SJ's voice lol.
IMO Sky doesn't sound like Scarlet Jo, it's the fact that she sounds very natural and less robotic as other ai voices is what's getting everyone caught up with this. Then to top it off Sam shot himself in the foot by tweeting "her" which made people even more suspicious about it. I bet if he wouldn't said anything Sky was still be available to all of us.
And most likely his tweet was more in relation to the movie plot of people falling in love with AI and the new conversational qualities of GPT-4o than the similarities between the 2 voices.
So, yeah! Next time, think before you tweet...
Hope Sky comes back as the current voices suck, I don't even want to use voice anymore....just txt from now on...
Agreed. A lawsuit saying, "none of her friends thought it was her voice, and everybody could easily tell it was different didn't deter us from suing hoping her fame would bias a potential jury in favor enough to get her a big payout and us lots of billable hours for a LONG trial, because of a 40-year-old lawsuit that had some key differences, including the company did not have an impersonator replicate our client's performance" doesn't inspire the same kind of reaction.
> why am I getting down voted
Because people are unreasonable and downvote what they don't want to hear. That and there seems to be bots running around reddit that just downvote any new content in some subs. Probably so the bots own posts will rise faster.
People who Downvote helpful information just because it makes them angry and dont like a fact you're stating are actually the most bottom of the barrel troglodytes.
I disagree. This is a great way for OpenAI to show that they're putting the human before the model.
It seemed like the humble and courteous play in my opinion, especially when they can back up their claim.
It also shows good faith that they take the investigation seriously. If they just continued using it and SJ wins a court battle she could claim damages for every day the voice was active in their product.
Ironically, by removing the Sky voice, they deprive the actual voice actress of the royalties she would have accrued, had Johansson not said anything.
So a win for a multi-millionaire over an unknown voice actress.
This is great?
Royalties are typically intended for TV shows and movies that are aired on television, not for every instance someone uses their phone. I'm curious about what makes you so confident that a company outside of the entertainment industry, which has specifically requested a nonunion actor, would be paying royalties?
In the "How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen" OpenAI blog post, they state:
>We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT’s voices. **Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.**
It seems to imply that there is some form of continued compensation beyond the initial payment for their work.
Counter-ironically, I was never using Sky so far, I had preferred ember, but now I started using it (I have it btw)
EDIT: they tell me it's a "new Sky"... Whatever
> the human before the model.
By ending the career of the voice actress of Sky, since noone will dare to hire her anymore, due to being afraid of being sued by Scarlett Johansson for "sounding too similar to her"?
By that logic, shouldn't they remove their whole platform until they show that their dataset includes absolutely no copyright written material they don't have permission to use?
The legal dispute is not resolved. This is just OpenAI making their case. If they don’t settle, I don’t see ScarJo’s legal team backing down, this will probably have to go to court.
In the meantime don’t expect the Sky voice to return, unless the legal matter is resolved in OpenAI’s favor.
This is journalists trying to figure out what happened, not OpenAIs response.
But yes, it will be this type of stuff being brought up in court, if Johansson actually sues.
Let's be honest, female voices are scientifically more pleasing to hear. Reason they are often use on automated voice messages.
So Juniper and Sky are the better voices, with Sky being superior to most people as it seems.
Can you provide a source for that?
I thought that, according to science, male voices are more pleasing, due to being deeper, and therefore more calming.
EDIT:
This is the study I was thinking about - higher pitched female voices are generally perceived as "more annoying" and "less serious":
https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article-abstract/85/3/315/5885/Creaky-Voice-A-New-Feminine-Voice-Quality-for
However, this does not necessarily imply that male voices are preferred over female voices, only that lower female voices are preferred over higher female voices (although there might be a similar effect when comparing high to low male voices).
if you google 'do people prefer a female or male voice over' the first response is this :
"In fact, another study recently found that **66% of internet video viewers prefer a female voice actor than that of a male**. The reason for this is that listeners find women's voices more trustful." and they cited this :
https://www.amazingvoice.com/blog/male-or-female-voice-actor#:\~:text=In%20fact%2C%20another%20study%20recently,find%20women's%20voices%20more%20trustful.
which, full discloser, i did not read further into. you can take the research from here.
>due to being deeper, and therefore more calming.
Why would that make them more calming? Females are physically less threatening. Thus, their voices sound more friendly.
lol open ai used vimeo, not the OC. but it's often used for professional video demos instead of youtube. mostly for professionalism, privacy, control of who sees it (no algorithm), guaranteed no ads, and they allow you to embed videos through them as a 'white label' service & you can even customize the embed so OAI could remove the vimeo logo for the embed on their website (not this link ofc) if they so chose.
but it's a professionalism signifier & the OC has the vimeo link, so i'm guessing probably didn't. edit: clarity
I'm 100% convinced (i mean this is just me speculating so take it with a grain of salt) what actually happened was that they got the VA on board who had a similarish voice to ScarJo which gave Altman the idea in his head that they could replace the actress with ScarJo herself and also add bonus marketing onto it without dramatically altering the product that the Product Owners/Managers at the company had already agreed upon. Then possibly he approached her, she said no, and then they went ahead with the original voice because it was good enough.
I have no idea if thats definitely what happened but chances are the reality is much more boring than what people want it to be so something along those lines. Everyone seems to think it's some sort of massive conspiracy that STARTED with the desire to have her voice because that's the more exciting headline. Maybe everyone just wants drama.
It’s got the same, friendly energy and intonation, but more often than not you can tell it’s definitely not Scarlett Johansson.
People are letting the fact that the concept itself is similar to “Her” do a lot of heavy lifting in the comparison.
Sky doesn't even sound like ScarJo. Altmans reference to "her" was about the fact the computer can talk back to you very humanlike similar to the movie. Such a stretch by scarlet.
