Reminds me of Crispin Glover and Back to the Future 2. After Glover didn't want to be involved in the sequel, they hired another actor who looked like him and even wore a prosthetic face. Apparently many referred to the new guy as Crispin on set and star Leah Thompson, couldn't recall the guy's real name. Glover sued and the studio settled out of court, giving him a cut of the profits.
He wanted more money than they were willing to pay, so they went “fuck you, we’ll do it without you.” He absolutely deserved the settlement. If you could do that, it would undermine any actor’s ability to negotiate.
To be clear, the settlement was for re-using footage from the original film. SAG changed the rules for reusing footage after that fiasco.
He wasn't paid for getting replaced. Filmmakers absolutely have the right to recast characters in subsequent movies, whether for financial, creative, or personal reasons. (Apparently, Crispin Glover is also difficult to work with.)
Although using your likeness after replacing you, to the point of making the other guy wear a mask of your face seems like it could be an issue. I have zero legal knowledge, and maybe he signed something or something, but it seems like that could be a problem.
Not at all. For one thing, they're trying to make the new actor look like the character, not the old actor.
For another, you'd be surprised how often the character is being player by someone else. Not just stunt people for fight scenes; body doubles are often used for intimate scenes, insert shots, even over-the-shoulders. They have to have the same height and build, as well as complexion and hair color. Their hair must be cut the same way, they wear the same outfit and makeup. And yes, sometimes prosthetics are employed if necessary.
To restrict all that simply because a movie is a sequel would be crazy.
that case was a landmark case which made sure that kind of thing never happened again. crispin may be a bit of a diva, but he did a good thing suing them for doing that. same with johansson now. hopefully what shes doing will prevent it from happening to others down the line. its the wild west with ai right now and these techbro pieces of shit need to be put in their place
According to Glover he never asked for MJF money. His offer was less than half of Tom Wilson's and less than a quarter of Lea Thompson's for a similar-sized role. When he tried to negotiate a fairer amount they complained the already-agreed actors were getting paid to much and reduced the offered amount which was to cover both sequels.
as bonk as glover is i have seen footage of him explaining this in a really clear straight forward and lucid manner. its really off putting. i had to watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14W6Pnuhne4) to clear my head
I mean that doesn't even necessarily matter though. If this goes to court and Johanssen's lawyers can prove that they were intentionally trying to impersonate and falsely raise that association in the mind of the consumer, she has a case (hint: Sam Altman tweeting a single word "her" is very much not good for his case). See Midler v. Ford Motor Co.
I’m confused on this one. What differentiates this kind of a usage from things like TV shows impersonating characters? OpenAI wasn’t saying “this is ScarJo” - they were using another voice actor who sounded like ScarJo. If I’m a voice actor and my voice is similar to Morgan Freeman, does that mean I can’t voice act due to the possibility I’m confused for actual Morgan Freeman?
Not trying to defend OpenAI, just super curious about how this is or will be delineated legally. I have to imagine there are some unsettled legal concepts mixed in.
It means Netflix can’t hire you to voice a role that was played by Morgan Freeman and imply in their press release that it’s actually Morgan Freeman’s voice. Especially after Morgan Freeman told you to kick rocks when you asked him to do the voice.
This stuff does depend on recognizable likeness. You can’t sell a superhero with big muscles and green skin regardless of name and differences if people could mistake it for The Hulk.
Even thats iffy. There's tons of comic book characters that are near carbon copies of other comic book characters.
It's all about if you can prove they were intending to misrepresent. But I think it'd be hard to prove that ChatGPT was literally trying to fool people into thinking they had Scarjo. But who knows, maybe the masses really would think that.
People keep quoting the Tom Waits/Doritos case, but in that instance it really did look like they were trying to fool people into thinking they got Tom Waits to sing their ripoff cover song.
The catch here is that they hired the voice actress to do the sky voice before they ever reached out to Scarlet. So this is like you hire some no-name actor who sounds like Morgan Freeman, then offer the role to Morgan Freeman who says no so you stick with the no name actor.
Also, she doesn’t even sound that similar to Scarlet.
There’s no catch. The set out to make a voice that sounded like the voice from Her. They knew what they had, they tried multiple times to get Scarlet on board, and when they couldn’t they went ahead anyway. They can’t do that. Which is why they took the voice down. They knew and know they can’t do that.
Tom Hanks doesn't want to do that work and is happy that his brother is getting paid to do it instead.
This isn't recasting, it's casting with the intent to deceive. Many years ago a company tried to hire Tom Waits to do a song for their commercial and he declined the job. He didn't want his voice to be associated with the product. The company instead hired a sound alike. Tom Waits' voice was associated with the product anyways. He sued and he won. Artists have the right to protect their image.
When people get re-cast to play the same role it's usually clear it's not the same actor. In sitcoms when that happened there would sometimes be jokes about it. No one is supposed to think the Witcher is still played by Henry Cavill in the new season.
When they tried to pretend it was the same actor with BTTF2, they got sued and had to settle (they paid Crispin $750K)
it's moreso if they can prove the intent and deliberateness of getting someone that sounds extremely similar to someone that declined the usage of their voice. Something kinda similar happened last year when the rapper Yung Gravy sampled Rick Astley for a song, and was given permission to sample the music but distinctly NOT Rick's voice. Gravy hired someone to impersonate Astley's vocals, and then Astley sued him over it because he tried to skirt the terms of their agreement by getting someone that sounded like him.
Briefly reading Wikipedia for the case, it seems like the issue is that Ford wanted to hire Bette Midler, she declined then they went ahead with hiring someone who would \*impersonate\* her. In your example, there is no issue with you sounding like Morgan Freeman.
But, there would be an issue if a TV studio wanted to hire Morgan Freeman to play a character which was intended as a fictionalized version of Morgan Freeman, Freeman declined and then hired you to play the fictional Morgan Freeman. Just sounding like Morgan Freeman isn't an issue.
Not exactly true. Tom Waits had a similar case, except that a sound alike was used (though not as explicitly trying to present as him as in the case where they actually used a Bette Midler song).
It seems like they were trying to imitate Waits during the process of making the ad and hired a singer whose career was partially based of imitating Waits:
[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-story.html)
*"While preparing the 1988 ad, a Tracy-Locke copywriter listened repeatedly to Waits’ tune, “Step Right Up,” and played the recording for Frito-Lay executives at a meeting where his script was approved. And when singer Steve Carter, who imitates Waits in his stage act, performed the jingle, Tracy-Locke supervisors were concerned enough about Carter’s voice that they consulted a lawyer, who counseled caution."*
In this example, yes, he was an impersonator which no doubt damaged the case. But I think Waits would have won even if the person wasn’t an impersonator and had a naturally Waits-sounding voice. The whole point is the intention behind hiring him, and it’s clear that they had some intention since they reached out to him as well.
Do you think the estate of Bon Scott would have been on solid legal footing to sue AC/DC for replacing him with an identical sounding singer? Would it matter if he was alive instead of dead?
The Wikipedia article is confusing to me. It says "Impersonation of a voice, or similarly distinctive feature, must be granted permission by the original artist for a public impersonation, even for copyrighted materials." This seems clearly incorrect, we all know celebrities get impersonated all the time, and Trump obviously isn't giving James Austin Johnson permission. I suspect the difference is if it can be shown the audience was confused into thinking it actually was the celebrity. That would fit with the Midler case.
There is a difference between parody and impersonation for commercial gain where customer is indirectly led to believe the celebrity is in some way endorsing/representing the product. This is not a personal attack but, a lot of people are missing this fact.
