[callalex]

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.

[tivert]

> 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.

[howbadisthat]

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

[airstrike]

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

[sneak]

I missed that; where did he say that?

[warcher]

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.

[llamaimperative]

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.

[serf]

>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.

[kristiandupont]

>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?

[warcher]

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.