OpenAI claimed they hired a different professional actor who performed using her own voice [1].

If so, I suspect they’ll be okay in a court of law — having a voice similar to a celebrity isn’t illegal.

It’ll likely cheese off actors and performers though.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2024/05/20/openai-sa...

Seems like sama may have put a big hole in that argument when he tweeted "her", now it is very easy to say that they knowingly cloned ScarJo's likeness. When will tech leaders learn to stop tweeting.

Or perhaps they cloned a character's likeness?

Is there a distinction?

'Her' is a character in the film. They did not advertise it as a real-person.

>Is there a distinction?

Yes, that would be a copyright violation on top of everything else.

Great idea though!

I'm going to start selling Keanu Reeves T-Shirts using this little trick.

See, I'm not using Keanu's likeness if I don't label it as Keanu. I'm just going to write Neo in a Tweet, and then say I'm just cloning Neo's likeness.

Neo is not a real person, so Keanu can't sue me! Bwahahaha

I love these takes that constantly pop up in tech circles.

There's no way "you" (the people that engage in these tactics) believe anyone is that gullible to not see what's happening. You either believe yourselves to be exceedingly clever or everyone else has the intelligence of toddler.

With the gumption some tech "leaders" display, maybe both.

If you have to say "technically it's not" 5x in a row to justify a position in a social context just short-circuit your brain and go do something else.

Just to be clear, my comment was sarcastic, I agree with you and I don't think it's a great idea at all.

Writing this comment mostly to say - damn, I didn't think about it this way, but I guess "either believe yourselves to be exceedingly clever or everyone else has the intelligence of toddler" is indeed the mindset.

The only other alternative I can think of is "we all know it's BS, but do they have more money than us to spend on lawyers to call it out?" - which isn't much better TBH.

If you find a guy that looks identical to him, however ...

>If you find a guy that looks identical to him, however ...

...it wouldn't make any difference.

A Barack Obama figurine is a Barack Obama figurine, no matter how much you say that it's actually a figurine of Boback O'Rama, a random person that coincidentally looks identically to the former US President.

What?

That situation would be completely legal. Come on.

>What?

California Civil Code Section 3344(a) states:

Any person who knowingly uses another’s name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness, in any manner, on or in products, merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods or services, without such person’s prior consent, or, in the case of a minor, the prior consent of his parent or legal guardian, shall be liable for any damages sustained by the person or persons injured as a result thereof.

What are you supposed to do if you look like a famous celebrity? Die? Get real.

>What are you supposed to do if you look like a famous celebrity?

Not make a living posing for pictures without consent of the said celebrity?

Re: "get real" - the law is pretty real.

Sure, but you're not. You're just a look-alike and Boback O'Rama is not somebody with personality rights.

Things like parody are protected under fair use, explicitly.

Nitpick: it's not copyright, it's personality rights and likeness. It's a violation of it nonetheless.

That’s a weaksauce argument IMO. The character was played by SJ. Depictions of this character necessarily have to be depictions of the voice actress.

Your argument may be stronger if OpenAI said something like “the movie studio owns the rights to this character’s likeness, so we approached them,” but it’s not clear they attempted that.

They didn't approach her, they approached her agent, which should've the point of contact for either case.

As to whether she owns the rights of that performance or somebody else, we'd have to read the contract; most likely she doesn't, though.

Probably anyone but her inner circle can "approach her" directly. I would expect any other kind of connection to be made through her agent.

The character has a very distinct tonality. particularly the inflections and word emphasis.

I honestly don't think Scarlett (the person, not her "her" character) has anything to favor their case, aside from the public's sympathy.

She may have something only if it turns out that the training set for that voice is composed of some recordings of her (the person, not the movie), which I highly doubt and is, unfortunately, extremely hard to prove. Even that wouldn't be much, though, as it could be ruled a derivative work, or something akin to any celebrity impersonator. Those guys can even advertise themselves using the actual name of the celebrities involved and it's allowed.

Me personally, I hope she takes them to court anyway, as it will be an interesting trial to follow.

An interesting facet is, copyright law goes to the substance of the copyrighted work; in this case, because of the peculiarities of her character in "her", she is pretty much only voice, I wonder if that make things look different to the eyes of a judge.

Likeness rights and copyright are different.

Fictional characters cannot have personality rights, for obvious reasons.

That falls under copyright, trademarks, ...

Actors who play fictional characters have personality rights.