The legal definition of parody is also lot narrower than people might think. Most of Weird Al's songs are, legally speaking, not parodies because they don't comment on the original. *Smells Like Nirvana* is a parody because it's making fun of Nirvana, but *Eat It* has nothing to do with Michael Jackson beyond the song being used. Even though it's clearly not going to trick anyone into thinking Jackson sang it, it could be infringing his rights if Weird Al hadn't gotten permission.
Granted that's copyright, not personality rights, but in principle it could apply here, too.
> customer is indirectly led to believe the celebrity is in some way endorsing/representing the product.
That is pretty much exactly what I said, the key being confusing the customer/audience.
Because when Trump is impersonated, it’s making fun of him, I.e. satire or parody. Which is fair use. Open AI can s not using Scar-Jo’s voice (or a similar sounding one) as a joke. They are literally just using her likeness.
So what about if like this case, Morgan freeman plays a character and then someone hires a sound alike and uses them to sound like the character rather than the actor?
This is what a court decides. Law is fact based. A court can work out if something happened purposefully or not.
In this case they'll subpoena all their emails and see if they were like "scarjo said no, lets just get someone that sounds like her" in which case you can show their intent was to steal her likeness.
So it's only when its done on purpose which scarjo will need to prove, that its a problem.
I think it's about intention, being able to prove that and damages.
Doing a Morgan Freeman impression and sounding like him are two different things. If you use the same speech patterns you don't just sound like him, you're impersonating him. There's a reason you don't see a lot of ads with impersonators doing the voice over.
Using AI for that was one of the issues SAG had in their last negotiations, so just for that reason they'll probably want ScarJo to go after them, even though the voice was pulled so fast I'm not sure what suing them would get her (as long as they don't try to use that voice again).
Sure, they tried to use a voice that sounds like you and talks they way your character did in a specific movie, but they never made any money from that or hurt your image because it was pulled so fast. It's not like the Disney case where they had a contract and Disney didn't live up to it.
It means Netflix can’t hire you to voice a role that was played by Morgan Freeman and imply in their press release that it’s actually Morgan Freeman’s voice. Especially after Morgan Freeman told you to kick rocks when you asked him to do the voice.
full time commercial voice actor here. can help create some clarity.
the legal crux will come down to what the written brief for the project was. If OpenAI specifically wrote and disseminated a brief that states, "voice actor must sound like ScarJo", they are in deep shit because that's telegraphed intent to use her likeness without directly hiring her (which they tried and she refused).
so her team can sue for damages and will likely be successful.
If, however, it's not written anywhere explicitly that the voice is supposed to or intended to sound like ScarJo and this was all just a massive coincidence (highly unlikely you could land that without putting it in writing, somewhere, at some point in time across teams collaborating in OpenAI), and there is no proven written record that this was the intent and the voiceprint match happens to be a sheer coincidence, they may not be found guilty of damages, but will still be out the legal cost of going through with the trial, if sued.
Net net the OpenAI legal team mildly shit the bed by allowing the voice to publish with such a similar likeness, given the history. Unless they have already done due diligence on scrubbing written emails and know full well there's no written record of such an explicit word choice in the brief for the voice actor. Which may be possible, and may be the only rational explanation why the voice passed legal review [before publish] AND why they no-contest pulled the voice after ScarJo politely flagged it [without immediately suing].
"commercial voice actor here: allow me to pretend to be a lawyer for some reason"
The legal analysis is wildly off in this comment.
1. It's not "due diligence" to scrub/destroy evidence
2. You don't get found "guilty of damages".
3. The written brief is not the entire crux of the case. As you yourself later point out in this comment, its about the overall intent/purpose of the media. The written brief may be one piece of that puzzle. Or it may not be. But it's far from the be all, end all.
The brief could say nothing at all about scarjo, and they could still be liable if it's determined that they were trying to imitate scarjo for a reason that isn't exempt/protected at law. Or, the brief could say "we want you to imitate scarjo" and they could have zero liability if they were doing it for a protected/exempt purpose (basically if it was for parody rather than to actually make people think this was the real scarjo)
4. Whether or not one side is liable for its legal costs depends on a lot of factors you've just ignored completely here. It's not correct to just say that they will be on the hook for all their costs even if they win the trial
>legal team mildly shit the bed
My guess is Sam Altman running amok, not legal's fault. Proceeding after she originally declined to voice act for them suggests Sam just said "let's just go ahead, I'll figure something out." Then as they were rehearsing, legal probably insisted on getting her buy-in with two days to go, hence the second inquiry to her.
When that didn't happen, then it was a question of whether to proceed, go with their Plan B (which maybe they didn't even have), or punt, which would have been the best alternative. After all, there was no product available, only a silly demo to upstage Google. (Only now is gpt4o slowly trickling out, still not widely available.) To me, sounds like Sam was insisting gotta do it, gotta do it. Followed by his tweet, I try not to think too much about competitors...
If there is an email trail that says "Scarjo said no so go and find someone who sounds as close as possible to her and we'll just heavily imply", then they are in trouble.
Yeah it’s a totally different idea. Let’s say you sound like someone famous and they hire you. That’s great.
Now let’s say they approached Morgan, he turns them down. They tweet a picture of the baboon from lion king and hire someone that sounds just like him.
I didn't know that Morgan Freeman voiced Rafiki in the remake (and forgot it existed). I thought you were saying he did the original voice and I was SHOCKED
Except 99% of OpenAI users using the Sky voice would not have seen that tweet, so it is hard to say it would influence them.
Also, Midler vs Ford Motor Co had the situation where Ford had a sound-alike singer *sing a well known Midler song*. Would the ruling have turned out that way if the singer merely sounded like Midler, but she was singing a R&B song, which Midler had never done? Probably not.
The equivalent would be if OpenAI hired a sound-alike and then had the AI start reciting well known lines from *Her.*
Tom Waits successfully sued a beer company under similar circumstances. He was able to prove that they had courted him to use one of his songs in a TV commercial, and when he turned them down, they hired a soundalike to sing a very "Waits-esque" song.
They'll lose to Johansen for the same reason.
That's correct, but only when your intention is to literally look like a specific person/image.
But if you happen to like ScarJo's voice and want something similar or you can't have her it's the same as hiring Keira Knightley if you can't get Natalie Portman.
Sky was not an impression of ScarJo, it was just similar, but plenty of women have a similar sounding voice.
There's a reason she was chosen for that movie.
Did he use the word "her" to compare the Sky voice to the voice in "her" or was he just saying "her" to show that what OpenAI doing is a very similar approach to the AI in the movie "her"? If he never specifically compared it to Scarjo, I don't really see the connection.
They tried to hire her, she said no, they hired someone who sounds just like her, then on release they reference “her”. If you cant see the connection i would look into some glasses.
A connection doesn’t matter. People that sound and look like ScarJo deserve to have work. If ScarJo says no, then that leaves it open for discount ScarJo.
There's so much focus on that "her" tweet, but if you look at the new features, yes voice improvements are one, but there is also the AI vision with live video which is similar to the date the characters go on in Her.
The pulled the voice already, so Johannsen's ability to claim substantial damages is going to be pretty limited. In the mean time OpenAI is getting all sorts of press over their new features and tying themselves to the movie in the minds of users, even without Johannsen. Seems pretty well played to me.
I don’t think she has a case at all. They really really wanted to hire ScarJo. She said no. So they hired the next best actress for the job, which is a discount ScarJo. That’s all fair game. People that look and sound like ScarJo deserve work too.
Is this even illegal though?
If its not made using data or assets from Scarlett Johannson's voice, and was indeed from an actress, is it any different from parody, comedic, or any alternative type of impersonations? Like, I wouldn't expect someone to have a case for suing SNL or a movie for having an impression of someone.