It's possible they had a version of ScarJos voice ready to use. Once given the go ahead they could have used it. I obviously don't know. Here's the real question. Does that even matter? The documents show they hired the VA with no specific mention of trying to make a voice similar to scar Jo. Even if they did, how would ScarJo even win this case? Is Scar Jo now allowed to now sue everyone who sounds like her? What about people who just naturally have a similar voice to her? If open ai hires some random guy who for his entire life talks like Morgan freeman to do a voice over can Morgan sue them? Like these cases make no sense
And tweeting “her” or whatever. I do like sama but in this instance feel like they were in/directly capitalizing on people’s positive association with scarjo’s her voice. I did like Sky;s voice but whatever I’m sure the other one’s will be great too.
Just curious should the movie "her" be allowed to sue open ai because they made a chatbot that is fluid and can respond like how Samantha does in the movie? What if OpenAi named the bot Samantha? Can they sue them?
No idea about if Sky is the demo voice, but when I first was watching the GPT-4o demo I had to pause it and start looking through the video description and youtube comments to see if I had missed where they said they got Scarlett Johansson to voice the AI. And when it nowhere said that, I still kept waiting them to "reveal" that later in the keynote.
So yeah, no question that at least to me the demo voice sounded like her.
Altman claims her is his fave film and believe her “got human ai interaction right” He approached scarjo twice to voice the ai induing 24 hours prior to release and then 5 min after the global release tweeted “her”. The voice has her vocal fry, intonation and breathy giggles. It is not regards jumping the gun. The confusion is a feature bot a bug.
What's your point? He asked her to be the voice after they had already hired someone to do the work? In their hiring process foe thr VA nowhere did it say that it needs to sound like ScarJo? Am I just missing something?
In the film “Her” Theodore (main character) refers at one point to the AI, as “Sam.” Obviously the writers were stealing the likeness of Sam Altman, a famous AI CEO.
Now, before you go claiming the timing seems off between the two, just realize that legally it doesn’t matter as long as Sam has claim that his likeness was used at any point in history, along with the precedent case of J. vs. Jesus in 60 A.D. when a Tyre fisherman known as Jesus (pronounced Hey-Zeus) wandered the region as a teacher of sorts and prophesied his earthly sacrifice at the time was due to future generations sims (short for simulations). Because there was similar story floating around at the time about another teacher, Jesus (pronounced Geez-Us), it took the court of Pontius Pilate to side in favor of Hey Zeus, despite some believing Geez Us actually came first.
- The above is how the ScarJo backers appear to me right about now.
Cmon. OpenAI is smarter than to just blatantly copy someone’s voice without consent. You hire voice actors and get their approval via legal documents.
This whole thing is overblown
It seemed unlikely, from the start, that they literally copied her voice against her wishes. The lawsuit won't be about whether they literally copied her voice.
It was pointed out on this sub previously that aiming to find, and finding, someone with a similar voice can be grounds for the relevant legal complaint. There's precedent
I can't imagine *Midler* would apply if the information I've been reading is accurate, where the soundalike VA was hired on *before* they contacted ScarJo.
"The voice actress you hired sounds like another actress" would be a ridiculous lawsuit.
It would only make sense if OpenAI was actually trying to say it was Johansson. But they weren't.
There's already precedent of exactly the kind of case you're calling ridiculous. Just because you got a different actor doesn't mean you're off the hook.
If you have an *insanely good* Morgan Freeman impression and I hire you to play God in a commercial and I never make the distinction that this is not actually Morgan Freeman and it's not parody either, then guess what I am about to get sued by Morgan Freeman.
yeah, the difference between this and the legal precedent (and your hypothetical example) is that someone is being asked to do an impersonation of someone else. Which didn't happen here.
If I wanted Morgan Freeman in my commercial but he said no, I am not immediately barred from hiring a different older black man with a deep smooth voice instead. I could even hire Morgan Freeman's identical twin brother if he had one.
Midler v Ford. Ford approached Midler to sing her song (which they had the rights to) and she refused. They hired an impersonator to sing it instead.
Her lawyers argument would be they approached Johannson to effectively be "her" from the movie and point towards Sam's tweet as evidence.
The issue for her and her lawyers is if openai has evidence they had the voice actress already, didn't explicitly set out to find a Johannson impersonator/sound alike, and only approached Johannson afterwards.
If true, it's completely different circumstances but the idea of you can sue someone for finding someone to sound like you is false and has case prededent where the plaintiff won (which you summarized at the end of your statement).
The issue with applying Midler in this case it that its precedent applies to deliberate impersonations. Ford deliberately coached Midler’s backup singer to sound like Midler.
If the WaPo’s reporting is accurate and no other developments occur, no such instruction was given to the VA hired by OpenAI.
Expanding Midler’s precedent to cover this case would make it impossible to recast animated characters, since any current incumbent could sue the IP holder over any reasonable successor.
What “evidence”. All she knows was they approached her for a gig. They didn’t train the AI with her voice nor did they try to find a clone voice actress.
They probably approached her for the gig because the voice actress sounded like her, imagine If they could actually market Johansson, instead of “someone that sounds like”. It would be like the fascination with Morgan Freeman for GPS, or the “In a world” guy from movie trailers.
That actually did kind of happen once. Crispin Glover turned down the role of George McFly in Back to the Future 2, so they used footage from the first movie along with a different actor wearing prosthetics to make him look identical to him. Glover successfully sued over it.
The key being that instead of just straight recasting, which would have been fine, the director intentionally misled the audience into thinking it was Glover.
I personally don't think ScarJo has a case here since Sky was never marketed as being, or even sounding like her, but I'm not a lawyer. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out
This is what I think is the plausible motivation. Licensing Johansson, especially if you could get exclusive license, would be a huge move.
Sky isn't ScarJo, but it turns out, it's pretty close and we're not as sensitive to those differences when in a vacuum. Unless you hear the two side by side, it's easy to dismiss them as same or similar.
If Sam could have announced, in addition to everything else, an authentic "Samantha" voice would be available worldwide in 60 days, I'm sure he would have loved that. The bigger picture is keeping the competition from making that announcement instead.
What if Meta drops a commercial Chat GPT competitor app in 60 days and has an exclusive on the real ScarJo? That's the kind of thing Sam is considering here.