Yes, but not the fictional character. Scarlett Johansson's character in her, credited only as "voice", is a fictional character.

No one claimed the fictional character's personality rights were infringed.

People who want to use an actor's likeness can't get around likeness rights by saying they impersonated a specific performance actually.

Yeeah, this was very stupid. Sigh.

only when they can get a bigger fix from something else.

it takes more than money to fuel these types, and they would have far better minders and bumpers if the downside outweighed the upside. they aren’t stupid, just addicted.

musk was addict smart, owned up to his proclivities and bought the cartel.

It's also very easy to say that they were inspired by the concept of the movie, but the voice is different.

Sure if they hadn’t contacted her twice for permission, including 2 days before launch.

I heard the voice before hearing this news and didn't recognize her, but it's crazy if they really cloned her voice without her permission. Even worse somehow since they did such a bad job at it.

They can say they had a certain thing in mind, which was to produce something like ‘Her’, and obviously Scarjo would have sold it home for them if she participated. But in lieu of the fact that she didn’t, they still went out and created what they had in mind, which was something LIKE ‘Her’. That doesn’t sound illegal.

Not illegal, because this would be a civil case. But they’re on thin ice because there’s a big difference between “creating something like Her” and “creating something like Scarlet Johansson’s performance in Her”.

Creating something like Her is creating something like Scarlet Johansson’s performance of her. The whole point is to hit the same note, which is a voice and an aesthetic and a sensibility. That’s the point! She wasn’t willing to do it. If they hit the same note without training on her voice, then I think that’s fair game.

Yeah, influential people shouldn't get to functionally own a "likeness." It's not a fingerprint. An actor shouldn't credibly worry about getting work because a rich/famous doppelganger exists (which may threaten clientele).

Explicit brand reference? Bad. Circumstantial insinuation? Let it go.

What else does a famous actor have but a likeness? What if their likeness is appropriated to support a cause they disagree with, or a job they declined for moral or ethical reasons? The public will still associate them first and they will bear the consequences.

A famous actor still has acting, name recognition, and generally mountains of cash. But should not get to call dibs on some vague "likeness" simply because they got hot first. Someone shouldn't damage/lose their livelihood because their famous doppelganger iced them out.

It probably is illegal in CA: https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

"when voice is sufficient indicia of a celebrity's identity, the right of publicity protects against its imitation for commercial purposes without the celebrity's consent."

I'd be surprised if it was legal anywhere in the US, but this just puts the final nail into Sky's coffin.

But why? Sounds like a violation to the rights of the sound actor

Because it's meant to give the _appearance_ or _perception_ that a celebrity is involved. Their actions demonstrate they were both highly interested and had the expectation that the partnership was going to work out, with the express purpose of using the celebrity's identity for their own commercial purposes.

If they had just screened a bunch of voice actors and chosen the same one no one would care (legally or otherwise).

What OpenAI did here is beyond the pale. This is open and shut for me based off of the actions surrounding the voice training.

I think a lot of people are wondering about a situation (which clearly doesn’t apply here) in which someone was falsely accused of impersonation based on an accidental similarity. I have more sympathy for that.

But that’s giving OpenAI far more than just the benefit of the doubt: there is no doubt in this case.

I think "beyond the pale" is a bit hyperbolic. The voice actor has publicity rights, too.

Sounds like one of those situations you'd have to prove intent.

(and given the timeline ScarJo laid out in her Twitter feed, I'd be inclined to vote to convict at the present moment)

Not necessarily, because this would be a civil matter, the burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence - it’s glaring obvious that this voice is emulating the movie Her and I suspect it wouldn’t be hard to convince a jury.

> Sounds like one of those situations you'd have to prove intent.

The discovery process may help figuring the intent - especially any internal communication before and after the two(!) failed attempts to get her sign-off, as well as any notes shared with the people responsible for casting.

I guess the Trump lookalike satire guy would not want to go to California then

Ah, so OpenAI does satire. That explains a lot.

I am guessing it's because you are trying to sell the voice as "that" actor voice. I guess if the other voice become popular on its own right (a celebrity) then there is a case to be made.

Did you read the statement? They approached Scarlett twice, including two days before launch. Sam even said himself that Sky sounds like 'HER'.

This isn't actually complicated at all. OpenAI robbed her likeness against her express will.

It's almost certainly not legal exactly because of the surrounding context of openai trying to hire her along with the "her" tweet.