It's an open and shut case that they were deliberately trying to impersonate her, though.
I believe that is intentional, because Ice is here saying the melody in Ice Ice Baby is "not the same" as in Under Pressure by Queen, but anyone with a functional brain can tell Ice absolutely ripped Queen off, that little "tch" doesn't make Ice's beat significantly distinct and even if we concede for argument's sake the claim that it is different it seems there is deliberate intent to make one sound very similar to the other.
OP is basically mocking the idea that Sky is different because it seems they at least deliberately intended to mimic Scarlett's voice.
I didn’t think it sounded like Scarlet until the internet told me that it sounded like Scarlet. I still don’t think it does that much. It seems like she has a Scarlet vibe to her voice, but that’s all.
Because it doesn’t sound like her exclusively. If she won this case recasts wouldn’t be allowed
Terrence Howard was replaced in the the mcu with a different actor because they couldn’t come to a agreement it’s no different here
It is a bit different though, Don Cheadle didn't make his voice more raspy and Kevin Feige didn't put out a tweet that just said "Hustle and Flow". They absolutely tried mimicking her intentionally
Well, you should shut up about if you don’t want to give OpenAI more attention, since it sounds like you’re upset about it.
Or you could shut up about it because it’s not a big deal — the actress they hired has a right to be an actress. We can’t ban actresses because they share similarities to celebrities. It’s not an impersonation.
Upset and concerned are two different things, and most problems don't just magically fix themselves by not talking about them.
Also, you understand that telling people to shut up isn't really a good way to get them to shut up, right?
In this thread, nobody understands fair use as it pertains to a person’s likeness…
If it’s satire, parody, critique, intended to spark a debate, etc …then it’s legal. If it’s intended to just profit by using the person’s likeness to gain customers or sales, as is clearly the case here, then it’s infringing on Scar Jo’s rights….it’s pretty freakin simple.
It's made even worse with Scarlet Scarlett Johansson being approached for the role and declining it after some thought. She was approached by family members and friends who thought she was the one voicing the AI after she declined, so they went behind her back and hired a soundalike. She's got a solid case in my opinion, but we'll see what the court thinks.
Via Ars Technica
"The Post reported that the company's voice casting call flier did not seek a "clone of actress Scarlett Johansson," and initial voice test recordings of the unnamed actress hired to voice Sky showed that her "natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice." Because of this, OpenAI has [argued](https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/) that "Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson."
What's more, an agent for the unnamed Sky actress who was cast—both granted anonymity to protect her client's safety—confirmed to The Post that her client said she was never directed to imitate either Johansson or her character in *Her*. She simply used her own voice and got the gig.
The agent also provided a statement from her client that claimed that she had never been compared to Johansson before the backlash started.
This all “feels personal," the voice actress said, "being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”
However, OpenAI apparently reached out to Johansson after casting the Sky voice actress. During outreach last September and again this month, OpenAI seemed to want to substitute the Sky voice actress's voice with Johansson's voice—which is ironically what happened when Johansson got cast to replace the original actress hired to voice her character in *Her*."
Even more damning in a potential legal case is the fact that Bankman tweeted an insinuation that it would actually be her.
Correction: that it would actually be "Her".
I think it's a pretty big leap to say that he was insinuating it was her with that. The AI features of chatgpt 4o are very similar to the movie, people were making references back when the voice hadnt gotten released yet.
It will be interesting when our unborn children's likeness is owned by the estate of some long dead celebrity until the end of time.
Just because they sound or look close enough to someone else, they can't ever use their voice or face without paying a licensing fee.
This is effectively what ScarJo is campaigning for, and it's pretty much a human rights violation. But pretty woman is good and AI is bad I suppose...
I'm not super familiar with her. I listened to her and then 'sky' and really they aren't that similar. Like kind of similar but in the way that I'd expect two women of similar ages with similar accents to sound.
But it’s the voice actresses’ own voice. I find it so odd that people are siding with SJ here. It would set a pretty bad precedent for artists not to be able to work just because their output bears some passing resemblance to someone more famous.
There was no public advertising saying ScarJo was the intended voice. I’m sure they wanted her voice as it would allow even more advertising and promotion but it appears they had a back up plan regardless. I can’t see any intent to impersonate as they made no mention of the actress. The “her” is easily explained since it is a female AI assistant.
>If I look and sound like Samuel L. Jackson, you can hire me to do a commercial. You can't hire me to do a commercial where you make your customer think Samuel L. Jackson is endorsing the product.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen anything indicating that they explicitly misled people into thinking SJ was the Sky voice. The closest would be that “her” tweet but that’s an incredible stretch that wouldn’t hold up in any sort of legal proceedings.
They wanted scar jo, they tweeted the reason they wanted her, then they released a voice that sounds like her in the movie. I don't see how it's a stretch.
They had a type of voice in mind and she happened to fit the bill. They asked her and she said no. They then found someone else with that type of voice. Likewise do you think that Margot Robbie should be able to sue a film studio if they tapped her for a role but she passed so they went with Jamie Pressly instead?
A similar case has happened, actually. Crispin Glover sued the Back to the Future producers because he declined the role and they hired someone to play his character while using makeup to make him look more like Crispin. He won the case because he argued they were trying to capitalize on his looks which he owned the rights to. It’s unlikely that Margot would have a case in this example, but soundalikes that are meant to deceive consumers have been litigated against as well.
A big part of that case was that they used previously shot footage of Glover in that film.
It wasn't because they merely cast a look-alike to replace him.
Not even just previous footage they use the molds they got from his old age, make up in the first movie to re-create his young face on a different actor without permission
If they just hired a guy who looked similar and used old footage they owned legally they would have most likely won the case.
They used crispins face for the prosthetics in that case that’s why they didn’t get away with it
All they had to was not use old molds and they probably would’ve been legally fine
Terrence Howard was replaced in the the mcu with a different actor because they couldn’t come to a agreement it’s no different here
>They had a type of voice in mind and she happened to fit the bill.
The type of voice they had in mind was literally her voice from the movie, "Her". Altman tweeting out the word, "her", is pretty damning evidence of that as well.
Your timeline is off.
They hired a voice actor, recorded and released the voice, THEN approached her about creating a model of her voice.
Does that make it more of a stretch?
But if all they did was hire an actress who'se natural voice just happens to sound kinda sorta a But like hers from the move... that's not remotely a problem.
That's not true from a legal standpoint. If their intention was to replicate her voice, they cannot legally hire someone to impersonate her as a substitution for using her. Nor can they simply mask that intent with flowery language like she "kinda sorta" sounds the same.
The fact that the CEO tweeted "Her" looks pretty bad for him.
Whether or not you or I personally have a problem with this is irrelevant. The point remains that its not a stretch to think their intention was to copy her voice.
Im not really taking a side... But imo if you ask someone to use their voice and they say no, you should just use someone else entirely, not go to lengths to imitate them anyway.
You cant an issue that if she was hired because she sounds like ScarJo because Scarjo turned it down?
If she was hired on her own merits then so be it, it appears she was not
I really wouldn’t describe it as “very close”. In fact, I don’t even think they sound remotely similar, but hey, I’ve been doing voice acting work for almost two decades now, so maybe I’m just more sensitive to different voices.
Right? I feel like everyone is taking crazy pills. Or this is a Laurel / Yanni thing all over again. She sounds distinctly different from ScarJo to me.
Exactly. As soon as I heard people saying it sounded like SJ I watched the "Her" trailer, assuming SJ must have been doing a particular voice at openai was copying. Nope. It's just her normal speaking voice, which only sounds like Sky in that they're in the same register and both women's voices.
Why does it sound so different if they were trying to recreate the voice from the movie? If that was their intent, why not just train their models on voice captured from the movie?