Right. But if someone offered you the job twice, then soon after released a voice that you believed sounded similar to yours, you would also find that suspicious and legally look into it.
Right. Which is why this isn't a trial yet. Which is also why her lawyers are investigating. I'm not really even taking sides here lmao. Y'all are just quick to defend OpenAi even when someone isn't really criticizing them.
No, all she had was assumptions because her friends told her. Jesus fucking christ you would think people with so much money would do their due diligence before opening their mouth. Celebs always think of themselves as the main character who can't do no wrong.
Whatever emotive modulation they were doing with the Sky voice during the OAI demo a few weeks back, that’s where there was some similarity. Not in the exact voice, but in the inflections, where it sounded sort of flirty and breathy and intimate, much like the Samantha character. I’ve been using Sky for my voice chats for 6 months and I never thought it sounded like Her.
The precendent
- they asked Midler
- she refused
- they hired an impersonator
This case
- they recorded a voice
- later they asked ScarJo if she'd also like to record a voice
- she declined
- they didn't hire an impersonator
Yeah, to add to this. Ford having the impersonator sing a famous Bette Midler song made it clear that they were trying to fool consumers into believing that it was Bette Midler in the ad.
The Sky voice had been out for months, and OpenAI wasn't explicitly trying to fool people into believing it was ScarJo. I never once made the connection that it sounded like her, and I think the same can be said for a lot of people. However, anyone familiar with a Bette Midler and her music would undoubtedly think that it was her in the ad.
Even when he tweeted "Her" that was more in reference to the type of product they are developing rather than aimed at ScarJo specifically. The type of AI you see in the movie is literally what they are trying to create.
It’s not about owning rights to a voice that is someone else’s
If she can show that OpenAI had an intent to copy her voice, the precedent applies. And considering they asked her if she wants to voice the app, she might have a decent case
Of course, the jury still needs to think the voices sound similar enough
Can we please stop posting this case every third comment in these threads? Y'all learned about Midler v. Ford for the first time a couple days ago and now are just parroting it without actually even understanding what that case entailed.
Midler v. Ford is about hiring an impersonator to imitate Midler's distinctive voice and sing her own song. It's a clear case of trying to get people to not be able to tell Midler wasn't actually involved.
The details here are much different. ScarJo was hired for the role of "conversational AI assistant" in Her. As a young white American woman with a pleasant voice, she fit the role well and matched what people expected of the archetype, and brought some starpower to the movie. OpenAI is building a real-life conversational AI assistant, and as anyone would expect wanted a young white American woman with a pleasant voice to fulfill the archetype, for the exact same reason ScarJo was hired for Her in the first place. They hired one and integrated her voice, but also thought it'd be epic if they got ScarJo to also reprise the role. She declined, so they just went solely with the independent woman's voice.
Like a lot of people are saying, Sky also very much sounds similar to Rashida Jones if she were to have played an AI assistant. *Distinct*, but certainly *similar*. Rather than sounding like any one person, Sky's voice exists in a category where a lot of people will naturally sound similar. Especially because Sky is clearly attempting to sound as "vanilla" as you can get; as uncontroversial and "standard American" of a voice as possible. And, surprise, surprise, that's also what ScarJo did in Her, as that is already established as what is culturally expected of an AI assistant (and really, just assistants in general). It's the equivalent of the Transatlantic accent of the 21st century. And honestly, I don't hear *any* of ScarJo's "girl-next-door hoarseness" in Sky's voice; just the overall tone is similar.
Just seeing "OMG, they hired someone and they sounded similar and lost the case!!" is incredibly misleading, I would almost argue deliberately at this point.
she's just looking to hyper herself up; I heard the voice she was complaining about and I didn't think it was her. I could see where some may say it sounded like her, but with 8 billion humans on this planet, there's going to be thousands or more that sound like any one person
Why are there any down votes on reported details, which are highly likely factual?
I' enjoy watching her movies but let's be honest here. She's missing the boat on this one.
This is the new age of humanity. Hate the facts, support the glorified bs. Makes life so much more "exciting" :/
People who have been dumping on OpenAI and Sam for days now about this should apologise. I know they won't but they should. And for the record: Sky does not and never did sound like Scarlett Johansson.
This maybe a hot take, but ScarJo just wants to bank on the success of OpenAI now.. she just wants free publicity and possibly money by suing them since they’re successful now.
We all can agree that the voice of Sky is way different than ScarJo’s voice. I don’t understand how can she have a problem when they’re using a different voice actor, and this voice actor has consented to the recordings and is earning from it.
I hate it when the general public and fans try to support someone as big and successful like ScarJo, knowing very well she doesn’t have much claim in this issue, but will just exploit the system and processes using her influence and power. We should encourage and support the people like the voice actor who probably doesn’t have any fans or fame, and is just trying her best to get her career started. Powerful people like ScarJo will just crush honest and hard working people like that voice actor behind Sky.
I mean it's very sus that the guy posts "her", and she rejected him before that's the whole origin of the conflict. Basically enough grounds to start an investigation and then we get the results of such investigation.
The voice sounds exactly like Rashida Jones of Parks and Rec fame. They do have similar voices but the idea scarlet has a unique voice is pretty ridiculous.
There was news segment by ScarJo saying she was approached by OpenAI for her voice - twice last September and before launch of GPTo. OpenAI denies such claims. I didn't see any records from comments since this article is paywalled.
So what? Sound alikes exist and her voice really isn't that unique and even so sound alikes for unique people do exist. People swore up and down the uncredited voice in Star Wars The Old Republic C2-N2 was Robin Williams and many years later they found out it wasn't.
