I repeat. Do not mess with Scarlett Johansson. You would think her movies, and her suit against Disney, would make this obvious. Apparently not so. Andrej Karpathy (co-founder OpenAI, departed earlier), May 14: The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson. You all thought it was math or something.
This is all so *seemingly* (key word) incredibly stupid, I have to believe it was intentional. I don't know why. I can only give very implausible speculation that it was done as a ploy to continue to be relevant and/or monopolize the attention economy; or maybe to create a legal test case they are conditioning the ground of, so even if they lose they know the terrain better than their competitors.
Either that, or someone spiked the punch bowl at the office with a gallon of PCP on the way out. (Nice one Ilya!)
I agree that Altman didn't handle it well, but I'll take the minority position -- if you can find a legit voice actor that sounds like Scarlett Johansson, and you didn't train on her voice, you should be able to use it. Many people will sound similar to her, and yes, you're able to take advantage of the association with the movie -- oh well, you can't own any resemblance to what you put out if it's not an actual copyright violation.
Scarlett Johansson‘s voice itself just isn’t that distinctive. She sounds like some actress. You know I’ve never watched Her but I imagine she spoke in a manner of computer generated ‘real person’. A generic sexy female computer voice. Think of the voice of the Hal 9000. “I’m sorry Dave but I can’t do that.”
Now if Altman had been really clever he would have negotiated with the estate of Lauren Bacall and done a deep fake of _her_ voice. I’d willingly fork over some cash to hear that.
1) Scarlett Johansson's voice is QUITE DISTINCTIVE. That's why she was hired for the "Her" movie. Part of the trick was viewers associated the disembodied "her" voice with the very luscious bodied actual actress.
2) Hal 9000 was voiced by the Canadian male actor, Douglas Rain. To modern ears, the voice sounds "vaguely gay." I don't know what that means regarding the trope of using female/secretarial sounding voices to extract the most information. Maybe Kubrick was even more of a genius than we thought!
I do recommend 'Her', it's very good, a very distinctive take. Also, after watching it, I suspect you will change your mind on the distinctiveness of Johansson's voice.
Then Altman shouldn’t’ve a) publicly tweeted ‘her’ and b) laid out in OAI’s own ethical policy that voices shouldn’t mimic those of public figures and c) surfed the hype for as long as he could on the fact that the voice sounded so close to Scarlett’s that pretty much the whole internet agreed on it.
Yeah honestly my off-the-cuff take here is that the Midler decision is kind of nonsensical. It effectively grants Bette Midler ownership of her own voice but not the imitator ownership of hers.
Ed.: And to be clear, the imitation isn't really the load-bearing part of this because presumably you could use selection or filtering to find someone who is naturally a sound-alike without affectation, which would create exactly the same class of dispute vis a vis imputation or endorsement.
Honestly, my take is this: ScarJo doesn't have a case, because while this all of course looks horrible and was done in the worst possible way, Sky is an imitation of Samantha primarily and Scarlett Johansson only indirectly, and while Scarlett Johansson does have a right to her voice she doesn't have a right to *the character of Samantha from Her.* OpenAI are imitating the character, not the actor; if another actor had played Samantha, OpenAI would be suspiciously imitating another voice; if the character had a voice tick or accent that Scarlett Johansson normally did not but affected for the movie, Sky would be imitating that accent, not Scarlett's natural accent. Scarlett is only involved because she played the character, but the rights to the character are with the license holders.
So really, Annapurna Pictures / Warner Brothers should sue.
I doubt this is intentional, but it seems like great advertising for OpenAI. Scarlett Johansson basically endorsed their product ("voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference").
The Twitter discourse may not look like it but the average person's reaction will probably be "I want this".
My default position on trust and big tech companies over the last 20 years has evolved to "don't trust big tech companies". This is not helping. The hubris shown here makes it even worse than usual.
This has a strong energy of "At last we have created the AI Samantha from the classic SciFi 'Don't create the AI Samantha'". I mean, Her was kind of dystopian.
In any case, imitating Scarlet Johansson's voice from Her seems way too on the nose.
Makes you wonder if one of the other voice packs will be HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die."
I agree that the peripheral actions and tweets by OpenAI make the case against them very strong but I do not like the idea that making a voice sound X% "similar" to that of a public personality should be disallowed. I don't think there is enough natural variation in human voices for us to allow famous people to claim rights on a range of similar voices.
