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.
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.
No. But in this particular case, there are two factors that make that irrelevant for me. One, I would have made their same mistake. (If I was Sam, I too would have found it a really cool idea to make GPT have the voice of Her, and I too would not have realized there was one dumb court case from the 80s standing in the way of that.)
Two, it’s bogus that conceptually this isn’t allowed. I’m already anti-IP — I think that IP is a tool that corporations wield to prevent us from using "their" ideas, not to protect us from being exploited as workers. And now this is yet another thing we’re Not Allowed To Do. Great, that sounds like a wonderful world, just peachy. Next time maybe we’ll stop people from monetizing the act of having fun at all, and then the circle of restrictions will be complete.
Or, another way of putting it: poor Scarlett, whatever will she do? Her voice is being actively exploited by a corporation. Oh no.
In reality, she’s rich, powerful, and will be absolutely fine. She’d get over it. The sole reason that she’s being allowed to act like a bully is because the law allows her to (just barely, in this case, but there is one legal precedent) and everyone happens to hate or fear OpenAI, so people love rooting for their downfall and calling Sam an evil sociopath.
Someone, please, make me a moral, ethical argument why what they did here was wrong. I’m happy to change my mind on this. Name one good reason that they shouldn’t be allowed to replicate Her. It would’ve been cool as fuck, and sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who thinks so, other than OpenAI.
Actually, there's a similar court case from 1988 that creates legal precedent for her to sue.
"That's just one case! And it's from 1988! That's 36 years ago: rounded up, that's 4 decades!"
Actually, there's a court case from 1992 that built on that judgement and expanded it to define a specific kind of tort.
"That's bad law! Forget the law! I demand a moral justification."
Anyway, asking a person if you can make money off their identity, them saying no, and you going ahead and doing that anyway seems challenging to justify on moral grounds. I don't think you're willing to change your mind, your claim notwithstanding.
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.