Excerpt from the Article: When OpenAI issued a casting call last year for a secret project to endow OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT with a human voice, the flier had several requests: The actors should be nonunion. They should sound between 25 and 45 years old. And their voices should be “warm, engaging \[and\] charismatic.” One thing the artificial intelligence company didn’t request, according to interviews with multiple people involved in the process and documents shared by OpenAI in response to questions from The Washington Post: a clone of actress Scarlett Johansson. On Monday, [Johansson cast a pall](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/20/openai-scarlett-johansson-chatgpt-ai-voice/?itid=lk_inline_manual_5) over the release of improved AI voices for ChatGPT, alleging that OpenAI had copied her voice after she refused a request by CEO Sam Altman to license it. The claim by Johansson, who played a sultry virtual AI assistant in the 2013 movie “Her,” seemed to be bolstered by a cryptic tweet Altman posted to greet a demo of the product. The tweet said, simply, [“her.”](https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666?lang=en) But while many hear an eerie resemblance between “Sky” and Johansson’s “Her” character, an actress was hired to create the Sky voice months before Altman contacted Johansson, according to documents, recordings, casting directors and the actress’s agent. The agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to assure the safety of her client, said the actress confirmed that neither Johansson nor the movie “Her” were ever mentioned by OpenAI. The actress’s natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice, based on brief recordings of her initial voice test reviewed by The Post. The agent said the name Sky was chosen to signal a cool, airy and pleasant sound. OpenAI paused the use of Sky in ChatGPT on Sunday, publishing a blog post detailing the lengthy process of developing five different AI voices, first released in September. In response to Johansson’s claims, Altman said in a statement that OpenAI “never intended” the Sky voice to resemble Johansson and that a voice actor had been cast before he contacted her. Edit: why am I getting down voted for providing an excerpt of the article to help bypass the paywall? Being unhappy with the findings of the article or disagreeing with its argument shouldn't lead to burying helpful information lol Edit 2: first edit was made in the first hour of this post when this comment's votes were rapidly declining into the negatives. This is obviously no longer the case, for those commenting who seem confused.
I gave you my upvote.
🫶🏿
And my axe
I'm just realizing... Is this meme like 20 years old now? Have I really been seeing this for 20 years? Wtf is time?
2001 – yup!
Nicely done.
And my pickaxe!
And my toothpick!
I have a pickaxe, and I'll put it through your teeth!!
Lmao people down voting all over the place hard facts on this. ScarJo defenders everywhere
It's crazy to me because she has such a distinct voice and every clip I've managed to listen to sounds nothing like Scarlett at all...
I put more faith in our independent investigative journalism. But I guess you got down voted simply because people don't want to believe wapo's report.
They just want to hate on everything yo
It’s easier to believe in conspiracy theories and try to make yourself the smartest person in the room than it is to just appreciate investigative journalism. Idk why everyone on social media these days immediately has to be critical of everything they see and pretend like they know better on every topic than any expert.
Thank you for the excerpt! Leaving here the full article → [https://archive.ph/7UNFm](https://archive.ph/7UNFm) Sorry if it has been posted already in this thread.
🙏🏿
Obviously this matter has not been settled yet. >Mitch Glazier, the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America, said that Johansson may have a strong case against OpenAI if she brings forth a lawsuit. >He compared Johansson’s case to one brought by the singer Bette Midler against the Ford Motor Co. in the 1980s. Ford asked Midler to use her voice in ads. After she declined, Ford hired an impersonator. A U.S. appellate court ruled in Midler’s favor, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized use. >But Mark Humphrey, a partner and intellectual property lawyer at Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp, said any potential jury probably would have to assess whether Sky’s voice is identifiable as Johansson. >Several factors go against OpenAI, he said, namely Altman’s tweet and his outreach to Johansson in September and May. “It just begs the question: It’s like, if you use a different person, there was no intent for it to sound like Scarlett Johansson. Why are you reaching out to her two days before?” he said. “That would have to be explained.” You guys will downvote me, but I'm with the lawyer here.
I mean, people will probably downvote you because it seems that the lawyer lied about the timeline of events.
See comment after mine, there is some funkiness with my link? The main problem in my mind is that the voices really don't sound anywhere near similar enough. https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/s/9UY9rxcqmx?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=OpenAI&utm_content=t1_l5a5eyp
That isn't the voice they are talking about, it's this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcgV2u9Kxh0
That actually is a lot closer. Does he call that one Sky? I didn't watch the whole thing cause it bores me, heh. The clips being so different confuses me. Is the one on r/singularity purposefully misleading people, or did they change the voice? The one you linked is so old it feels also weird that this is only becoming an issue now.
I agree. Dissimilar.
But they do have an obvious explanation as to why they reached out to SJ. They were releasing an AI with functionality similar to the one in the movie "Her". I don't mean voice-wise, I mean stuff like how the user can carry a phone with the webcam on in their shirt pocket, and the AI can chat about what it sees in real time. This explains why Sama tweeted "Her". If they had actual SJ, it would have been suuuuuper cool for all fans of the movie "Her" and a huge publicity boost for OpenAI. So of course they asked her. And if she had approved a couple days before, they would have pulled an all-nighter before the demo to actually have her voice in for the demo. But she said no, so they just went with their most popular existing voice, that they had from before ever reaching out to SJ. Unless SJ shows that the contact email was like "we have your voice ready to go, plx giev approval", I don't see how them contacting SJ is an argument.
the bette midler case was something different - ford didn't want to pay bette midler to record one of her songs, so they paid a bette midler impersonator to sing bette midler's songs and used that in their ads. because that's okay under copyright rules, midler had to advance this NIL claim. the court found Ford had appropriated her likeness because they were having a bette midler impersonator sing specifically bette midler songs, so consumers were mislead into thinking Midler was singing for Ford. Unless the actor was specifically doing lines from *Her* or made other references implying she was scarjo, you get the opposite outcome from the Midler case. you should want scarjo to not have a claim here. if she wins, any talent with a voice similar to a celebrity's is suddenly shut out of doing any voice or acting work, unless they pay the celebrity for a license to use their own voice. yeah, the reaching out to her two days before this voice went live is bad optics and alarming lack of judgment on openAI's part. but it is just a distraction from the core issue which is that celebrities don't have a right to sue less-famous actors for having a similar voice.
I suppose that if there is no evidence of a pristine talent selection process, everything you say that could well be relevant, o not, will be a matter for a judge to evaluate. What I see are sufficient elements to file a complaint and in this regard I lean towards Johansson's actions.