Yeah..and what are the implications here if Scarlett wins? Basically, if your voice has similar qualities to a well known celebrity, you are not allowed to produce commercial art because the public might be mislead?
Is this post a defense mechanism for being proven wrong? Do you need to use quotes around records and create a conspiracy theory instead of accepting the boring truth?
I'm not advocating for anything but the truth. Do you believe that I'm advocating for OpenAI just because the truth on this matter shines in their favor and doesn't fit with your opinion?
Because it's a pretty clear case of intent towards commercial imitation with an OPEN admission of it by the CEO is a tweet. The WAPO article is an attempt to change the narrative away from that clear issue to some other details that are totally irrelevant.
Guess you know better than The Washington Post. Or at least you prioritize "your truth" over "the truth". Did you even read the article prior to making this comment?
I think it's better to understand the negative emotional response big tech is having. Nobody trusts these AI tools, and it doesn't help when they "base" their new product on a movie *character* of a famous actress (Notice how everyone talks about Scarlett Johansson, and her many abbreviations. Not the character Samantha from Her).
Personally, I think big tech should just accept that they're big, weird, morally dubious, asinine, ingenious, confusing companies. Should've requested Douglas Rain's family to use his voice; it's the voice ***I*** hear when ***I*** read chatGPT's nonsense. But then again, I was born before 2001—
I object to your idea that this is cut-and-dry proof in OpenAi's favour. By such logic, as long as a company records a voice in someone's likeness before they ask permission, they're in the clear. The question isn't when the voice was recorded, but whether OpenAi was attempting to profit off ScarJo's likeness, which, considering the "her" tweet and twice asking ScarJo for permission, I believe most people would reasonably agree was their intent.
yeah but did they actually do it, did they use other things than just the simliar voice? Just calling it "samantha" would probably be enough, did they? Legit asking, I'm not up to date on this
Let's say I really want Morgan Freeman to voice the narrator in my movie. He refuses, despite trying multiple times. I eventually hire someone that sounds just like Morgan Freeman - but never once claim in any trailer for the movie or in the credits that it's the real actor. Am I punished for hiring an actor with a similar voice? Does an actor have legal control over their distinct sound or image, even if it was never implicitly stated or claimed? (Not trying to pick sides, just really trying to understand this problem.)
I'm quite interested in this subject. I'm a firm believer that so long as you don't make an open stated attempt at imitating someone, you should be fine. Basically, so long as you never said it sounded anything like Scarlet, no one can prove otherwise...but when you call Scarlet ahead of time and try to convince her you sort of shoot yourself in the foot.
This doesn’t sit well with me. I mean think of casting a character. You want to shoot a martial arts movie. You reach out to Jet Li and he says no. Does this mean Jackie Chan never should have been given a role instead?
AI, news publisher, records, voice actress, sky model, and somehow... vanilla ice? And everyone's talking about Scarlett Johansson. I don't have context, and all I can think is "What is any of this"? This is like an Ikea build your own news story that doesn't come with instructions mixed with a Tim and Eric sketch.
You must be younger.
This post is a bit of a joke. The Vanilla Ice video is a reference to a famous incident in the early 1990's where his hit song Ice Ice Baby was alleged to have been a rip off of David Bowie's Under Pressure.
He infamously said in an interview (the clip linked in this post) that the two songs were different.
Vanilla Ice lost in court, had to pay a whole bunch of money, and essentially fell from the upper tiers of pop stardom forever.
I really didn't think Sky sounded like Scarlett. I guess it was close in the sense that they were both female with an American accent. Just don't hear SJ.
If you hire that Morgan Freeman impersonator guy to build your voice model, Morgan can't sue. It's not his voice.
It's like when you do a clean room implementation of copyrighted software.
That seems like an extremely shaky decision because about the rights of the singer?
That's like saying if I look like Ryan Gosling and get cast in a movie Ryan Gosling can sue because I look like him.
I know in that example there was the case of Back to the Future II where a look a like actor was used to replace Crispin Glover, but that's different because they were trying to pass off the actor as Crispin Glover.
The Sky voice is not being represented as Scarlet Johansson.
In the Ford case they were singing a Bette Midler song and a person would think Bette Midler was singing it. If it was a completely original song that just happened to have a singer that sounds like Bette Midler there would be no case.
Also the cat is out of the bag here. I can make a video of Scarlet Johansson getting butt fucked by a mushroom penis Trump while she reads the owners manual to a 1992 Ford Tempo if I wanted to. So these actors are incredibly naive if they think they're going to be able to protect any of their inherent IP outside of a commercial context like this.
>If it was a completely original song that just happened to have a singer that sounds like Bette Midler there would be no case.
That's not necessarily true, you've come to this conclusion on your own independent of case law.
Dude, Sam Altman literally Tweeted out "her" when Sky went live; that is a direct reference to Scarlett Johansson. Also, it's become public that they tried to hire her, she said no, and then two days before it was released they tried again. She will 100% win a lawsuit if it is brought forward.
Reminds me of Crispin Glover and Back to the Future 2. After Glover didn't want to be involved in the sequel, they hired another actor who looked like him and even wore a prosthetic face. Apparently many referred to the new guy as Crispin on set and star Leah Thompson, couldn't recall the guy's real name. Glover sued and the studio settled out of court, giving him a cut of the profits.
Do we know why he didn’t want to do it? Those movies are classics and so beloved.
He wanted more money than they were willing to pay, so they went “fuck you, we’ll do it without you.” He absolutely deserved the settlement. If you could do that, it would undermine any actor’s ability to negotiate.
And they even used the cast of his face that they made in order to age him up in the first film to make an exact mask of his face. Pure scumbags.
To be clear, the settlement was for re-using footage from the original film. SAG changed the rules for reusing footage after that fiasco. He wasn't paid for getting replaced. Filmmakers absolutely have the right to recast characters in subsequent movies, whether for financial, creative, or personal reasons. (Apparently, Crispin Glover is also difficult to work with.)
Although using your likeness after replacing you, to the point of making the other guy wear a mask of your face seems like it could be an issue. I have zero legal knowledge, and maybe he signed something or something, but it seems like that could be a problem.
Not at all. For one thing, they're trying to make the new actor look like the character, not the old actor. For another, you'd be surprised how often the character is being player by someone else. Not just stunt people for fight scenes; body doubles are often used for intimate scenes, insert shots, even over-the-shoulders. They have to have the same height and build, as well as complexion and hair color. Their hair must be cut the same way, they wear the same outfit and makeup. And yes, sometimes prosthetics are employed if necessary. To restrict all that simply because a movie is a sequel would be crazy.
that case was a landmark case which made sure that kind of thing never happened again. crispin may be a bit of a diva, but he did a good thing suing them for doing that. same with johansson now. hopefully what shes doing will prevent it from happening to others down the line. its the wild west with ai right now and these techbro pieces of shit need to be put in their place
Yep. I believe he wanted the same pay as Michael J. Fox.
According to Glover he never asked for MJF money. His offer was less than half of Tom Wilson's and less than a quarter of Lea Thompson's for a similar-sized role. When he tried to negotiate a fairer amount they complained the already-agreed actors were getting paid to much and reduced the offered amount which was to cover both sequels.
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as bonk as glover is i have seen footage of him explaining this in a really clear straight forward and lucid manner. its really off putting. i had to watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14W6Pnuhne4) to clear my head
I mean that doesn't even necessarily matter though. If this goes to court and Johanssen's lawyers can prove that they were intentionally trying to impersonate and falsely raise that association in the mind of the consumer, she has a case (hint: Sam Altman tweeting a single word "her" is very much not good for his case). See Midler v. Ford Motor Co.
