[HN Gopher] Tom Waits vs. Frito-Lay, Inc (2003)
___________________________________________________________________
Tom Waits vs. Frito-Lay, Inc (2003)
Author : Borrible
Score : 249 points
Date : 2024-05-23 09:52 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tomwaitslibrary.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (tomwaitslibrary.info)
| asimpletune wrote:
| This is a good example of the case Scarlett Johansson has against
| OpenAI
| tptacek wrote:
| ... and that the Washington Post just comprehensively refuted,
| finding the voice actor and reviewing contemporaneous
| documentation showing that they were hired months before
| Johansson was ever contacted.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That...doesn't refute the case at all.
|
| It, at best, makes it slightly less likely that the
| _original_ intent was commercial imitation, but it doesn't do
| anything to refute the case that that's what the ultimate use
| was. Adding one extra round to the back and forth of how they
| got to that point doesn't really change anything important.
| tptacek wrote:
| These are a lot of words that don't do anything to change
| the fact that the voice alleged to be an imitation of SJ is
| in fact the natural speaking voice of a professional voice
| actor hired months before OpenAI contacted SJ, in an open
| call that mentioned nothing at all about SJ or "Her".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It being the "natural speaking voice" of the voice actor
| is immaterial to what the intent or effect was when it
| was publicly used, which is what is legally relevant.
| Yes, that they didn't record the intent to imitate at the
| time of the selection is absence of evidence of intent at
| that time, which is, viewed extremely generously, very
| weak evidence of absence of intent at that time,
| but...that's it.
|
| You seem to be looking at this as if right of publicity
| were like copyright, where what is essentially protected
| is, well, the act of copying.
|
| Right of publicity is a separate area of law, but it is
| more like trademark than copyright. The mechanism by
| which a resemblance which is commercially leveraged is
| attained is not relevant.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| But it doesn't sound that much like her, and wasn't
| positioned publicly in a way that in any way touches on
| right of publicity considerations. The Midler reasoning
| also rested on how much of the artist's brand recognition
| (though that's not the term used) was in the voice.
| Intentional impression of a singer doing that singer's
| song is very different than "they hired someone with
| moderately similar vocal features to ScarJo and Rashida
| Jones to speak in their own voice."
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Except many, many people including a lot of HNers thought
| Johannson had done the voice. That is _exactly_ what
| Midler tort is.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| People mistaking one person's real voice for another
| person's real voice is basically nothing like what
| happened in the Midler case.
|
| The Midler case was a vocal impersonation using one of
| Midler's songs. As discussed in the Midler case, where
| there's an imitation of the voice, one of the keys is
| also how much of the likeness/recognition/brand of the
| person is tied up in their voice, and that's
| substantially different between a singer's voice on their
| own song vs. an actress's voice. And given that it's not
| an impression/impersonation, and _literally sounds more
| like another famous actress than it does ScarJo_? This is
| a great example of facts you 'd give to show where the
| Midler precedent _doesn 't_ apply -- it's certainly in no
| way " _exactly_ " like Midler.
| Teever wrote:
| It sounds like you're skeptical that ScarJo will be
| entitled to compensation should this go to court?
|
| Would you be willing to bet a small sum on this?
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| I would. They'd probably settle just to get the
| distraction out of the way, but I'd be willing to bet
| that if it's decided in court, ScarJo would lose.
| criddell wrote:
| Don't get too hung up on facts like that. If it goes to
| court you will have an extraordinarily likable actress
| standing up to a giant soulless tech company. Good luck
| finding a jury sympathetic to the tech company.
|
| All SJ has to do is show that they wanted her and plant
| the idea that they may have been thinking of her when
| they hired the other actor. The end results sounds enough
| like her that I think OpenAI is going to have a very
| rough time in court.
|
| I think the chances of this getting to court are almost
| nothing. OpenAI will replace the voice and settle with
| SJ.