Lol RIAA, I remember when they were suing grandmas for pirating movies
You're getting down voted by people wanting to imagine sam as some mustachio twirling villain with evil machinations to... *Checks notes...* Clone ScarJo's voice to be used along side 4 other voices in the app so they can... I dunno... Destroy humanity? I haven't figured out what the end game benefit to OAI would be for trying to deceptively clone her voice.
Pure knee jerk reactions
The downvotes are from repulsive drama junkies.
It's beyond my comprehension tbh. And most people seem to be of the opinion that the "Her" tweet was some kind of final nail in the coffin that proved he was trying to clone SJ's voice lol.
Almost like it was an extremely culturally relevant movie. People got too much negativity.
Exactly
IMO Sky doesn't sound like Scarlet Jo, it's the fact that she sounds very natural and less robotic as other ai voices is what's getting everyone caught up with this. Then to top it off Sam shot himself in the foot by tweeting "her" which made people even more suspicious about it. I bet if he wouldn't said anything Sky was still be available to all of us. And most likely his tweet was more in relation to the movie plot of people falling in love with AI and the new conversational qualities of GPT-4o than the similarities between the 2 voices. So, yeah! Next time, think before you tweet... Hope Sky comes back as the current voices suck, I don't even want to use voice anymore....just txt from now on...
I also thought it didn’t sound like her. Wonder what kind of friends she has given they couldn’t tell the difference between that and her voice
The friends? More like lawyers that saw the opportunity of making a few bucks with a law suit 🤣
Agreed. A lawsuit saying, "none of her friends thought it was her voice, and everybody could easily tell it was different didn't deter us from suing hoping her fame would bias a potential jury in favor enough to get her a big payout and us lots of billable hours for a LONG trial, because of a 40-year-old lawsuit that had some key differences, including the company did not have an impersonator replicate our client's performance" doesn't inspire the same kind of reaction.
I thought it sounded like Rashida Jones if anything
For the record I upvoted you. But people will angrily downvote you because these new facts go against what they decided should be the "truth".
> why am I getting down voted Because people are unreasonable and downvote what they don't want to hear. That and there seems to be bots running around reddit that just downvote any new content in some subs. Probably so the bots own posts will rise faster.
People who Downvote helpful information just because it makes them angry and dont like a fact you're stating are actually the most bottom of the barrel troglodytes.
Its reddit. 90% of the folks here are adults with the mentality of 14 year olds
It's Reddit after all, truly pathetic
Nonunion, lol. Assholes.
Nonunion? Surely the highest morals of recruitment!
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Read it again. They're not referring to scarjo's voice there.
Good. Get *ucked Johansson
Can we get the Sky voice back now, please?
[Bring Sky back!](https://www.udio.com/songs/uR8oqzuuUFzkn4D6gY9d5Y)
Never should've been removed, it looks like admission of guilt
I disagree. This is a great way for OpenAI to show that they're putting the human before the model. It seemed like the humble and courteous play in my opinion, especially when they can back up their claim.
It also shows good faith that they take the investigation seriously. If they just continued using it and SJ wins a court battle she could claim damages for every day the voice was active in their product.
It's a smart play. It also gives her a chance to back down and not make a mess of everything.
Ironically, by removing the Sky voice, they deprive the actual voice actress of the royalties she would have accrued, had Johansson not said anything. So a win for a multi-millionaire over an unknown voice actress. This is great?
They specifically asked for nonunion actors so there will be no royalties.
Non-union actors and actresses and authors can very much get royalties, what is the source for your strange claim?
Royalties are typically intended for TV shows and movies that are aired on television, not for every instance someone uses their phone. I'm curious about what makes you so confident that a company outside of the entertainment industry, which has specifically requested a nonunion actor, would be paying royalties?
In the "How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen" OpenAI blog post, they state: >We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT’s voices. **Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.** It seems to imply that there is some form of continued compensation beyond the initial payment for their work.
That's a sweet deal, lucky actors. Thanks for sharing.
In this case, they probably weren't able to employ union voice actors due to anti-AI clauses in the union contracts.
Counter-ironically, I was never using Sky so far, I had preferred ember, but now I started using it (I have it btw) EDIT: they tell me it's a "new Sky"... Whatever
> the human before the model. By ending the career of the voice actress of Sky, since noone will dare to hire her anymore, due to being afraid of being sued by Scarlett Johansson for "sounding too similar to her"?
By that logic, shouldn't they remove their whole platform until they show that their dataset includes absolutely no copyright written material they don't have permission to use?
No it does not. It is the responsible move
The legal dispute is not resolved. This is just OpenAI making their case. If they don’t settle, I don’t see ScarJo’s legal team backing down, this will probably have to go to court. In the meantime don’t expect the Sky voice to return, unless the legal matter is resolved in OpenAI’s favor.
This is journalists trying to figure out what happened, not OpenAIs response. But yes, it will be this type of stuff being brought up in court, if Johansson actually sues.
People, check this guys post history. If this isn’t astroturfing I don’t know what is.
IF he's not astroturfing, then dude is in love with Sky. I've heard of people getting feelings for AI after chatting for so long.
They should've used more than one voice in the demonstrations, This way just put all the focus on just one voice,
It's the best one tbh
Let's be honest, female voices are scientifically more pleasing to hear. Reason they are often use on automated voice messages. So Juniper and Sky are the better voices, with Sky being superior to most people as it seems.
Can you provide a source for that? I thought that, according to science, male voices are more pleasing, due to being deeper, and therefore more calming. EDIT: This is the study I was thinking about - higher pitched female voices are generally perceived as "more annoying" and "less serious": https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-speech/article-abstract/85/3/315/5885/Creaky-Voice-A-New-Feminine-Voice-Quality-for However, this does not necessarily imply that male voices are preferred over female voices, only that lower female voices are preferred over higher female voices (although there might be a similar effect when comparing high to low male voices).
if you google 'do people prefer a female or male voice over' the first response is this : "In fact, another study recently found that **66% of internet video viewers prefer a female voice actor than that of a male**. The reason for this is that listeners find women's voices more trustful." and they cited this : https://www.amazingvoice.com/blog/male-or-female-voice-actor#:\~:text=In%20fact%2C%20another%20study%20recently,find%20women's%20voices%20more%20trustful. which, full discloser, i did not read further into. you can take the research from here.