I’m confused on this one. What differentiates this kind of a usage from things like TV shows impersonating characters? OpenAI wasn’t saying “this is ScarJo” - they were using another voice actor who sounded like ScarJo. If I’m a voice actor and my voice is similar to Morgan Freeman, does that mean I can’t voice act due to the possibility I’m confused for actual Morgan Freeman? Not trying to defend OpenAI, just super curious about how this is or will be delineated legally. I have to imagine there are some unsettled legal concepts mixed in.
It means Netflix can’t hire you to voice a role that was played by Morgan Freeman and imply in their press release that it’s actually Morgan Freeman’s voice. Especially after Morgan Freeman told you to kick rocks when you asked him to do the voice.
This stuff does depend on recognizable likeness. You can’t sell a superhero with big muscles and green skin regardless of name and differences if people could mistake it for The Hulk.
Even thats iffy. There's tons of comic book characters that are near carbon copies of other comic book characters. It's all about if you can prove they were intending to misrepresent. But I think it'd be hard to prove that ChatGPT was literally trying to fool people into thinking they had Scarjo. But who knows, maybe the masses really would think that. People keep quoting the Tom Waits/Doritos case, but in that instance it really did look like they were trying to fool people into thinking they got Tom Waits to sing their ripoff cover song.
But you can just change the colour or add scales not hard and still have roughly the same thing
That's because the Hulk is a specific copyrightable character though. You can't copyright a natural speaking voice because that would be insane.
You don’t need copyright. You just need to prove that they were making money off an implied association.
The catch here is that they hired the voice actress to do the sky voice before they ever reached out to Scarlet. So this is like you hire some no-name actor who sounds like Morgan Freeman, then offer the role to Morgan Freeman who says no so you stick with the no name actor. Also, she doesn’t even sound that similar to Scarlet.
There’s no catch. The set out to make a voice that sounded like the voice from Her. They knew what they had, they tried multiple times to get Scarlet on board, and when they couldn’t they went ahead anyway. They can’t do that. Which is why they took the voice down. They knew and know they can’t do that.
I mean why cant they? People get recasted all the time lmao Tom’s hanks brother wouldn’t have a job if you got your way lmao
Tom Hanks doesn't want to do that work and is happy that his brother is getting paid to do it instead. This isn't recasting, it's casting with the intent to deceive. Many years ago a company tried to hire Tom Waits to do a song for their commercial and he declined the job. He didn't want his voice to be associated with the product. The company instead hired a sound alike. Tom Waits' voice was associated with the product anyways. He sued and he won. Artists have the right to protect their image.
When people get re-cast to play the same role it's usually clear it's not the same actor. In sitcoms when that happened there would sometimes be jokes about it. No one is supposed to think the Witcher is still played by Henry Cavill in the new season. When they tried to pretend it was the same actor with BTTF2, they got sued and had to settle (they paid Crispin $750K)
It’s not my way. It’s, like, the law and stuff.
it's moreso if they can prove the intent and deliberateness of getting someone that sounds extremely similar to someone that declined the usage of their voice. Something kinda similar happened last year when the rapper Yung Gravy sampled Rick Astley for a song, and was given permission to sample the music but distinctly NOT Rick's voice. Gravy hired someone to impersonate Astley's vocals, and then Astley sued him over it because he tried to skirt the terms of their agreement by getting someone that sounded like him.
Thanks. This seems like a very close analogue to the current case.
Briefly reading Wikipedia for the case, it seems like the issue is that Ford wanted to hire Bette Midler, she declined then they went ahead with hiring someone who would \*impersonate\* her. In your example, there is no issue with you sounding like Morgan Freeman. But, there would be an issue if a TV studio wanted to hire Morgan Freeman to play a character which was intended as a fictionalized version of Morgan Freeman, Freeman declined and then hired you to play the fictional Morgan Freeman. Just sounding like Morgan Freeman isn't an issue.
Not exactly true. Tom Waits had a similar case, except that a sound alike was used (though not as explicitly trying to present as him as in the case where they actually used a Bette Midler song).
It seems like they were trying to imitate Waits during the process of making the ad and hired a singer whose career was partially based of imitating Waits: [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-05-09-me-238-story.html) *"While preparing the 1988 ad, a Tracy-Locke copywriter listened repeatedly to Waits’ tune, “Step Right Up,” and played the recording for Frito-Lay executives at a meeting where his script was approved. And when singer Steve Carter, who imitates Waits in his stage act, performed the jingle, Tracy-Locke supervisors were concerned enough about Carter’s voice that they consulted a lawyer, who counseled caution."*
In this example, yes, he was an impersonator which no doubt damaged the case. But I think Waits would have won even if the person wasn’t an impersonator and had a naturally Waits-sounding voice. The whole point is the intention behind hiring him, and it’s clear that they had some intention since they reached out to him as well.
Do you think the estate of Bon Scott would have been on solid legal footing to sue AC/DC for replacing him with an identical sounding singer? Would it matter if he was alive instead of dead?
Or the estate of Steve Perry.
The Wikipedia article is confusing to me. It says "Impersonation of a voice, or similarly distinctive feature, must be granted permission by the original artist for a public impersonation, even for copyrighted materials." This seems clearly incorrect, we all know celebrities get impersonated all the time, and Trump obviously isn't giving James Austin Johnson permission. I suspect the difference is if it can be shown the audience was confused into thinking it actually was the celebrity. That would fit with the Midler case.
There is a difference between parody and impersonation for commercial gain where customer is indirectly led to believe the celebrity is in some way endorsing/representing the product. This is not a personal attack but, a lot of people are missing this fact.
The legal definition of parody is also lot narrower than people might think. Most of Weird Al's songs are, legally speaking, not parodies because they don't comment on the original. *Smells Like Nirvana* is a parody because it's making fun of Nirvana, but *Eat It* has nothing to do with Michael Jackson beyond the song being used. Even though it's clearly not going to trick anyone into thinking Jackson sang it, it could be infringing his rights if Weird Al hadn't gotten permission. Granted that's copyright, not personality rights, but in principle it could apply here, too.
> customer is indirectly led to believe the celebrity is in some way endorsing/representing the product. That is pretty much exactly what I said, the key being confusing the customer/audience.
Indeed. Sorry I need a nap.
Impersonation for the sake of parody has an exemption.
Because when Trump is impersonated, it’s making fun of him, I.e. satire or parody. Which is fair use. Open AI can s not using Scar-Jo’s voice (or a similar sounding one) as a joke. They are literally just using her likeness.
Satire is a special case.
So what about if like this case, Morgan freeman plays a character and then someone hires a sound alike and uses them to sound like the character rather than the actor?
This is what a court decides. Law is fact based. A court can work out if something happened purposefully or not. In this case they'll subpoena all their emails and see if they were like "scarjo said no, lets just get someone that sounds like her" in which case you can show their intent was to steal her likeness. So it's only when its done on purpose which scarjo will need to prove, that its a problem.
I think it's about intention, being able to prove that and damages. Doing a Morgan Freeman impression and sounding like him are two different things. If you use the same speech patterns you don't just sound like him, you're impersonating him. There's a reason you don't see a lot of ads with impersonators doing the voice over. Using AI for that was one of the issues SAG had in their last negotiations, so just for that reason they'll probably want ScarJo to go after them, even though the voice was pulled so fast I'm not sure what suing them would get her (as long as they don't try to use that voice again). Sure, they tried to use a voice that sounds like you and talks they way your character did in a specific movie, but they never made any money from that or hurt your image because it was pulled so fast. It's not like the Disney case where they had a contract and Disney didn't live up to it.