|
| Remember the _Blurred Lines_ vs _Got to Give It Up_
| lawsuit? I personally think they sound way different yet
| Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams lost that one.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziz9HW2ZmmY
| dingnuts wrote:
| >All SJ has to do is show that they wanted her and plant
| the idea that they may have been thinking of her when
| they hired the other actor. The end results sounds enough
| like her that I think OpenAI is going to have a very
| rough time in court.
|
| Wait, are you alleging that an individual has a right to
| faithful imitations of their voice, as well as to their
| actual performance?
|
| So if I do a really good Morgan Freeman impression and I
| want to use that voice for a voiceover that I make, and I
| intentionally do an impression, he should have the right
| to tell me I cannot use the voiceover that I made,
| because I intended it to sound like Mr Freeman? Even if
| there is no intent to mislead and it's rightfully
| credited etc (not like the Tom Waits situation in TFA
| where the ad was intended to deceive)
|
| What stops that from extending to parody? Should Sarah
| Palin be able to sue Tina Fey for the impression on SNL
| all those years ago?
|
| If all it boils down to is >The end results sounds enough
| like her
|
| this starts to sound like celebrities with sufficient
| popularity and clout can trademark likenesses that are
| sufficiently similar to them. So is the voice actor who
| happens to sound like Scarlett Johnansson but is
| insufficiently famous not allowed to use their own voice
| in recordings because it might sound too much like the
| famous person?
|
| Absurd absurd absurd
| glitz wrote:
| Context is king here.
|
| Nobody would confuse Tina Fey for Sarah Palin, while it
| would be possible for someone hearing the "Sky" voice
| combined with the "Her" aside to assume it was SJ
| providing the voice.
|
| Again it would be up to a jury to decide, but there are
| plenty of previous cases decided in the artists favor
| that any sane lawyer would be uneasy taking it in front
| of a jury.
| gs17 wrote:
| > Nobody would confuse Tina Fey for Sarah Palin
|
| Surprisingly many people think "I can see Russia from my
| house" is a thing the real Palin said.
| qarl wrote:
| Well, she actually did say "They're our next-door
| neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here
| in Alaska." So, it's pretty close to a real thing Palin
| said.
| gs17 wrote:
| But that part is true (it's just "Russia" and "Alaska"
| aren't the mainlands of either), the Diomede Islands are
| close enough together that you can see the Russian one
| from the US one.
| calmworm wrote:
| Agreed. Not only does it not sound like SJ, at all, it's
| someone else's actual voice. Would this voice actor then
| be barred from doing voice acting? None of it makes
| sense.
| gs17 wrote:
| >Would this voice actor then be barred from doing voice
| acting?
|
| That's where this has always gotten odd to me. There's
| obvious impersonation, sure, but what if this same
| actress wanted to e.g. be the Major in a new Ghost in the
| Shell dub? Is she responsible for making sure everyone
| who hires her very definitely isn't hiring her as a
| soundalike if she wants her work to get released?
|
| I'm sure it would be fine in reality, but if saying "her"
| (when advertising an app you can have a conversation
| with) is enough to make this impersonation, then the same
| logic says she's barred from certain roles (or categories
| of role) because someone more famous got there first.
| tptacek wrote:
| Bette Midler sued Ford for hiring an impersonator. She
| lost in the circuit court and won on appeal. The fact
| pattern in the appeal was that Ford had explicitly asked
| their actress to "sound as much as possible like Bette
| Midler". That's exactly what didn't happen here: not only
| did they not ask the actor to impersonate SJ or her
| character from "Her", they didn't even mention SJ. The
| actor used her natural speaking voice.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Why would Altman, two days before they went live, feel
| the need to try to get her to agree a second time if
| they'd done what you had said and used another voice
| actor?
|
| Of course they didn't mention "sound like SJ" in the
| casting call - it might as well say "Please violate
| Midler tort." Actors wouldn't do it, casting agencies
| wouldn't do it. She / her agency would have found out
| almost immediately, and C&D'd them into the ground within
| hours.