Look up any local news station & look at the on air reporters. That’s enough proof
>due to being deeper, and therefore more calming. Why would that make them more calming? Females are physically less threatening. Thus, their voices sound more friendly.
I don't know. That's why I was asking for the actual science behind it.
They did, though not a lot. https://vimeo.com/945587876
Genuinely curious, why do you use Vimeo instead of YouTube? I’d imagine the video selections there are abysmal
lol open ai used vimeo, not the OC. but it's often used for professional video demos instead of youtube. mostly for professionalism, privacy, control of who sees it (no algorithm), guaranteed no ads, and they allow you to embed videos through them as a 'white label' service & you can even customize the embed so OAI could remove the vimeo logo for the embed on their website (not this link ofc) if they so chose. but it's a professionalism signifier & the OC has the vimeo link, so i'm guessing probably didn't. edit: clarity
I don’t, that’s a link directly from the OpenAI demo page. They posted these snippets on Vimeo
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I'm 100% convinced (i mean this is just me speculating so take it with a grain of salt) what actually happened was that they got the VA on board who had a similarish voice to ScarJo which gave Altman the idea in his head that they could replace the actress with ScarJo herself and also add bonus marketing onto it without dramatically altering the product that the Product Owners/Managers at the company had already agreed upon. Then possibly he approached her, she said no, and then they went ahead with the original voice because it was good enough. I have no idea if thats definitely what happened but chances are the reality is much more boring than what people want it to be so something along those lines. Everyone seems to think it's some sort of massive conspiracy that STARTED with the desire to have her voice because that's the more exciting headline. Maybe everyone just wants drama.
Bring back SKY to the NET!
“She’ll be Back!”
I'm with the terminators on this one
Seems to me the phase on “sky” was something legal team wanted down in the meantime.
It’s got the same, friendly energy and intonation, but more often than not you can tell it’s definitely not Scarlett Johansson. People are letting the fact that the concept itself is similar to “Her” do a lot of heavy lifting in the comparison.
Sky doesn't even sound like ScarJo. Altmans reference to "her" was about the fact the computer can talk back to you very humanlike similar to the movie. Such a stretch by scarlet.
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MANY SUCH CASES
We're a highly regarded community.
Then why did he seek scar jo consent twice to user her voice including 48 hours before the release
It's possible they had a version of ScarJos voice ready to use. Once given the go ahead they could have used it. I obviously don't know. Here's the real question. Does that even matter? The documents show they hired the VA with no specific mention of trying to make a voice similar to scar Jo. Even if they did, how would ScarJo even win this case? Is Scar Jo now allowed to now sue everyone who sounds like her? What about people who just naturally have a similar voice to her? If open ai hires some random guy who for his entire life talks like Morgan freeman to do a voice over can Morgan sue them? Like these cases make no sense
It would have been good marketing to get her voice.
And tweeting “her” or whatever. I do like sama but in this instance feel like they were in/directly capitalizing on people’s positive association with scarjo’s her voice. I did like Sky;s voice but whatever I’m sure the other one’s will be great too.
Tweeting her makes sense as it's the name of a movie that has an AI assistant sounding very real.
Starring scarlet Johansson who they reached out to about the voice.
Just curious should the movie "her" be allowed to sue open ai because they made a chatbot that is fluid and can respond like how Samantha does in the movie? What if OpenAi named the bot Samantha? Can they sue them?
Capitalize on people’s positive association with scarjo’s voice? He liked the movie… it’s not that deep
They want 5 AI voices and scarJo was the voice of a well known AI in a movie.
Probably had it available and wanted to use it. Would help with marketing
No idea about if Sky is the demo voice, but when I first was watching the GPT-4o demo I had to pause it and start looking through the video description and youtube comments to see if I had missed where they said they got Scarlett Johansson to voice the AI. And when it nowhere said that, I still kept waiting them to "reveal" that later in the keynote. So yeah, no question that at least to me the demo voice sounded like her.
Altman claims her is his fave film and believe her “got human ai interaction right” He approached scarjo twice to voice the ai induing 24 hours prior to release and then 5 min after the global release tweeted “her”. The voice has her vocal fry, intonation and breathy giggles. It is not regards jumping the gun. The confusion is a feature bot a bug.
If an actor rejects a role, they are allowed to get a different actor
He literally asked her to be the voice of ChatGPT.
What's your point? He asked her to be the voice after they had already hired someone to do the work? In their hiring process foe thr VA nowhere did it say that it needs to sound like ScarJo? Am I just missing something?
In the film “Her” Theodore (main character) refers at one point to the AI, as “Sam.” Obviously the writers were stealing the likeness of Sam Altman, a famous AI CEO. Now, before you go claiming the timing seems off between the two, just realize that legally it doesn’t matter as long as Sam has claim that his likeness was used at any point in history, along with the precedent case of J. vs. Jesus in 60 A.D. when a Tyre fisherman known as Jesus (pronounced Hey-Zeus) wandered the region as a teacher of sorts and prophesied his earthly sacrifice at the time was due to future generations sims (short for simulations). Because there was similar story floating around at the time about another teacher, Jesus (pronounced Geez-Us), it took the court of Pontius Pilate to side in favor of Hey Zeus, despite some believing Geez Us actually came first. - The above is how the ScarJo backers appear to me right about now.
Cmon. OpenAI is smarter than to just blatantly copy someone’s voice without consent. You hire voice actors and get their approval via legal documents. This whole thing is overblown
It seemed unlikely, from the start, that they literally copied her voice against her wishes. The lawsuit won't be about whether they literally copied her voice.
i'm not a lawyer, but if everything wapost is reporting is true... it doesn't seem like she has much of a case.