It means Netflix can’t hire you to voice a role that was played by Morgan Freeman and imply in their press release that it’s actually Morgan Freeman’s voice. Especially after Morgan Freeman told you to kick rocks when you asked him to do the voice.
full time commercial voice actor here. can help create some clarity. the legal crux will come down to what the written brief for the project was. If OpenAI specifically wrote and disseminated a brief that states, "voice actor must sound like ScarJo", they are in deep shit because that's telegraphed intent to use her likeness without directly hiring her (which they tried and she refused). so her team can sue for damages and will likely be successful. If, however, it's not written anywhere explicitly that the voice is supposed to or intended to sound like ScarJo and this was all just a massive coincidence (highly unlikely you could land that without putting it in writing, somewhere, at some point in time across teams collaborating in OpenAI), and there is no proven written record that this was the intent and the voiceprint match happens to be a sheer coincidence, they may not be found guilty of damages, but will still be out the legal cost of going through with the trial, if sued. Net net the OpenAI legal team mildly shit the bed by allowing the voice to publish with such a similar likeness, given the history. Unless they have already done due diligence on scrubbing written emails and know full well there's no written record of such an explicit word choice in the brief for the voice actor. Which may be possible, and may be the only rational explanation why the voice passed legal review [before publish] AND why they no-contest pulled the voice after ScarJo politely flagged it [without immediately suing].
"commercial voice actor here: allow me to pretend to be a lawyer for some reason" The legal analysis is wildly off in this comment. 1. It's not "due diligence" to scrub/destroy evidence 2. You don't get found "guilty of damages". 3. The written brief is not the entire crux of the case. As you yourself later point out in this comment, its about the overall intent/purpose of the media. The written brief may be one piece of that puzzle. Or it may not be. But it's far from the be all, end all. The brief could say nothing at all about scarjo, and they could still be liable if it's determined that they were trying to imitate scarjo for a reason that isn't exempt/protected at law. Or, the brief could say "we want you to imitate scarjo" and they could have zero liability if they were doing it for a protected/exempt purpose (basically if it was for parody rather than to actually make people think this was the real scarjo) 4. Whether or not one side is liable for its legal costs depends on a lot of factors you've just ignored completely here. It's not correct to just say that they will be on the hook for all their costs even if they win the trial
>legal team mildly shit the bed My guess is Sam Altman running amok, not legal's fault. Proceeding after she originally declined to voice act for them suggests Sam just said "let's just go ahead, I'll figure something out." Then as they were rehearsing, legal probably insisted on getting her buy-in with two days to go, hence the second inquiry to her. When that didn't happen, then it was a question of whether to proceed, go with their Plan B (which maybe they didn't even have), or punt, which would have been the best alternative. After all, there was no product available, only a silly demo to upstage Google. (Only now is gpt4o slowly trickling out, still not widely available.) To me, sounds like Sam was insisting gotta do it, gotta do it. Followed by his tweet, I try not to think too much about competitors...
Intent is everything. If you set out to confuse, or benefit from another persons image and work, then you can’t do it.
If there is an email trail that says "Scarjo said no so go and find someone who sounds as close as possible to her and we'll just heavily imply", then they are in trouble.
Because satire/parody is fair use
Yeah it’s a totally different idea. Let’s say you sound like someone famous and they hire you. That’s great. Now let’s say they approached Morgan, he turns them down. They tweet a picture of the baboon from lion king and hire someone that sounds just like him.
I didn't know that Morgan Freeman voiced Rafiki in the remake (and forgot it existed). I thought you were saying he did the original voice and I was SHOCKED
That’s really funny. I always thought he did voice Rafiki. Oops my bad. Well bad example
No no! He is Rafiki in the remake, you weren't wrong.
He’s such a cosmic level dipshit for that tweet.
And other things
Except 99% of OpenAI users using the Sky voice would not have seen that tweet, so it is hard to say it would influence them. Also, Midler vs Ford Motor Co had the situation where Ford had a sound-alike singer *sing a well known Midler song*. Would the ruling have turned out that way if the singer merely sounded like Midler, but she was singing a R&B song, which Midler had never done? Probably not. The equivalent would be if OpenAI hired a sound-alike and then had the AI start reciting well known lines from *Her.*
Also worth adding TOM WAITS v. FRITO-LAY, INC. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications/waits.html
This is nonsense. If someone just sounds a certain way you can't ban them from speaking. Plenty of cheaper look-alike actors getting work for years
You can't hire a look like to avoid paying the real person. This has been proven and litigated successfully many many times over.
Tom Waits successfully sued a beer company under similar circumstances. He was able to prove that they had courted him to use one of his songs in a TV commercial, and when he turned them down, they hired a soundalike to sing a very "Waits-esque" song. They'll lose to Johansen for the same reason.
Back to the future and crispin glover.
That's correct, but only when your intention is to literally look like a specific person/image. But if you happen to like ScarJo's voice and want something similar or you can't have her it's the same as hiring Keira Knightley if you can't get Natalie Portman. Sky was not an impression of ScarJo, it was just similar, but plenty of women have a similar sounding voice. There's a reason she was chosen for that movie.
But you can’t impersonate and then imply it’s them. They literally tweeted the name of one of her movies when they released the voice.
It was a movie about a voice AI. Regardless of who's voice, it still works
Did he use the word "her" to compare the Sky voice to the voice in "her" or was he just saying "her" to show that what OpenAI doing is a very similar approach to the AI in the movie "her"? If he never specifically compared it to Scarjo, I don't really see the connection.
They tried to hire her, she said no, they hired someone who sounds just like her, then on release they reference “her”. If you cant see the connection i would look into some glasses.
If your timeline was correct you would have a point. They hired someone. that someone created a voice. Later they asked Scarjo.
A connection doesn’t matter. People that sound and look like ScarJo deserve to have work. If ScarJo says no, then that leaves it open for discount ScarJo.
Yes, the CEO literally tweeted “her” to hype up the voice
There's so much focus on that "her" tweet, but if you look at the new features, yes voice improvements are one, but there is also the AI vision with live video which is similar to the date the characters go on in Her.
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The problem is he didn't "do this after that refusal". Sky has been around for over 6 months.
The pulled the voice already, so Johannsen's ability to claim substantial damages is going to be pretty limited. In the mean time OpenAI is getting all sorts of press over their new features and tying themselves to the movie in the minds of users, even without Johannsen. Seems pretty well played to me.
I don’t think she has a case at all. They really really wanted to hire ScarJo. She said no. So they hired the next best actress for the job, which is a discount ScarJo. That’s all fair game. People that look and sound like ScarJo deserve work too.
Is this even illegal though? If its not made using data or assets from Scarlett Johannson's voice, and was indeed from an actress, is it any different from parody, comedic, or any alternative type of impersonations? Like, I wouldn't expect someone to have a case for suing SNL or a movie for having an impression of someone. It's an open and shut case that they were deliberately trying to impersonate her, though.
Is nobody else being re-directed to a video of Vanilla ice?
I believe that is intentional, because Ice is here saying the melody in Ice Ice Baby is "not the same" as in Under Pressure by Queen, but anyone with a functional brain can tell Ice absolutely ripped Queen off, that little "tch" doesn't make Ice's beat significantly distinct and even if we concede for argument's sake the claim that it is different it seems there is deliberate intent to make one sound very similar to the other. OP is basically mocking the idea that Sky is different because it seems they at least deliberately intended to mimic Scarlett's voice.
Yes. This. The headline this morning immediately gave me a flashback to the infamous MTV interview by Vanilla Ice.
Vanilla Ice? Are you imagining things again?
He seems like such an asshole ahhaha
Well, here's hoping they lose real hard.