There's not a lot of precedent around voice impersonation, but there is for a very, very similar case against Ford

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Amazing case law, thank you! I suspect OpenAI have just realised this, hence the walking back of the “Sky” voice.

I am not a lawyer, but other potentially relevant cases:

https://www.quimbee.com/cases/waits-v-frito-lay-inc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_v._Samsung_Electronics_A....

I mean, unless an investigation can find any criteria used to select this particular actress like "sounds like Scarlett" in an email somewhere, or you know, the head idiot intentionally and publicly posting the title of a movie starring the actress in relation to the soundalike's voice work.

Whether or not what they've done is currently technically illegal, they're priming the public to be pissed off at them. Making enemies of beloved figures from the broader culture is likely to not make OpenAI many friends.

OpenAI has gone the "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" route, and it seemed like they might get away with that, but if this results in a lot more stories like this they'll risk running afoul of public opinion and future legislation turning sharply against them.

Problem is, they asked for permission, showing their hand multiple times. Can I say, I'm somewhat relieved to learn that Sam Altman isn't an evil genius.

It’s definitely sketchy (classic OpenAI) But my question is: is what they did actually illegal? Can someone copyright their own voice?

Yes, absolutely illegal. You don't need to copyright anything, you simply own the rights your own likeness -- your visual appearance and your voice.

A company can't take a photo from your Facebook and plaster it across an advertisement for their product without you giving them the rights to do that.

And if you're a known public figure, this includes lookalikes and soundalikes as well. You can't hire a ScarJo impersonator that people will think is ScarJo.

This is clearly a ScarJo soundalike. It doesn't matter whether it's an AI voice or clone or if they hired someone to sound just like her. Because she's a known public figure, that's illegal if she hasn't given them the rights.

(However, if you generate a synthetic voice that just happens to sound exactly like a random Joe Schmo, it's allowed because Joe Schmo isn't a public figure, so there's no value in the association.)

If they didn’t use her actual voice for the training, didn’t hire voice talent to imitate her, didnt pursue her for a voice contract, didn’t make a reference to the movie in which she voices an AI, I feel OpenAI would have been on more stable legal footing. But they aren’t playing with a strong hand now and folded fast.

You're 100% correct and there's precedent

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Not only that but they didn't credit the voice actress who sounds like her. If she was semi-famous and just naturally sounded like Scarlett Johansson, maybe they could have an argument: "it is not Scarlett, it is the famous [C-list actress] who worked in [production some people may know]".

Scarlet owns the voice of a stranger that happens to sound like her? That seems absurd.

Just find someone who sounds like her, then hire them for the rights to their voice.

It’s really hard to assume in good faith that you are unfamiliar with the concept of impersonation. Just in case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impersonator

There is no doubt that the hired actor was an impersonator, this was explicitly stated by scama himself.

It’s just that her voice by itself is relatively unremarkable. Someone like say, Morgan freeman, or Barack Obama, someone with a distinctive vocal delivery, that’s one thing. Scarlett Johansson, I couldn’t place her voice out of a lineup. I’m sure it’s pleasant I just can’t think of it.

Scarlett Johansson does absolutely have a distinctive and very famous voice. I wouldn’t take your own ignorance (not meant disparagingly) as evidence otherwise.

That’s why she was the voice actor for the AI voice in Her.

>That’s why she was the voice actor for the AI voice in Her.

She was used in Her because she has a dry/monotone/lifeless form of diction that at the time seemed like a decent stand-in for an non-human AI.

IMDB is riddled with complaints about his vocal-style/diction/dead-pan on every one of her movies. Ghost World, Ghost in the Shell, Lost in Translation, Comic-Book-Movie-1-100 -- take a line from one movie and dub it across the character of another and most people would be fooled, that's impressive given the breadth of quality/style/age across the movies.

When she was first on the scene I thought it was bad acting, but then it continued -- now I tend to think that it's an effort to cultivate a character personality similar to Steven Wright or Tom Waits; the fact that she's now litigating towards protection of her character and likeness reinforces that fact for me.

It's unique to her though , that's for sure.

>She was used in Her because she has a dry/monotone/lifeless form of diction that at the time seemed like a decent stand-in for an non-human AI

Do you have a source for this?

You know I took some time to compare versus just reading the analysis and in particular I listened to the OpenAI demo and a scene from “her”.