|
| I'm not sure why you're believing OpenAI when they say
| that the voice actor is who they actually used, and not
| that after bringing in the voice actor, they didn't just
| toss the recordings aside, have an intern collect clips
| of SJ in interviews, and throw that in to the machine?
|
| Altman has a long history of demonstrating incredibly
| poor morals. Stop taking _anything_ he says at face
| value.
| mdorazio wrote:
| That _completely_ refutes the case. There is no imitation.
| There was no intent to bypass Scarlett saying "no". It
| doesn't even sound that much like her.
| flutas wrote:
| And yet the CEO of OpenAI tweeted a reference to the
| character she played[0], and a co-founder of OpenAI less than
| 24 hours later tweeted "The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett
| Johansson."[1]
|
| Yeah, not really damning evidence either way but it certainly
| looks like, according to their own words, OpenAI intended to
| use her as marketing.
|
| [0]: https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666?lang=en
|
| [1]: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1790373216537502106
| legitster wrote:
| It's probably the CEO just clumsily stumbled into the
| comparison.
|
| He was probably not personally aware she was contacted, and
| it just so happened that his dumb movie reference hit a
| nerve.
|
| The alternative is that he knew they were ripping off
| Scarlett Johansson and then publicly compared them. Which
| seems too stupid to be true.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The alternative is that he knew they were ripping off
| Scarlett Johansson and then publicly compared them. Which
| seems too stupid to be true.
|
| People, even Silicon Valley CEOs, doing things that seem
| "too stupid to be true", happens a lot more than most
| people think.
| bnralt wrote:
| The problem is, a lot of conspiracy thinking relies on
| people being publicly stupid and careless, then privately
| extremely cautious and careful. The Washington Post looks
| at what was happening internally when the voice was
| created, and finds that the casting call didn't ask for
| anyone who sounds like Johansson, and the actress wasn't
| told to sound like her or imitate anything from Her.
| People say, "That doesn't mean anything, maybe they were
| just keeping their intent hidden!"
|
| OK, but then they openly blast it all over Twitter? If
| you're so open about what you're trying to do with
| everyone in the world, yet you didn't bother mentioning
| to the voice actress who's supposedly going to implement
| this?
| jameshart wrote:
| Washington Post rated this the sixth stupidest thing a
| tech CEO has done recently: https://www.washingtonpost.co
| m/technology/2024/05/21/chatgpt...
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think we should retire the phrase "too stupid to be
| true" at this point. I think many of these CEOs are just
| as stupid as the rest of us, except they have a special
| interest in something really profitable.
|
| I didn't really think it sounded much like Johansson, but
| it looks like OpenAI decided to pull the voice(?). They
| are in a better position to evaluate their liabilities
| (or the PR cost of having the perception that are ripping
| her off, whether or not it is right). Hopefully they'll
| add it back, Johansson doubles down, and then we can get
| a court case to satisfy everybody. Both entities have
| plenty of money to spend on this, having them battle it
| out seems like a real win. (It would have been a real
| shame if a small no-name voice actor without the cash to
| fight OpenAI felt copied instead).
| bnralt wrote:
| Those tweets were made on May 13th and 14th, so they're
| pretty clearly in reference to 4o, and the effort to make
| the chat seem more lifelike (similar to the AI in the movie
| "Her"). The Sky voice came out last year, and it doesn't
| seem like anyone at the company referenced "Her" when it
| did (from what I can find).
|
| The voice chat didn't seem to be particularly well
| publicized. People mention how after the 4o announcement,
| many people started voice chatting for the first time (and
| mistaking it for 4o voice chat) because they hadn't
| realized the voice chat was there before.
| cdme wrote:
| A truly convenient piece for a company so transparent and
| demonstrably trustworthy.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| All of which is irrelevant, since the Waits case is about
| impersonation of likeness, not _stealing_ likeness.
|
| OpenAI might have had a leg to stand on if their CEO hadn't
| gone on the internet and blasted out "Her" when advertising
| the Sky voice, and another co-founder had not specifically
| name-dropped using SJ to market their voice product. (And
| reading the WaPo article, they hired a film director to
| handle the voice recording, and the individual in charge of
| artistic decision-making, apparently an avid Her fan, was
| conveniently not made available to interview...Hm...)