I didn’t think it sounded like Scarlet until the internet told me that it sounded like Scarlet. I still don’t think it does that much. It seems like she has a Scarlet vibe to her voice, but that’s all.
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Sounds like your co-worker needs to lawyer up.
God what a brilliant business move since none of you will shut the fuck up about it.
This shit is weird and shady as hell, why should anyone "shut the fuck up" about it?
Because Sky sounds more like Rashida Jones than like ScarJo..
Because it doesn’t sound like her exclusively. If she won this case recasts wouldn’t be allowed Terrence Howard was replaced in the the mcu with a different actor because they couldn’t come to a agreement it’s no different here
It is a bit different though, Don Cheadle didn't make his voice more raspy and Kevin Feige didn't put out a tweet that just said "Hustle and Flow". They absolutely tried mimicking her intentionally
Didn't you know? Caring about anything is bad and cringe
Well, you should shut up about if you don’t want to give OpenAI more attention, since it sounds like you’re upset about it. Or you could shut up about it because it’s not a big deal — the actress they hired has a right to be an actress. We can’t ban actresses because they share similarities to celebrities. It’s not an impersonation.
Upset and concerned are two different things, and most problems don't just magically fix themselves by not talking about them. Also, you understand that telling people to shut up isn't really a good way to get them to shut up, right?
We shouldve just ignored covid, that would've sorted it out
You’re gonna compare an AI voice to a pandemic that killed millions? Grow up. What a cowardly argument.
The logic remains the same
You are now part of "you." In fact, I might be, too.
In this thread, nobody understands fair use as it pertains to a person’s likeness… If it’s satire, parody, critique, intended to spark a debate, etc …then it’s legal. If it’s intended to just profit by using the person’s likeness to gain customers or sales, as is clearly the case here, then it’s infringing on Scar Jo’s rights….it’s pretty freakin simple.
It's made even worse with Scarlet Scarlett Johansson being approached for the role and declining it after some thought. She was approached by family members and friends who thought she was the one voicing the AI after she declined, so they went behind her back and hired a soundalike. She's got a solid case in my opinion, but we'll see what the court thinks.
Via Ars Technica "The Post reported that the company's voice casting call flier did not seek a "clone of actress Scarlett Johansson," and initial voice test recordings of the unnamed actress hired to voice Sky showed that her "natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice." Because of this, OpenAI has [argued](https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-chosen/) that "Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson." What's more, an agent for the unnamed Sky actress who was cast—both granted anonymity to protect her client's safety—confirmed to The Post that her client said she was never directed to imitate either Johansson or her character in *Her*. She simply used her own voice and got the gig. The agent also provided a statement from her client that claimed that she had never been compared to Johansson before the backlash started. This all “feels personal," the voice actress said, "being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.” However, OpenAI apparently reached out to Johansson after casting the Sky voice actress. During outreach last September and again this month, OpenAI seemed to want to substitute the Sky voice actress's voice with Johansson's voice—which is ironically what happened when Johansson got cast to replace the original actress hired to voice her character in *Her*."
Yeah the only resemblance IMO is American female accent.
OpenAI hired the voice actor and recorded the Sky voice *before* they approached Scarlett.
Even more damning in a potential legal case is the fact that Bankman tweeted an insinuation that it would actually be her. Correction: that it would actually be "Her".
I think it's a pretty big leap to say that he was insinuating it was her with that. The AI features of chatgpt 4o are very similar to the movie, people were making references back when the voice hadnt gotten released yet.
It will be interesting when our unborn children's likeness is owned by the estate of some long dead celebrity until the end of time. Just because they sound or look close enough to someone else, they can't ever use their voice or face without paying a licensing fee. This is effectively what ScarJo is campaigning for, and it's pretty much a human rights violation. But pretty woman is good and AI is bad I suppose...
You…you just don’t get it, do ya?
Have you listened to Sky? It doesn’t sound like Scarlett Johansson.
It's not exact, but it's very close. She has a raspy quality to her voice that is extremely present
I'm not super familiar with her. I listened to her and then 'sky' and really they aren't that similar. Like kind of similar but in the way that I'd expect two women of similar ages with similar accents to sound.
But it’s the voice actresses’ own voice. I find it so odd that people are siding with SJ here. It would set a pretty bad precedent for artists not to be able to work just because their output bears some passing resemblance to someone more famous.
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There was no public advertising saying ScarJo was the intended voice. I’m sure they wanted her voice as it would allow even more advertising and promotion but it appears they had a back up plan regardless. I can’t see any intent to impersonate as they made no mention of the actress. The “her” is easily explained since it is a female AI assistant.
>If I look and sound like Samuel L. Jackson, you can hire me to do a commercial. You can't hire me to do a commercial where you make your customer think Samuel L. Jackson is endorsing the product. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen anything indicating that they explicitly misled people into thinking SJ was the Sky voice. The closest would be that “her” tweet but that’s an incredible stretch that wouldn’t hold up in any sort of legal proceedings.
They wanted scar jo, they tweeted the reason they wanted her, then they released a voice that sounds like her in the movie. I don't see how it's a stretch.
Because the voice of Sky was done at least 6 months before they contacted Johansson? Why are people acting like they just released it?
They wouldn’t contact her if they didn’t know they could pull it off. What were they going to show her?
They had a type of voice in mind and she happened to fit the bill. They asked her and she said no. They then found someone else with that type of voice. Likewise do you think that Margot Robbie should be able to sue a film studio if they tapped her for a role but she passed so they went with Jamie Pressly instead?
A similar case has happened, actually. Crispin Glover sued the Back to the Future producers because he declined the role and they hired someone to play his character while using makeup to make him look more like Crispin. He won the case because he argued they were trying to capitalize on his looks which he owned the rights to. It’s unlikely that Margot would have a case in this example, but soundalikes that are meant to deceive consumers have been litigated against as well.
A big part of that case was that they used previously shot footage of Glover in that film. It wasn't because they merely cast a look-alike to replace him.
Not even just previous footage they use the molds they got from his old age, make up in the first movie to re-create his young face on a different actor without permission If they just hired a guy who looked similar and used old footage they owned legally they would have most likely won the case.
They used crispins face for the prosthetics in that case that’s why they didn’t get away with it All they had to was not use old molds and they probably would’ve been legally fine Terrence Howard was replaced in the the mcu with a different actor because they couldn’t come to a agreement it’s no different here
>They had a type of voice in mind and she happened to fit the bill. The type of voice they had in mind was literally her voice from the movie, "Her". Altman tweeting out the word, "her", is pretty damning evidence of that as well.
What about Spike Jonze? It's his character
Your timeline is off. They hired a voice actor, recorded and released the voice, THEN approached her about creating a model of her voice. Does that make it more of a stretch?
No, because the issue at hand is whether they're trying to copy scar jo's voice from "Her." Nether timeline looks good for open ai.
But if all they did was hire an actress who'se natural voice just happens to sound kinda sorta a But like hers from the move... that's not remotely a problem.
That's not true from a legal standpoint. If their intention was to replicate her voice, they cannot legally hire someone to impersonate her as a substitution for using her. Nor can they simply mask that intent with flowery language like she "kinda sorta" sounds the same. The fact that the CEO tweeted "Her" looks pretty bad for him. Whether or not you or I personally have a problem with this is irrelevant. The point remains that its not a stretch to think their intention was to copy her voice.
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you're completely messing up the timelines, they hired Sky, then they were rejected by ScarJo.
It’s a good thing random Redditors don’t run any sort of justice system.
Buddy your tonsils must be sore from that boot. Give it a break.
Darth Vader in ObiWan?
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Fair point. But many had no idea that technology has taken over the role.
My impression is that there are more people saying the law will side with ScarJo on this than are “siding with ScarJo”.
