Similar voices, clearly different actresses. Imagine refusing a job then feeling entitled to some sort of compensation…
Honestly sounds nothing like Scarlett Johansson to me. OpenAI is shit for many reasons but this seems just another “AI” hysteria wave being pushed.
It sounds somewhat like her character from the movie Her to me, but based on the standards set by the entertainment industry it seems reasonable for her to lose the lawsuit. If you can’t hire an actor for a role, you can get a voice actor to do a similar voice. This is done often in animation.
Crispin Glover’s lawsuit against Back to the Future 2 could have set a precedent for image likeness, but he ended up settling, so it seems the industry is just avoiding this problem instead.
I wouldn’t say nothing like her, it’s uncomfortably close especially after being told no. But after the initial uproar, I was shocked how dissimilar it was when I actually heard it.
If the company uses a reference to you to make money, I’d definitely feel entitled to compensation.
It’s not the script writer or the producer that’s complaining though. I think it’s more reasonable for them to want compensation.
Producer, maybe. But what part of the script did they use for marketing of an unrelated product?
Not anything literally from the script, but I assume that’s where the concept of a voice controlled AI assistant came from - whoever holds the rights to that in relation to the title “Her”. So if it’s based on a novel or story, clearly the writer of that.
It really isn’t where it came from, they are just the current most popular example of it. We literally had Alexa before the movie came out, as well as An de Armas in the second blade runner and Cortana in the halo video game series as notable examples. AI assistants have always been ubiquitous with sci Fi movies, in most cases they control the ship and aren’t personal though.
I’m aware of that, but we seem to get get distracted from the main point. In the case of OpenAI versus “Her” (i.e. Them launching a similar product, and referencing the film), I think it’s the owners of the Her IP that should have a right to complain. Not an actress that was in it, and whose voice is similar to it. According to the article, there were 2 well-known actresses whose vice matched even better. Should they take action as well?
All of this is under the assumption that they didn’t actual train on her voice - which does seem likely.
This Hollywood idea that famous people are owed perpetual passive income for work they did decades ago needs to die in a fire.
By reference do you mean somewhat similar sounding voice? This is status quo for voice acting. Do you think if someone tries to hire James Earl Jones for a voice part and he says no they throw their arms up, say fuck it and hire Megan Mullally? When hiring a voice actor you have a certain sound in mind you are going for and you take the closest thing your budget allows.
I do get off on how heated this whole debate has gotten with everyone picking the side of completely unrelatable rich people. I’m waiting for a good AI generated porno with altman and johansen reaching forgiveness in the form of a passionate 69.
No, I mean referring to the movie Her which features the voice of Johansen as an AI assistant
The producers of Her do not own the concept, nor does Scarlet. Nothing is referring to the movie other than it’s a personal assistant with a bubbly womans voice which is much too broad and general to infringe on anything. Its not even close to being a unique concept either.
Except maybe tweeting the name of the movie: https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666
It’s not even a reference to Scarlett, it’s at best a reference to a movie that she has no rights over.
She was offered a job, refused it, and they went with a different actress. She doesn’t own her “likeness”. They owe nothing to her or her ego.
But it doesn’t reference the whole movie, does it. It’s meant to invoke a memory of a specific character in the movie, since that’s the business Altman is in.
And we don’t know what kind of deal Johansen struck for that movie. Maybe she does own her likeness in it. We’ll see, I guess.
Didn’t she sue them for this?
I’m pretty sure it fell through, once OpenAI clearly showed it wasn’t based on her
Anybody know if it is hard to make a synthetic voice, just like you can make a synthetic face or synthetic music? Or is that the point: that a synthetic voice ended up sounding like her?
It’s just as easy. I was surprised to learn that they hired a voice actress. I guess hiring voice actors is cheaper than risking having to explain technology to a jury.
The bastard went ahead and did it anyway, even when told no.
“Our analysis shows that the two voices are similar but likely not identical,” Berisha said.
They also point out the main differences between the two voices in the paragraphs below this quote. I do believe that they hired a voice actress and that they didn’t train on SJ’s voice, or at least not entirely. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was big push for finding a voice similar to SJ’s voice in Her, no matter how much they deny this.
Its quite obvious it isn’t her if you actually listen to a comparison video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ8UVSXnefk
Scarlet doesn’t own her whole spectrum of tone, nor do the directors of Her own the concept of a bubbly female assistant. I don’t think this is defendable imo.
Tom Waits, IIRC, successfully sued the makers of a commercial for mimicking his voice, so there is precedent. And the fact that OpenAI reached out to her about using her voice, and that Altman tweeted the word “Her” on its own as a teaser of the product makes it pretty clear that they had knowledge and intent. I think she’s likely to have a pretty solid case here if she chooses to pursue it.
The biggest thing to me is they yanked that voice super quick. Like the same day. That makes me think a lawyer yelled at their client for being dumb and the only defense we’re going to get is, “it was an honest mistake, and we rectified it as soon as we were told. The voice was prepared because we thought the deal would go through. It should never have released.”
So she has a solid case but damages will be minimal.
So they used AI to determine this? So I’m sure the result must be totally accurate.
What else does the article say? Hmmm let’s see. “The researchers found that Sky was also reminiscent of other Hollywood stars, including Anne Hathaway and Keri Russell. The analysis of Sky often rated Hathaway and Russell as being even more similar to the AI than Johansson.” Alright that proves it! Clearly this voice was based on Scarlett Johansson!
Many things are called “AI models” nowadays (unfortunately due to the hype). I wouldn’t dismiss the tools and methodology yet.
That said, the article (or the researchers) did a disservice to the analysis by not including a link to the report (and code) that outlines the methodology and how the distribution of similarities look. I couldn’t find a link in the article and a quick search didn’t turn up anything.
