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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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[–] cybersandwich@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Lemmy is gonna lemmy.

There isn't any evidence that they used her voice for the "Sky" voice model. Actually, there is evidence that they paid a voice actress to model that specific actress's voice.

That actress sounds similar to Scarlett, but it isn't Scarlett's voice. Is that illegal? No. Is it grounds for a suit? maybe. Will Scarlett win? Maybe.

Let's put it another way. If you wanted to record an audio book, but you wanted the voice actor to have certain qualities that you think would help your book sell. You think Scarlett has all of those qualities, so you ask her if she would record it for you. She declines.

Well shit, that sucks. But wait! She's not the only person with those vocal qualities. I am sure you can find someone else with very similar qualities. So you hire another voice actress that has all of those--which coincidentally and very understandable sounds a lot like Scarlett. But it isn't Scarlett.

Everyone wants to say "big corp bad!" here, but if they truly didn't use Scarlett's voice and didn't do any sort of manipulation to make it sound more like Scarlett, then why CANT they do it. I get that Scarlett is upset, but she's basically mad that someone sounds like her--and decided to work for OpenAI.

If I wanted James Earl Jones to read my eulogy, but he isn't available or is unwilling. Why couldn't I get someone to sound like him to read it? Why should he be able to sue me for using a voice actor that sounds similar to him?

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago

There isn’t any evidence that they used her voice

There's ample evidence, via the samples OpenAI released during their demo.

Actually, there is evidence that they paid a voice actress to model that specific actress’s voice.

Actually, there's not. OpenAI refuses to release where they got their voice samples. They insist it came from "another unnamed actress".

She’s not the only person with those vocal qualities.

If the raw data OpenAI used to train its AI came from voice samples produced by Scarlett Johansson, then there actually IS only one person with those vocal qualities.

If I wanted James Earl Jones to read my eulogy, but he isn’t available or is unwilling. Why couldn’t I get someone to sound like him to read it?

Nothing is stopping you from doing this.

However, if you took an existing privately licensed James Earl Jones eulogy and doctored it with AI trained data to replace another person's name with your name, then you'd be robbing Jones of his work product.

Waving your hands and saying "But maybe I didn't do the thing I did, so actually its fine" isn't a credible defense.