OpenAl is sticking to its story that it never intended to copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice when seeking an actor for ChatGPT’s “Sky” voice mode.

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.”

This comes at a time when many studios are otherwise intrigued by the idea of using AI for things like digital effects but remain, after a long history of avoiding copyright conflicts, hesitant to connect with any company potentially viewed as stealing artists’ work without consent, Reuters reported.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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    5 months ago

    Setting aside whether soundalikes-hyped-as-the-real-deal is a violation of personal likeness rights…

    How do we know what voice(s) they actually used? To my understanding, the process atomizes the input such that you can never actually prove what went into it.

    Their whole business seems to be one of selling plausible-deniability engines.

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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      5 months ago

      I think a huge issue currently is the widespread “AI” hysteria. People kinda want to believe that they did this violation because they already have this negative image of LLMs in their mind from all the overblown headlines & scenarios that they’ve read.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I think it’s fair to err on the side of shadiness with OpenAI considering their training data controversies with gtp and Sora.

        I don’t mean this argumentatively but would you be surprised if it came out that they did use Johansson’s voice to train it?

        • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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          5 months ago

          It would seem weird to have them go through the trouble of hiring this woman only to then not use her recordings in favor of Scarlet Johansson’s voice only to then not claim it is Scarlet Johansson. I’m not a fan of a lot of what is being done with AI but that logic just doesn’t make sense to me.

          • glimse@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I don’t think anyone is claiming that they scrapped the hired actor’s voice completely. I’m inclined to think they supplemented the training data with Johansson’s long career.

            OpenAI has not been very open about where they source anything and there’s more evidence than not that they’ve used copyrighted material in the past.

            • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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              5 months ago

              I’m inclined to think they supplemented the training data with Johansson’s long career.

              But why do that? They’re already paying someone they can have her say everything they need.

              • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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                5 months ago

                They’re paying her for plausible deniability. They tried multiple times to get Johansson to agree to allow her voice to be used, including two days before they released it. They’re covering their ass.

        • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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          5 months ago

          Surprised? No. But I think we should stick with the facts we actually know instead of starting witch hunts just because we don’t like the company.

          • glimse@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I don’t think it’s a witch hunt to call it into question, though. I feel bad for the voice actor they hired but what they showed of it is remarkably similar to Johansson’s iconic voice from Her.

            It’s akin to (though not nearly on the same level) as having a voice that says “it’s-a-me, Vincenzo! Wahoo!” and saying it’s just a coincidence that it sounds like Mario

            • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Maybe they hired her because of her voice’s the likeness to Johansson. It’s getting 90% of what they wanted but still being legal I’d think.

              • glimse@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Maybe. I don’t claim to know the truth, just saying that thinking they’re being shady is an not unfounded thought

      • mutant_zz@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        And most of those headlines are spread by the tech companies… So we don’t have much reason to trust them

      • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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        5 months ago

        It’s kind of funny. This lawsuit is the same kind of “criti-hype” that they’ve been pushing since day one.