<story><title>OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/22/openai-scarlett-johansson-chatgpt-ai-voice/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kstrauser</author><text>Please don&amp;#x27;t take this as me defending OpenAI&amp;#x27;s clearly sketchy process. I&amp;#x27;m writing this to help myself think through it.&lt;p&gt;If it weren&amp;#x27;t for their attempt to link the voice to SJ (i.e. with the &amp;quot;her&amp;quot; tweet), would that be OK?&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s fine to hire a voice actor.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s fine to train a system to sound like that voice actor.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s fine to hire a voice actor who sounds like someone else.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s probably fine to go out of your way to hire a voice actor who sounds like someone else.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s probably not fine to hire a voice actor and tell them to imitate someone else.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s very likely not fine to market your AI as &amp;quot;sounds like Jane Doe, who sounds like SJ&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s definitely not fine to market your AI as &amp;quot;sounds like SJ&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Say I wanted to make my AI voice sound like Patrick Stewart. Surely it&amp;#x27;s OK to hire an English actor who sounds a lot like him, so long as I don&amp;#x27;t use Sir Patrick&amp;#x27;s name in the advertising. If so, would it have been OK for OpenAI to do all this as long as they didn&amp;#x27;t mention SJ? Or is SJ so clearly identifiable with her role in &amp;quot;Her&amp;quot; that it&amp;#x27;s never OK to try to make a product like &amp;quot;Her&amp;quot; that sounds like SJ?</text></item><item><author>summerlight</author><text>My guess: Sam wanted to imitate the voice from Her and became aware of Midler v. Ford cases so reached out to SJ. He probably didn&amp;#x27;t expect her decline. Anyway, this prior case tells that you cannot mimic other&amp;#x27;s voice without their permission and the overall timeline indicates OpenAI&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;intention&amp;quot; of imitation. It does not matter if they used SJ&amp;#x27;s voice in the training set or not. Their intention matters.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>&lt;i&gt;They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ&lt;/i&gt;. The reaction on this site to the news that this story was false is kind of mindbending.</text></item><item><author>HarHarVeryFunny</author><text>Clearly an SJ voice was the goal, given that Altman asked her to do it, asked her a second time just two days before the ChatGPT-4o release, and then tweeted &amp;quot;her&amp;quot; on the release day. The next day Karpathy, recently ex-OpenAI, then tweets &amp;quot;The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Altman appears to be an habitual liar. Note his recent claim not to be aware of the non-disparagement and claw-back terms he had departing employees agree to. Are we supposed to believe that the company lawyer or head of HR did this without consulting (or more likely being instructed by) the co-founder and CEO?!</text></item><item><author>jmull</author><text>Well, here are some things that aren&amp;#x27;t really being disputed:&lt;p&gt;* OpenAI wanted an AI voice that sounds like SJ&lt;p&gt;* SJ declined&lt;p&gt;* OpenAI got an AI voice that sounds like SJ anyway&lt;p&gt;I guess they want us to believe this happened without shenanigans, but it&amp;#x27;s bit hard to.&lt;p&gt;The headline of the article is a little funny, because records can&amp;#x27;t really show they weren&amp;#x27;t looking for an SJ sound-alike. They can just show that &lt;i&gt;those&lt;/i&gt; records didn&amp;#x27;t mention it. The key decision-makers could simply have agreed to keep that fact close-to-the-vest -- they may have well understood that knocking off a high-profile actress was legally perilous.&lt;p&gt;Also, I think we can readily assume OpenAI understood that one of their potential voices sounded a lot like SJ. Since they were pursuing her they must have had a pretty good idea of what they were going after, especially considering the likely price tag. So even if an SJ voice wasn&amp;#x27;t the original goal, it clearly became an important goal to them. They surely listened to demos for many voice actors, auditioned a number of them, and may even have recorded many of them, but somehow they selected one for release who seemed to sound a lot like SJ.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pyuser583</author><text>There’s a special branch of law called “right of publicity” or “manners and likeness.”&lt;p&gt;It protect celebrities who rely on endorsements and “who they are” for income.&lt;p&gt;It very clearly prohibits copycats with near-likeness as a workaround to getting permission from a celebrity.&lt;p&gt;OpenAI asked SJ to use her voice. That right there helps her case immensely.&lt;p&gt;She said no. They went ahead anyway, presumably with someone or someone’s with a similar voice.&lt;p&gt;They publicized the product by referencing SJ.&lt;p&gt;These facts are damning.&lt;p&gt;They might be just a part of the story. Maybe 100 actresses, all sounding roughly the same, were given the offer over a two year period.&lt;p&gt;Maybe they all were given the same praise. Maybe one other, who signed an agreement, was praised on social media much more.&lt;p&gt;But this isn’t a slippery slope or a grey area. SJ was asked and said no.&lt;p&gt;That prohibits using a similar sounding copycat and publicizing as SJ.</text></comment>