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Tom Waits has a 1 in a billion voice. I'm fairly confident most
| people couldn't pick Scarlett Johansson's voice out of a lineup
| of 10 random 35 year old female professional voice actors.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You'd be wrong. We're almost as good at recognizing voices as
| we are at recognizing faces.
|
| Recently I had a friend message me to ask me if it was me
| asking a question at a recorded event with audience questions
| that they were watching on YouTube (the camera only showed
| the stage, not audience members at the microphones).
|
| They had absolutely no reason to think I would have been at
| that particular event.
|
| And I told them, yup -- it was me asking that question a few
| years ago.
|
| And there is nothing particularly distinctive about my voice.
| If anything, my voice is probably particularly generic. But
| it's just timbre, accent, and the unique "fingerprint" of my
| particular vocal personality.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I don't think I would be.
|
| How many hours has your friend heard you talk? How many
| hours has the average person heard Scarlett talk? Coupled
| with the fact that Scarlett is acting when people generally
| hear her voice, which means some aspects of her vocal
| qualities change(black widow doesn't sound exactly like her
| character from _Her_ )
| crazygringo wrote:
| It has nothing to do with hours of exposure. You don't
| need time to learn someone's voice, in the same way you
| don't need time to recognize their face.
|
| And obviously we're talking about "normal" voices as
| opposed to impressions or accents. But we still recognize
| voices even if the voice is doing a wide range of
| emotions. The same way we don't stop recognizing
| someone's face when they change from a smile to a frown.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Recognizing someone has _everything_ to do with hours of
| exposure. Which is why people are better at picking their
| mother out of a crowd rather than a random person who
| they were shown a picture of once.
|
| I'm beginning to wonder if you've ever considered your
| interactions with other people, or if you're just making
| this up as you go along.
| arduanika wrote:
| Yeah. I imagine her case against OpenAI would be much
| stronger if she had spent decades on a strict diet of
| whiskey, candy, and gravel. (Not legal advice.)
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| A better one is Bette Middler vs Ford:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
|
| (TLDR; Ford licenses a Bette Midler track and gets a sound-a-
| like to perform it for a commercial after Bette Midler refuses
| to participate. Midler sues and wins)
| lolinder wrote:
| _Midler_ is actually the foundation for _Waits_. The appeal
| hinged in part on whether Midler was still valid precedent
| (the court ruled it was):
|
| > In sum, our holding in _Midler_ , upon which Waits' voice
| misappropriation claim rests, has not been eroded by
| subsequent authority.
|
| https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc
| withinboredom wrote:
| [1988]?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 2003, apparently. The cause of the suit occurred in 1988, this
| writeup about it has quotes through 2002.
| dang wrote:
| I could only find it going back to 2019 (https://web.archive.
| org/web/20191213165922/http://tomwaitsli...) but you're
| right, it does feel 2003-ey. We'll put that year above.
| Thanks!
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I got the date from http://tomwaitslibrary.info/updates/.
| If you C-f for "frito", the only mention is 2003.
| mvkel wrote:
| The actual Sky voice actor was interviewed and, surprise, she
| sounds way more like the OpenAI voice than Scarlett.
|
| That said, this is certainly a problem we will see in the future.
| yyyyybb wrote:
| But it's more like identity theft, they are stealing his
| identity, not mimicking him. They are hijacking his fame,
| obviously that's the just of the commercial. This is free
| speech.
| mvkel wrote:
| Oh of course, I don't disagree with the Waits decision at
| all. I just presume this was posted as a proxy for the OpenAI
| situation.