What happens if your voice is incidentally similar to random personality #xxx,xxx,xxx? It would be even more constraining if people are allowed to claim their voices as they change over time, from childhood through to their adult voice.
On one level, yeah, don't mess with Scarlett Johansson. On another, I do believe that this should not be illegal, that such "putting actors out of their jobs" is a desirable thing.
I honestly don't see why people were so riled up about this:
1. Scarlett Johansson has a net worth of $165m. She's not exactly a struggling person being taken advantage of.
2. OpenAI removed the voice immediately after she complained.
3. I'm sure she'll get a nice payout via a settlement or in the court system.
If this was some struggling actor who failed to get justice then yeah, I might have sympathy. But in this case? Just a small business dispute between a very wealthy person and a very rich corporation. Both Sam Altman and Scarlett Johansson lived in a giant mansion before this and will continue living in a giant mansion after this. I'd rather worry about the 99% who can't afford a mansion.
Is someone stealing the voice of “small fry”? If they need to steal your voice there’s a 99% chance you live in a giant mansion and can afford good lawyers.
As per the original article, which summed things up nicely, people want punitive enforcement of what they see as norms. If that requires people with enough clout to go up against those infringing on perceived norms, that's acceptable.
I remember a Buffy video game where Sarah Michelle Gellar wasn't available to voice act, so they got another actress who sounded similar. But the credits for the game were up front about that. Nobody was lying.
The way to discourage (legally) this kind of behavior without trying to unring the tech bell or block licensed work like the above: just distinguish between personal and business use, and also honesty. You can't make money, or otherwise incorporate in your business, someone's likeness without permission. If you use an imitation, you have to make it very clear that it's an imitation (and if you can't, then too bad, not allowed). The law and the courts are capable of making this kind of distinction.
Maybe we can finally unify with the AI ethics people with the AI safety people
This is all so *seemingly* (key word) incredibly stupid, I have to believe it was intentional. I don't know why. I can only give very implausible speculation that it was done as a ploy to continue to be relevant and/or monopolize the attention economy; or maybe to create a legal test case they are conditioning the ground of, so even if they lose they know the terrain better than their competitors.
Either that, or someone spiked the punch bowl at the office with a gallon of PCP on the way out. (Nice one Ilya!)
What does Wu Tang Clan have to do with Sam Altman?
#dontexplainthejoke but nothing, it is simply the well-known 'thing not to **** with.'
My rap knowledge is clearly sub-par.
I agree that Altman didn't handle it well, but I'll take the minority position -- if you can find a legit voice actor that sounds like Scarlett Johansson, and you didn't train on her voice, you should be able to use it. Many people will sound similar to her, and yes, you're able to take advantage of the association with the movie -- oh well, you can't own any resemblance to what you put out if it's not an actual copyright violation.
Scarlett Johansson‘s voice itself just isn’t that distinctive. She sounds like some actress. You know I’ve never watched Her but I imagine she spoke in a manner of computer generated ‘real person’. A generic sexy female computer voice. Think of the voice of the Hal 9000. “I’m sorry Dave but I can’t do that.”
Now if Altman had been really clever he would have negotiated with the estate of Lauren Bacall and done a deep fake of _her_ voice. I’d willingly fork over some cash to hear that.
1) Scarlett Johansson's voice is QUITE DISTINCTIVE. That's why she was hired for the "Her" movie. Part of the trick was viewers associated the disembodied "her" voice with the very luscious bodied actual actress.
2) Hal 9000 was voiced by the Canadian male actor, Douglas Rain. To modern ears, the voice sounds "vaguely gay." I don't know what that means regarding the trope of using female/secretarial sounding voices to extract the most information. Maybe Kubrick was even more of a genius than we thought!
I do recommend 'Her', it's very good, a very distinctive take. Also, after watching it, I suspect you will change your mind on the distinctiveness of Johansson's voice.
I just watched and enjoyed it. Scarlett’s voice is flirty and sexy but a little immature for a man of my advanced years. ;)
Then Altman shouldn’t’ve a) publicly tweeted ‘her’ and b) laid out in OAI’s own ethical policy that voices shouldn’t mimic those of public figures and c) surfed the hype for as long as he could on the fact that the voice sounded so close to Scarlett’s that pretty much the whole internet agreed on it.
Yeah honestly my off-the-cuff take here is that the Midler decision is kind of nonsensical. It effectively grants Bette Midler ownership of her own voice but not the imitator ownership of hers.