<story><title>OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/22/openai-scarlett-johansson-chatgpt-ai-voice/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kstrauser</author><text>Please don&amp;#x27;t take this as me defending OpenAI&amp;#x27;s clearly sketchy process. I&amp;#x27;m writing this to help myself think through it.&lt;p&gt;If it weren&amp;#x27;t for their attempt to link the voice to SJ (i.e. with the &amp;quot;her&amp;quot; tweet), would that be OK?&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s fine to hire a voice actor.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s fine to train a system to sound like that voice actor.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s fine to hire a voice actor who sounds like someone else.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s probably fine to go out of your way to hire a voice actor who sounds like someone else.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s probably not fine to hire a voice actor and tell them to imitate someone else.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s very likely not fine to market your AI as &amp;quot;sounds like Jane Doe, who sounds like SJ&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;- It&amp;#x27;s definitely not fine to market your AI as &amp;quot;sounds like SJ&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Say I wanted to make my AI voice sound like Patrick Stewart. Surely it&amp;#x27;s OK to hire an English actor who sounds a lot like him, so long as I don&amp;#x27;t use Sir Patrick&amp;#x27;s name in the advertising. If so, would it have been OK for OpenAI to do all this as long as they didn&amp;#x27;t mention SJ? Or is SJ so clearly identifiable with her role in &amp;quot;Her&amp;quot; that it&amp;#x27;s never OK to try to make a product like &amp;quot;Her&amp;quot; that sounds like SJ?</text></item><item><author>summerlight</author><text>My guess: Sam wanted to imitate the voice from Her and became aware of Midler v. Ford cases so reached out to SJ. He probably didn&amp;#x27;t expect her decline. Anyway, this prior case tells that you cannot mimic other&amp;#x27;s voice without their permission and the overall timeline indicates OpenAI&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;intention&amp;quot; of imitation. It does not matter if they used SJ&amp;#x27;s voice in the training set or not. Their intention matters.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>&lt;i&gt;They hired the actor that did the voice months before they contacted SJ&lt;/i&gt;. The reaction on this site to the news that this story was false is kind of mindbending.</text></item><item><author>HarHarVeryFunny</author><text>Clearly an SJ voice was the goal, given that Altman asked her to do it, asked her a second time just two days before the ChatGPT-4o release, and then tweeted &amp;quot;her&amp;quot; on the release day. The next day Karpathy, recently ex-OpenAI, then tweets &amp;quot;The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Altman appears to be an habitual liar. Note his recent claim not to be aware of the non-disparagement and claw-back terms he had departing employees agree to. Are we supposed to believe that the company lawyer or head of HR did this without consulting (or more likely being instructed by) the co-founder and CEO?!</text></item><item><author>jmull</author><text>Well, here are some things that aren&amp;#x27;t really being disputed:&lt;p&gt;* OpenAI wanted an AI voice that sounds like SJ&lt;p&gt;* SJ declined&lt;p&gt;* OpenAI got an AI voice that sounds like SJ anyway&lt;p&gt;I guess they want us to believe this happened without shenanigans, but it&amp;#x27;s bit hard to.&lt;p&gt;The headline of the article is a little funny, because records can&amp;#x27;t really show they weren&amp;#x27;t looking for an SJ sound-alike. They can just show that &lt;i&gt;those&lt;/i&gt; records didn&amp;#x27;t mention it. The key decision-makers could simply have agreed to keep that fact close-to-the-vest -- they may have well understood that knocking off a high-profile actress was legally perilous.&lt;p&gt;Also, I think we can readily assume OpenAI understood that one of their potential voices sounded a lot like SJ. Since they were pursuing her they must have had a pretty good idea of what they were going after, especially considering the likely price tag. So even if an SJ voice wasn&amp;#x27;t the original goal, it clearly became an important goal to them. They surely listened to demos for many voice actors, auditioned a number of them, and may even have recorded many of them, but somehow they selected one for release who seemed to sound a lot like SJ.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>summerlight</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s no clear line for this. To get the definite conclusion, you will need to bring this to the court with lots of investigation. I know this kind of ambiguity  is frustrating, but the context and intention matter a lot here and unfortunately we don&amp;#x27;t have a better way than a legal battle to figure it out.&lt;p&gt;Thanks to Sam, this OpenAI case is clearer than others since he made a number of clear evidence against him.</text></comment>