Because it’s still great marketing to have Scarjo on board? That immediately returns positive ROI on the cost to hire her.

Which is also why it’s unethical to use a voice clearly designed to be mistaken for her.

I agree that it’s a bit of a sketchy thing to do, and potentially even illegal based on similar case law, but the commenter I responded to created an entire fake sequence of events that seems incredibly unlikely, when there’s a far simpler explanation.

I mean, I guess? I don't know how many people base their choice in AI model or application on the voice, but maybe I'm just not privy to that.

A potential answer to that is liability protection even when you feel like you are legally in the clear. It is still worth paying a sum to avoid a lawsuit you think you will win.

An example of this is Weird Al pays for the rights to things that are probably ok under fair use parody protection. Paying for the rights removes the possibily of a challenge.

Does Weird Al pay rights? I know he asks for permission to maintain his relationships with artists and to make sure he gets his share of songwriting credits (and the fees).

But does he pay for rights? I’ve never seen that before and I’d love to read more.

Actually, yes, he does.

https://www.weirdal.com/archives/faq/

That says he asks for permission. His new song would generate songwriter credits and they’re paid out totally differently from regular royalties. Is that what you mean by him paying for rights?

Rereading your comment, I see that my answer rather falls short of your question. I don't claim to know anything about Weird Al beyond what he wrote on that page.

Honestly pal, I really appreciate you trying! I’m one of very few people strange enough to care about the minutiae of this. I’m grateful that you jumped into my weird rabbit hole with me for awhile. It was kind of you to try to help me.

IANAL - but I think there is some sort of carve-out for parody? @sama and OpenAI are clearly not parodying "Her" - especially with that paper trail.

This is a great question and I hope someone here with requisite knowledge can help.

My understanding is he doesn’t have to ask permission but does for two purposes. It’s important to him to keep good relationships with artists, and he wants to make sure that he gets songwriting credits because those are paid differently (and are often more lucrative) than royalties from recordings.

I’d love to find out if he directly pays artists for rights. That would be really interesting and would add a whole dimension to his problems with Prince.

Now you've got me doubting myself. It was covered in a Tom Scott video. I'll have a look for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU&t=485s

Is there any way to confirm that they actually did hire a voice actor prior to reaching out to ScarJo?

ScarJo claims they reached out to her just 2 days prior to demoing the voice that sounded like her, and (I believe) OpenAI outright claimed that they hired a different voice actor, though they didn't admit that they instructed her to try to sound like Scarlett's character in Her, which could make or break Scarlett's case.

They claimed they hired someone and they can't tell you who it is but pretty please trust them that they hired someone.

How can we tell if the model was trained exclusively on data from the voice actor and not ScarJo.

The hiring of the voice actor could be complete misdirection for all we know.

ScarJo claims they reached out to her far earlier when she rejected them and the 2 days prior to launch was a an attempted follow-up by OAI that didn't happen.