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Scarlett Johansson denied OpenAI the right to use her voice. They used it anyway. (boingboing.net)

submitted 5 months ago by Wilshire@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] lordmauve@programming.dev 6 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I doubt they are using Johansson's voice. I expect they need much more studio-quality training data than they would have for her.

The desire to create a "Her" might be real but explains why they chose a similar voice actress, made Sky the default, and continued to pursue Johansson to some day create the real thing.

Suspending the Sky voice looks guilty but it might be a temporary action while the legal team considers their response. There might be a non-zero risk of being found liable if there were directions in the voice casting process to seek a result comparable to Scarlet Johansson. You'd want to collect and assess correspondence to see if that's a possibility, which might take a while.

[–] adam_y@lemmy.world 71 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If only she was ever in a situation where her voice was professionally recorded.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago

Since when would an actress be in front of a camera?

[–] CustodialTeapot@lemmy.world 48 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Wtf is this thinking.

Open Ai wouldn't use something or someone without consent? There's a plethora of lawsuits and evidence that they did that with pretty much every medium out there.

[–] cbarrick@lemmy.world 22 points 5 months ago

Fine tuning a general TTS model on a specific custom voice doesn't require as much data as you think it does.

The hard part is building the foundational model that can be easily fine tuned. And OpenAI has already done that.

[–] WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

They could easily make it based on publically available voice data, especially for an actress of her fame. That's how they were able to create AI versions of Biden's voice and other famous people.

That doesn't mean they did, but your first sentence implies they couldn't have, when they very easily could if they wanted to.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That doesn't make it legal, let alone ethical. As a performer, her likeness, including her voice, is protected by personality rights. There have been multiple lawsuits over soundalikes in the past.

[–] WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh definitely. If they used her voice in that way, not okay at all. I'm not sure if they have because I keep seeing contradicting arguments, but if they did, 100% agree with you that just because it's out there, doesn't mean you can take it and profit on it.

[–] Ilflish@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

Pursuing a voice to match that of "Her" is a very weird move considering the story it tries to convey