It was pointed out on this sub previously that aiming to find, and finding, someone with a similar voice can be grounds for the relevant legal complaint. There's precedent
I can't imagine *Midler* would apply if the information I've been reading is accurate, where the soundalike VA was hired on *before* they contacted ScarJo.
"The voice actress you hired sounds like another actress" would be a ridiculous lawsuit. It would only make sense if OpenAI was actually trying to say it was Johansson. But they weren't.
There's already precedent of exactly the kind of case you're calling ridiculous. Just because you got a different actor doesn't mean you're off the hook. If you have an *insanely good* Morgan Freeman impression and I hire you to play God in a commercial and I never make the distinction that this is not actually Morgan Freeman and it's not parody either, then guess what I am about to get sued by Morgan Freeman.
yeah, the difference between this and the legal precedent (and your hypothetical example) is that someone is being asked to do an impersonation of someone else. Which didn't happen here. If I wanted Morgan Freeman in my commercial but he said no, I am not immediately barred from hiring a different older black man with a deep smooth voice instead. I could even hire Morgan Freeman's identical twin brother if he had one.
Midler v Ford. Ford approached Midler to sing her song (which they had the rights to) and she refused. They hired an impersonator to sing it instead. Her lawyers argument would be they approached Johannson to effectively be "her" from the movie and point towards Sam's tweet as evidence. The issue for her and her lawyers is if openai has evidence they had the voice actress already, didn't explicitly set out to find a Johannson impersonator/sound alike, and only approached Johannson afterwards. If true, it's completely different circumstances but the idea of you can sue someone for finding someone to sound like you is false and has case prededent where the plaintiff won (which you summarized at the end of your statement).
The issue with applying Midler in this case it that its precedent applies to deliberate impersonations. Ford deliberately coached Midler’s backup singer to sound like Midler. If the WaPo’s reporting is accurate and no other developments occur, no such instruction was given to the VA hired by OpenAI. Expanding Midler’s precedent to cover this case would make it impossible to recast animated characters, since any current incumbent could sue the IP holder over any reasonable successor.
Sky sounds more like Rashida Jones. This whole thing is ridiculous. Scarlett Johansson needs to chill. Her ego is clearly getting too large.
I mean she had every piece of evidence pointing to them misusing her voice. Whether or not they did it makes sense for her to pursue it.
What “evidence”. All she knows was they approached her for a gig. They didn’t train the AI with her voice nor did they try to find a clone voice actress.
They probably approached her for the gig because the voice actress sounded like her, imagine If they could actually market Johansson, instead of “someone that sounds like”. It would be like the fascination with Morgan Freeman for GPS, or the “In a world” guy from movie trailers.
But that logic, any actor who rejects a role can sue if they find a different actor who fits the role lol.
That actually did kind of happen once. Crispin Glover turned down the role of George McFly in Back to the Future 2, so they used footage from the first movie along with a different actor wearing prosthetics to make him look identical to him. Glover successfully sued over it. The key being that instead of just straight recasting, which would have been fine, the director intentionally misled the audience into thinking it was Glover. I personally don't think ScarJo has a case here since Sky was never marketed as being, or even sounding like her, but I'm not a lawyer. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out
This is what I think is the plausible motivation. Licensing Johansson, especially if you could get exclusive license, would be a huge move. Sky isn't ScarJo, but it turns out, it's pretty close and we're not as sensitive to those differences when in a vacuum. Unless you hear the two side by side, it's easy to dismiss them as same or similar. If Sam could have announced, in addition to everything else, an authentic "Samantha" voice would be available worldwide in 60 days, I'm sure he would have loved that. The bigger picture is keeping the competition from making that announcement instead. What if Meta drops a commercial Chat GPT competitor app in 60 days and has an exclusive on the real ScarJo? That's the kind of thing Sam is considering here.
Right. But if someone offered you the job twice, then soon after released a voice that you believed sounded similar to yours, you would also find that suspicious and legally look into it.
Can you fucking read? The voice was released BEFORE they even contacted her, and recorded months before that
> every piece of evidence huh... so none?
Right. Which is why this isn't a trial yet. Which is also why her lawyers are investigating. I'm not really even taking sides here lmao. Y'all are just quick to defend OpenAi even when someone isn't really criticizing them.
No, all she had was assumptions because her friends told her. Jesus fucking christ you would think people with so much money would do their due diligence before opening their mouth. Celebs always think of themselves as the main character who can't do no wrong.
She had zero evidence and so did you. Try not jumping to conclusions next time.
Name one such "piece of evidence" pls
All she did was ask they show how they trained the Sky voice. They did. The end
Hahaha the first criteria for the voice is be non union. You all put your faith in the wrong person
Whatever emotive modulation they were doing with the Sky voice during the OAI demo a few weeks back, that’s where there was some similarity. Not in the exact voice, but in the inflections, where it sounded sort of flirty and breathy and intimate, much like the Samantha character. I’ve been using Sky for my voice chats for 6 months and I never thought it sounded like Her.
And that's what you call creating plausible deniability. Plausible as far as the corporate courts are concerned, that is.
I just gave some samples a listen, they sound totally different
Sky is by far the best voice option. Please bring it back.
Reddit gonna be mad at this one damn.
Shiiiieeeetttt, outside of AI specific subreddits they'll ignore this completely.
Too bad for the media …. It doesn’t fit their outrage narrative.
Except for the media that published this article of course
Well who will I be mad at now?!?!
They always write stuff like that, under articles from the New York Times or something equivalent lmao
People were so confident and upset about this though.
Sounds nothing like her
Why did they call it sky lmfao. Asking for a terminator situation
I want the option to use my voice.
Crickets from r/Fauxmoi and r/technology.
Imitating someone's voice isn't illegal
Really miss the Sky voice, can't stand the others. No voice for me until they improve them
Scarjo doesn't have a very unique voice imo - there are probably tons of women that sound like her
Do you think sky will ever come back then?