Ed.: And to be clear, the imitation isn't really the load-bearing part of this because presumably you could use selection or filtering to find someone who is naturally a sound-alike without affectation, which would create exactly the same class of dispute vis a vis imputation or endorsement.
Honestly, my take is this: ScarJo doesn't have a case, because while this all of course looks horrible and was done in the worst possible way, Sky is an imitation of Samantha primarily and Scarlett Johansson only indirectly, and while Scarlett Johansson does have a right to her voice she doesn't have a right to *the character of Samantha from Her.* OpenAI are imitating the character, not the actor; if another actor had played Samantha, OpenAI would be suspiciously imitating another voice; if the character had a voice tick or accent that Scarlett Johansson normally did not but affected for the movie, Sky would be imitating that accent, not Scarlett's natural accent. Scarlett is only involved because she played the character, but the rights to the character are with the license holders.
So really, Annapurna Pictures / Warner Brothers should sue.
I doubt this is intentional, but it seems like great advertising for OpenAI. Scarlett Johansson basically endorsed their product ("voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference").
The Twitter discourse may not look like it but the average person's reaction will probably be "I want this".
My default position on trust and big tech companies over the last 20 years has evolved to "don't trust big tech companies". This is not helping. The hubris shown here makes it even worse than usual.
This has a strong energy of "At last we have created the AI Samantha from the classic SciFi 'Don't create the AI Samantha'". I mean, Her was kind of dystopian.
In any case, imitating Scarlet Johansson's voice from Her seems way too on the nose.
Makes you wonder if one of the other voice packs will be HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Or Rachel from Blade Runner.
Or, indeed, Rutger Hauer.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die."
> The second rule is to ask for permission.
I think you meant the second rule is to ask for forgiveness?
I certainly meant that second thing!
A (slightly ironically this time) multi voiced AI reading of this post (All voiced originally generated, I swear!):
https://open.substack.com/pub/askwhocastsai/p/do-not-mess-with-scarlett-johansson
I agree that the peripheral actions and tweets by OpenAI make the case against them very strong but I do not like the idea that making a voice sound X% "similar" to that of a public personality should be disallowed. I don't think there is enough natural variation in human voices for us to allow famous people to claim rights on a range of similar voices.
What happens if your voice is incidentally similar to random personality #xxx,xxx,xxx? It would be even more constraining if people are allowed to claim their voices as they change over time, from childhood through to their adult voice.
“Did OpenAI outright train on Scarlett Johansson’s voice?” I bet you my life savings they did.
I'll take the other side of this bet.
On one level, yeah, don't mess with Scarlett Johansson. On another, I do believe that this should not be illegal, that such "putting actors out of their jobs" is a desirable thing.
Altman is actually a double agent. He's messing up to unite everyone against AI and avert the apocalypse. Just don't make it so obvious, Sam.
I honestly don't see why people were so riled up about this:
1. Scarlett Johansson has a net worth of $165m. She's not exactly a struggling person being taken advantage of.
2. OpenAI removed the voice immediately after she complained.
3. I'm sure she'll get a nice payout via a settlement or in the court system.
If this was some struggling actor who failed to get justice then yeah, I might have sympathy. But in this case? Just a small business dispute between a very wealthy person and a very rich corporation. Both Sam Altman and Scarlett Johansson lived in a giant mansion before this and will continue living in a giant mansion after this. I'd rather worry about the 99% who can't afford a mansion.
It's important because US law is heavily precedent based, and Johansson winning her case makes it much easier for the small fry to do so.
Is someone stealing the voice of “small fry”? If they need to steal your voice there’s a 99% chance you live in a giant mansion and can afford good lawyers.
Billy West is another voice actor who will stand up for their rights...
[Insert vocal fry joke here]
As per the original article, which summed things up nicely, people want punitive enforcement of what they see as norms. If that requires people with enough clout to go up against those infringing on perceived norms, that's acceptable.
I remember a Buffy video game where Sarah Michelle Gellar wasn't available to voice act, so they got another actress who sounded similar. But the credits for the game were up front about that. Nobody was lying.
The way to discourage (legally) this kind of behavior without trying to unring the tech bell or block licensed work like the above: just distinguish between personal and business use, and also honesty. You can't make money, or otherwise incorporate in your business, someone's likeness without permission. If you use an imitation, you have to make it very clear that it's an imitation (and if you can't, then too bad, not allowed). The law and the courts are capable of making this kind of distinction.