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by sillysaurusx 751 days ago
Why is it wrong to explicitly mimic a part played in a movie? Are we saying that the actor owns their portrayal of the role?

OpenAI should’ve owned their actions. "Yes, we wanted to get a voice that sounded like the one from Her." There’s nothing wrong with that.
3 comments
pseudalopex 751 days ago
> OpenAI should’ve owned their actions. "Yes, we wanted to get a voice that sounded like the one from Her." There’s nothing wrong with that.

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

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danielmarkbruce 750 days ago
Not an IP lawyer, but I think the company that produced the movie owns the relevant IP, and Johansson might also own IP around it.

You can have an opinion on it, but they are going to get sued. Just like I can't take Moana and throw her in an ad where it says "I like [insert cereal here]", they can't take a character and use it without expecting Disney/whoever to come sue them.

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pests 751 days ago
Actors get a lot of rights to their likeness.

So, yes maybe?

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sillysaurusx 751 days ago
Hmm. Being able to say "thou shalt not make a character similar to Her" is a lot like saying "thou shalt not make a video game character similar to any other." It’s not an explicit copy, and their name for Sky was different. That’s the bar for the videogame industry; why should it be different for actors? Especially one that didn’t show her face.

This whole thing is reminiscent of Valve threatening to sue S2 for allegedly making a similar character. Unsurprisingly, the threats went nowhere.

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lelandfe 751 days ago
You've really contorted the facts here. This isn't a character, it's a voice.

The voice sounds remarkably like Scarlett Johansson's.

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sillysaurusx 751 days ago
It’s the other way around. The contortionists are on the other side of the issue. We’re talking about OpenAI hiring someone to use their natural speaking voice. As movies say, any similarity to existing people is completely coincidental from a legal perspective.

From a moral perspective, I can’t believe that people are trying to argue that someone’s voice should be protected under law. But that’s a personal opinion.

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pseudalopex 751 days ago
> We’re talking about OpenAI hiring someone to use their natural speaking voice.

How do you know?

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sillysaurusx 751 days ago
They said so, and it’s what I would have done. I have no reason not to believe them.

Unfortunately a commenter pointed out that there’s legal precedent for protecting people’s voices from commercial usage specifically (thanks to a court case from four decades ago), so I probably wouldn’t have tried this. The cost of battling it out in the legal system is outweighed by the coolness factor of replicating Her. I personally feel it’s a battle worth winning, since it’s bogus that they have to worry about some annoyed celebrity, and your personal freedoms aren’t being trodden on in this case. But I can see why OpenAI would back down.

Now, if some company was e.g. trying to commercialize everybody’s voices at scale, this would be a different conversation. That should obviously not be allowed. But replicating a culturally significant voice is one of the coolest aspects of AI (have you seen those recreations of historical voices from other languages translated into English? If not, you’re missing out) but that’s not what OpenAI did here.

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