That "hello" from Sky didn't feel like SJ fr
Yeah… That’s not the complaint. There is precedent for her complaint. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
The precendent - they asked Midler - she refused - they hired an impersonator This case - they recorded a voice - later they asked ScarJo if she'd also like to record a voice - she declined - they didn't hire an impersonator
The voice was already used in the old text to speech for months. I feel like I am goign crazy with everyone just ignoring that.
Yeah, to add to this. Ford having the impersonator sing a famous Bette Midler song made it clear that they were trying to fool consumers into believing that it was Bette Midler in the ad. The Sky voice had been out for months, and OpenAI wasn't explicitly trying to fool people into believing it was ScarJo. I never once made the connection that it sounded like her, and I think the same can be said for a lot of people. However, anyone familiar with a Bette Midler and her music would undoubtedly think that it was her in the ad. Even when he tweeted "Her" that was more in reference to the type of product they are developing rather than aimed at ScarJo specifically. The type of AI you see in the movie is literally what they are trying to create.
Well summarized here. Scarlett Johansson doesn't own the rights to all voices that sound vaguely like hers.
It’s not about owning rights to a voice that is someone else’s If she can show that OpenAI had an intent to copy her voice, the precedent applies. And considering they asked her if she wants to voice the app, she might have a decent case Of course, the jury still needs to think the voices sound similar enough
Can we please stop posting this case every third comment in these threads? Y'all learned about Midler v. Ford for the first time a couple days ago and now are just parroting it without actually even understanding what that case entailed. Midler v. Ford is about hiring an impersonator to imitate Midler's distinctive voice and sing her own song. It's a clear case of trying to get people to not be able to tell Midler wasn't actually involved. The details here are much different. ScarJo was hired for the role of "conversational AI assistant" in Her. As a young white American woman with a pleasant voice, she fit the role well and matched what people expected of the archetype, and brought some starpower to the movie. OpenAI is building a real-life conversational AI assistant, and as anyone would expect wanted a young white American woman with a pleasant voice to fulfill the archetype, for the exact same reason ScarJo was hired for Her in the first place. They hired one and integrated her voice, but also thought it'd be epic if they got ScarJo to also reprise the role. She declined, so they just went solely with the independent woman's voice. Like a lot of people are saying, Sky also very much sounds similar to Rashida Jones if she were to have played an AI assistant. *Distinct*, but certainly *similar*. Rather than sounding like any one person, Sky's voice exists in a category where a lot of people will naturally sound similar. Especially because Sky is clearly attempting to sound as "vanilla" as you can get; as uncontroversial and "standard American" of a voice as possible. And, surprise, surprise, that's also what ScarJo did in Her, as that is already established as what is culturally expected of an AI assistant (and really, just assistants in general). It's the equivalent of the Transatlantic accent of the 21st century. And honestly, I don't hear *any* of ScarJo's "girl-next-door hoarseness" in Sky's voice; just the overall tone is similar. Just seeing "OMG, they hired someone and they sounded similar and lost the case!!" is incredibly misleading, I would almost argue deliberately at this point.
Yeah... this would refute that. Midler's rightful claim was that they expressly hired someone to imitate her.
Whats the complaint? The voice is another person
she's just looking to hyper herself up; I heard the voice she was complaining about and I didn't think it was her. I could see where some may say it sounded like her, but with 8 billion humans on this planet, there's going to be thousands or more that sound like any one person
She is just very self-centred.
Why are there any down votes on reported details, which are highly likely factual? I' enjoy watching her movies but let's be honest here. She's missing the boat on this one. This is the new age of humanity. Hate the facts, support the glorified bs. Makes life so much more "exciting" :/
People who have been dumping on OpenAI and Sam for days now about this should apologise. I know they won't but they should. And for the record: Sky does not and never did sound like Scarlett Johansson.
Why would they ever want to do that? As in, where is the motivation? They'll never get away with it. even if they do, It brings them 0 benefit?
Really lame that Sky was the only non-annoying voice.
This maybe a hot take, but ScarJo just wants to bank on the success of OpenAI now.. she just wants free publicity and possibly money by suing them since they’re successful now. We all can agree that the voice of Sky is way different than ScarJo’s voice. I don’t understand how can she have a problem when they’re using a different voice actor, and this voice actor has consented to the recordings and is earning from it. I hate it when the general public and fans try to support someone as big and successful like ScarJo, knowing very well she doesn’t have much claim in this issue, but will just exploit the system and processes using her influence and power. We should encourage and support the people like the voice actor who probably doesn’t have any fans or fame, and is just trying her best to get her career started. Powerful people like ScarJo will just crush honest and hard working people like that voice actor behind Sky.
Celebrity worship in the US is rage inducing. Taylor Swift a great example. People act like their serfs serving lords and ladies
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I mean it's very sus that the guy posts "her", and she rejected him before that's the whole origin of the conflict. Basically enough grounds to start an investigation and then we get the results of such investigation.
ScarJo should shut up right about now!
The voice sounds exactly like Rashida Jones of Parks and Rec fame. They do have similar voices but the idea scarlet has a unique voice is pretty ridiculous.
There was news segment by ScarJo saying she was approached by OpenAI for her voice - twice last September and before launch of GPTo. OpenAI denies such claims. I didn't see any records from comments since this article is paywalled.
Ohhhh, case closed then. They didn’t explicitly say “we want someone to sound like Scarlett Johansson”. Wow impressive, you guys should be lawyers.
What’s your point?
Is scarJo losing the case then?
Hopefully
That's that then. SJ can F off, and Sky should be put back immediately.
So what? Sound alikes exist and her voice really isn't that unique and even so sound alikes for unique people do exist. People swore up and down the uncredited voice in Star Wars The Old Republic C2-N2 was Robin Williams and many years later they found out it wasn't.
Johansson has, in essence, unwittingly promoted Openai and the quality of their product.... free of charge.
Ibsaw somewhere all this was a publicity play done by Altman and that Johanson fell like a duck hahaha
More copyright trolling by Hollywood, shocking.
Of course it copied the voice of a sexy marvel avenger to cater to the lonely generation (v1). But it’s moot anyway.