Yeah not moving from my position at all. Just a very generic featureless female voice. I suppose I hear some similarities in timbre, but it’s such an unremarkable voice and diction that it’s hard to put your finger on anything past “generic low affect American alto”.

It’s a great computer voice. Taking it down is for sure the right call PR wise, regardless of whether they may have done.

The variance in voice is not that great. Just find someone who is very close to her voice naturally.

Doesn't matter if the intent is to make the listener think they're hearing ScarJo

I missed that; where did he say that?

> There is no doubt that the hired actor was an impersonator, this was explicitly stated by scama himself.

And here's some caselaw where another major corporation got smacked down for doing the exact same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

But given how unscrupulous Sam Altman appears to be, I wouldn't be surprised if OpenAI hired an impersonator as some kind half-ass legal cover, and went about using Johansson's voice anyway. Tech people do stupid shut sometimes because they assume they're so much cleverer than everyone else.

Impersonating is defined by intent. "Just find someone who sounds like her" implies intent.

But is that Scarlett Jo or Producers of Her that own the copyright?

If you imitate Darth Vader, I don't think James Earl Jones has as much case for likeliness as Star Wars franchise

It's both.

If you just want ScarJo's (or James Earl Jones') voice, you need the rights from them. Period.

If you want to reuse the character of her AI bot from the movie (her name, overall personality, tone, rhythm, catchphrases, etc.), or the character of Darth Vader, you also need to license that from the producers.

And also from ScarJo/Jones if you want the same voice to accompany the character. (Unless they've sold all rights for future re-use to the producers, which won't usually be the case, because they want to be paid for sequels.)

James Earl Jones sold his voice rights to Disney a couple of years ago, so they can continue to use an AI likeness of his voice for future movies. https://ambadar.com/insights/james-earl-jones-signs-off-his-...

There are two similar famous cases I know offhand. Probably there are more.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Bette Middler successfully sued Ford for impersonating her likeness in a commercial.

Then also:

https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc

Tom Waits successfully sued Frito Lay for using an imitator without approval in a radio commercial.

The key seems to be that if someone is famous and their voice is distinctly attributeable to them, there is a case. In both of these cases, the artists in question were also solicited first and refused.

Also Crispin Glover's case in Back to the Future II

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/bac...

Both cases seem to have also borrowed from the artists’ songs too however. That could perhaps make a difference.

Bette Midler and Tom Waits didn't control their songs when they sued the companies.

But it makes it more likely that the listener will associate the commercial with the artist than just using the voice.

The Midler v. Ford decision said her voice was distinctive. Not the song.

OpenAI didn't just use a voice like Scarlett Johansson's. They used it in an AI system they wanted people to associate with AI from movies and the movie where Johansson played an AI particularly.[1][2]

[1] https://blog.samaltman.com/gpt-4o

[2] https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666

True to an extent. I'd argue that celebrity of a certain level would make one's voice recognizable and thus confusion can happen.

What if the imitator is clearly an imitator? e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvF0l8RUGQ8

That's weird -- I would think Morgan Freeman would be able to sue over that, but I Am Not An Intellectual Property Lawyer.

I feel like that's a little different. In the cases of Midler, Waits, and Johansson, the companies involved wanted to use their voices, were turned down, and then went with an imitator to make it seem to the audience that the celebrity was actually performing. In the case of this "Morgan Freeman" video, Freeman himself is very obviously not performing: the imitator appears on screen, so it's explicitly acknowledged in the ad.

But I'm not a lawyer of any sort either, so... ::shrug::

You would have to argue the distinctiveness of the voice (if they hadn’t already pursued her to do it). Tom Waits…that’s pretty distinct voice. Scarlett Johansson…not so much

The Tom Waits case had a payout of 2.6 million for services with fair market cost of 100k. What would it cost openai to train chatgpt using her voice? Is she also going to get a payout 26 times that? That GPU budget is starting to look inexpensive...

The problem is they pursued, was rejected, then approximated. Had they just approximated and made no references to the movie…then I bet social marketing would have made the connection organically and neither Ms Johansson or the Her producers would have much ground because they could reasonably claim that it was just a relatively generic woman’s voice with a faint NY/NJ accent.

I’m not a lawyer and don’t have any deep background this area of IP, but there is at least some precedent apparently:

> In a novel case of voice theft, a Los Angeles federal court jury Tuesday awarded gravel-throated recording artist Tom Waits $2.475 million in damages from Frito-Lay Inc. and its advertising agency.