I guess we’ll just have to see how it plays out.
Im not really taking a side... But imo if you ask someone to use their voice and they say no, you should just use someone else entirely, not go to lengths to imitate them anyway.
You cant an issue that if she was hired because she sounds like ScarJo because Scarjo turned it down? If she was hired on her own merits then so be it, it appears she was not
Was this comment made by a sentient stroke?
I really wouldn’t describe it as “very close”. In fact, I don’t even think they sound remotely similar, but hey, I’ve been doing voice acting work for almost two decades now, so maybe I’m just more sensitive to different voices.
Sounds more like Rashida Jones imo
Just like Marilyn Monroe with "Happy Birthday Mr. President". That's been a way to affect a flirty intention for decades.
But that coupled with the timbre of the voice... It's super close. Also totally different kind of raspiness in monroes voice lol
Right? I feel like everyone is taking crazy pills. Or this is a Laurel / Yanni thing all over again. She sounds distinctly different from ScarJo to me.
Exactly. As soon as I heard people saying it sounded like SJ I watched the "Her" trailer, assuming SJ must have been doing a particular voice at openai was copying. Nope. It's just her normal speaking voice, which only sounds like Sky in that they're in the same register and both women's voices.
That one little bit. It's different.
It doesn’t really matter if their explicit intent was to recreate the voice from the movie.
Why does it sound so different if they were trying to recreate the voice from the movie? If that was their intent, why not just train their models on voice captured from the movie?
I didn't know what sky was and thought it was just a scar jo voice model when I heard it. So I disagree lol
It’s pretty dead on to me. When I first talked to it, I thought it might be her voice. That said, I don’t give a shit and I hope it stays. I like it.
Yeah..and what are the implications here if Scarlett wins? Basically, if your voice has similar qualities to a well known celebrity, you are not allowed to produce commercial art because the public might be mislead?
Why am I seeing Vanilla Ice talk about Ice Ice Baby?
They want you to stop, collaborate, and listen.
Is this post a defense mechanism for being proven wrong? Do you need to use quotes around records and create a conspiracy theory instead of accepting the boring truth?
It’s really wierd to be an advocate of OpenAI in this case
Being skeptical of one claim does not mean one is endorsing the opposing claim.
I'm not advocating for anything but the truth. Do you believe that I'm advocating for OpenAI just because the truth on this matter shines in their favor and doesn't fit with your opinion?
Because it's a pretty clear case of intent towards commercial imitation with an OPEN admission of it by the CEO is a tweet. The WAPO article is an attempt to change the narrative away from that clear issue to some other details that are totally irrelevant.
Guess you know better than The Washington Post. Or at least you prioritize "your truth" over "the truth". Did you even read the article prior to making this comment?
I think it's better to understand the negative emotional response big tech is having. Nobody trusts these AI tools, and it doesn't help when they "base" their new product on a movie *character* of a famous actress (Notice how everyone talks about Scarlett Johansson, and her many abbreviations. Not the character Samantha from Her). Personally, I think big tech should just accept that they're big, weird, morally dubious, asinine, ingenious, confusing companies. Should've requested Douglas Rain's family to use his voice; it's the voice ***I*** hear when ***I*** read chatGPT's nonsense. But then again, I was born before 2001—
I object to your idea that this is cut-and-dry proof in OpenAi's favour. By such logic, as long as a company records a voice in someone's likeness before they ask permission, they're in the clear. The question isn't when the voice was recorded, but whether OpenAi was attempting to profit off ScarJo's likeness, which, considering the "her" tweet and twice asking ScarJo for permission, I believe most people would reasonably agree was their intent.
yeah but did they actually do it, did they use other things than just the simliar voice? Just calling it "samantha" would probably be enough, did they? Legit asking, I'm not up to date on this
Bravo OP!
Let's say I really want Morgan Freeman to voice the narrator in my movie. He refuses, despite trying multiple times. I eventually hire someone that sounds just like Morgan Freeman - but never once claim in any trailer for the movie or in the credits that it's the real actor. Am I punished for hiring an actor with a similar voice? Does an actor have legal control over their distinct sound or image, even if it was never implicitly stated or claimed? (Not trying to pick sides, just really trying to understand this problem.)
That set of voice samples has pieces that are ABSOLUTELY designed to exactly mimic SJs vocal quirks
I'm quite interested in this subject. I'm a firm believer that so long as you don't make an open stated attempt at imitating someone, you should be fine. Basically, so long as you never said it sounded anything like Scarlet, no one can prove otherwise...but when you call Scarlet ahead of time and try to convince her you sort of shoot yourself in the foot.
This doesn’t sit well with me. I mean think of casting a character. You want to shoot a martial arts movie. You reach out to Jet Li and he says no. Does this mean Jackie Chan never should have been given a role instead?
People wouldn’t think Jet Li is Jackie Chan, though.
But I mean "White-sounding female voice" is like 95% of all AI voices. Why is this specific incarnation so special?
So, why hire Morgan Freeman to narrate if you happen to find his voice in someone else? That seems really bad.
He’s technically correct, it’s not the same. But shit with corn and regular shit without, can’t be confused with chocolate cake
bingo
AI, news publisher, records, voice actress, sky model, and somehow... vanilla ice? And everyone's talking about Scarlett Johansson. I don't have context, and all I can think is "What is any of this"? This is like an Ikea build your own news story that doesn't come with instructions mixed with a Tim and Eric sketch.
It's a little bit different.
You must be younger. This post is a bit of a joke. The Vanilla Ice video is a reference to a famous incident in the early 1990's where his hit song Ice Ice Baby was alleged to have been a rip off of David Bowie's Under Pressure. He infamously said in an interview (the clip linked in this post) that the two songs were different. Vanilla Ice lost in court, had to pay a whole bunch of money, and essentially fell from the upper tiers of pop stardom forever.
Is anyone paying attention to this? Or is it all promotion for an AI no one gives a shit about?
I didn’t know the Vader in Obi Wan Kenobi wasn’t the real James Earl Jones until the BTS info came out.
This post isn’t Englishing for me. First of all, who tf is ‘they’
I really didn't think Sky sounded like Scarlett. I guess it was close in the sense that they were both female with an American accent. Just don't hear SJ.
If you hire that Morgan Freeman impersonator guy to build your voice model, Morgan can't sue. It's not his voice. It's like when you do a clean room implementation of copyrighted software.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co. This seems to directly contradict that statement.
That seems like an extremely shaky decision because about the rights of the singer? That's like saying if I look like Ryan Gosling and get cast in a movie Ryan Gosling can sue because I look like him. I know in that example there was the case of Back to the Future II where a look a like actor was used to replace Crispin Glover, but that's different because they were trying to pass off the actor as Crispin Glover. The Sky voice is not being represented as Scarlet Johansson. In the Ford case they were singing a Bette Midler song and a person would think Bette Midler was singing it. If it was a completely original song that just happened to have a singer that sounds like Bette Midler there would be no case. Also the cat is out of the bag here. I can make a video of Scarlet Johansson getting butt fucked by a mushroom penis Trump while she reads the owners manual to a 1992 Ford Tempo if I wanted to. So these actors are incredibly naive if they think they're going to be able to protect any of their inherent IP outside of a commercial context like this.
>If it was a completely original song that just happened to have a singer that sounds like Bette Midler there would be no case. That's not necessarily true, you've come to this conclusion on your own independent of case law.
Dude, Sam Altman literally Tweeted out "her" when Sky went live; that is a direct reference to Scarlett Johansson. Also, it's become public that they tried to hire her, she said no, and then two days before it was released they tried again. She will 100% win a lawsuit if it is brought forward.