> The U.S. District Court jury found that the corn chip giant unlawfully appropriated Waits’ distinctive voice, tarring his reputation by employing an impersonator to record a radio ad for a new brand of spicy Doritos corn chips.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-st...

In the United States, likeness rights vary by state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

I think this will fall under what are termed personality rights, and the answer varies by state within the US.

It's not precisely copyright, but most states recognize some form of personality rights, which encompass a person's voice just as much as the person's name or visual appearance.

But where it will get murky is people sound like other people. Most voices are hardly unique. It will be interesting to see where this lands.

It isn't murky, because law is about intent more than result. It doesn't matter if they hired someone who sounds like Scarlett, it matters if they intended to do so.

If they accidentally hired someone who sounds identical, that's not illegal. But if they intended to, even if it is a pretty poor imitation, it would be illegal because the intent to do it was there.

A court of law would be looking for things like emails about what sort of actress they were looking for, how they described that requirement, how they evaluated the candidate and selected her, and of course, how the CEO announced it alongside a movie title Scarlett starred in.

Under what legal theory is intending to do something which is legal (hiring a person that has a voice you want) becomes illegal because there is another person who has a similar voice?

It's not intending to do something legal, it's intending to do something illegal: Stealing their likeness. The fact you used an otherwise legal procedure to do the illegal activity doesn't make it less illegal.

How can something be illegal if every step towards the objective is legal? This would result in an incoherent legal system where selective prosecution/corruption is trivial.

It is legal to buy a gun, and legal to fire a gun, and it can even be legal to fire a gun at someone who is threatening to kill you in the moment, but if you fire a gun at someone with the intention of killing someone that happens to be very, very illegal.

Very well. But in this case the end goal is the end of someone's unique life.

In the case of acquiring a likeness, if it's done legally you acquire someone else's likeness that happens to be shared with your target.

The likeness is shared and non-unique.

If you objective is to take someone's life, there is no other pathway to the objective but their life. With likeness that isn't the case.

So? You're merely (correctly) pointing out that the acts have consequences that are of wildly differing severity. Not that one is a legal and the other is not.

OpenAI should hire you as their lawyer.

What's illegal, in general, is not the action itself but the intent to do an action and the steps taken in furtherance of that intent.

Hiring someone with a voice you want isn't illegal; hiring someone with a voice you want because it is similar to a voice that someone expressly denied you permission to use is illegal.

Actually, it's so foundational to the common law legal system that there's a specialized Latin term to represent the concept: mens rea (literally 'guilty mind').

> But where it will get murky is people sound like other people. Most voices are hardly unique. It will be interesting to see where this lands.

Yes, it will be interesting in June 1988 when we will find out "where this lands": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

This is known as personality rights or right to publicity. Impersonating someone famous (eg faking their likeness or voice for an ad) is often illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights

Not here to weigh in on the answers to these questions. But it certainly feels pretty scary to have to ask such questions about a company leading the LLM space, considering the U.S. currently has little to no legal infrastructure to reign in these companies.

Plus the tone of the voice is likely an unimportant detail to theor success. So pushing up against the legal boundaries in this specific domain is at best strange and at worst a huge red flag for their ethics and how they operate.

This is so pointless and petty too. Like "hee hee our software is just like the movies". And continuing the trend of tech moguls watching bleak satire and thinking it's aspirational.

How do people watch 15 seconds of a demo like this - https://x.com/OpenAI/status/1790072174117613963

And not see how over the top it is... cmon.

If anyone thinks this demo is cool, I regret to inform you that your life is very, very sad.

"Over the top" means exaggerated and corny, almost the opposite of "cool".

I was not contradicting the parent comment, but adding to it. I know what "over the top" means, thank you.

Apologies, I misunderstood your comment then. It really sounded like you were contradicting them.

Yeah, I should have started with "indeed" and not used the impersonal "you".

I couldn’t take more than 10s of that. It’s so cringey and for some reason trying to be sexy? Like why would I want a bot to flirt with me while I’m trying to get information?

Precisely my comment. You can see the personality of the people building these products through the tech demo.

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale

Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?lang=e...

“Shooting from the hip” is giving them too much credit. Actual knowing malice and dishonesty is more like it.

I think this is such a massively trivial detail it’s hard to draw broader conclusions from it

I honestly didn't think it sounded like Johansson. Because of the controversy I just now re listened to the demos and I still find if very unlikely that someone would think it was her.