| sroussey wrote:
| Here is the article above poster is referring to.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/22/openai-...
| frank_nitti wrote:
| I think your confusion may be the difference between the
| popular demo people are referencing and the Sky voice actress's
| actual voice.
|
| Copying a comment from another HN user (not sure if appropriate
| to name them):
|
| * This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYi3Wr7v_g
|
| * compare it to:
| https://youtu.be/GV01B5kVsC0?feature=shared&t=158
|
| That seems like quite a strong resemblance to me.
| collingreen wrote:
| I think openai looks pretty bad right now, especially with
| the "her" tweet, but I can't honestly say these voices sound
| similar. The her clip is so iconically scarjo and I don't
| think the sky voice is even that close. I'm not a voice
| expert and I dont know all the technical terms but it isn't
| very similar in tone, cadence, or what I want to call texture
| (?)
|
| I wanted to laugh at and belittle openai when I first saw
| scarjos claim that her friends and family couldn't tell the
| difference but from the samples you just linked I find that
| so unlikely that I think she is lying.
| mdorazio wrote:
| These do not sound close at all to me.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Uh, those don't sound like the same person at all. The former
| uptalks (high rising terminal) _a lot_. The cadence is
| different, the pitch is different.
|
| > It looks? like you're part of some recording? or production
| setup? With those lights? tripod? and possibly a mic? It
| looks like you might be gearing up to shoot a video? or maybe
| even a live stream?
|
| They both have a vocal fry, but the former sounds more like
| valley girl without the slang or vowel lengthening.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| they are certainly both the voices of women
| Retric wrote:
| If they had simply used Sky from the beginning and stuck with
| her natural voice they would likely be in the clear.
|
| The problem OpenAI has is they tried to get Scarlet to do the
| voice and _after she declined_ OpenAI found someone who has a
| similar voice to do it. That shows intent which would otherwise
| be difficult, combined with the actual result being closer to
| Scarlet's voice than Sky is naturally and they are likely going
| to lose.
|
| Edit: By after I am saying they decided to use Sky's voice not
| that it was recorded first.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| >The problem OpenAI has is they tried to get Scarlet to do
| the voice and after she declined OpenAI found someone who has
| a similar voice to do it.
|
| As the public currently knows based on reporting from WaPo,
| the original VA was selected and performed her role (months)
| BEFORE they reached out to Scarlett for the first time.
| Please don't misconstrue the timeline for other people that
| are just now tuning in.
| thih9 wrote:
| Why does this matter? I'd say whether they contacted ScarJo
| before, after or not at all is irrelevant. Then again, yes,
| I guess best to present events and the timeline as they
| were.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| For starters, it lends credence to (a claim I've read
| somewhere in this morass) OpenAI wanting to have a 6th
| voice in addition to the previous ones already created.
| thih9 wrote:
| How does that affect the end result?
| Retric wrote:
| They made the choice to use that voice _after she decided_
| otherwise they would never have approached Scarlet. When
| the recording session occurred is irrelevant. They wanted
| her voice, couldn't get it, _and then_ chose to use
| something similar.
| mdorazio wrote:
| This changes absolutely nothing about the legality or
| ethics involved.
| Retric wrote:
| Using something similar is a possible legal problem.
| Creating evidence likely to sway a jury that it was
| intentionally similar even if it wasn't intended in that
| fashion is a problem.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| If they really recorded the Sky actor well in advance
| then there's nothing wrong with them using it. They
| aren't required to suddenly delete the other voice
| actor's work because Scarlett Johansen refused a later
| proposal to use her voice instead. She owns the rights to
| her voice, not any vaguely similar sounding white female
| voice put together before they even talked to her.
| Retric wrote:
| OpenAI didn't need to talk to her to create an imitation
| there's many recordings freely available. Recording
| beforehand therefore has zero impact on their ability or
| intent to imitate such a public figure.
|
| The core question eventually put before a jury would be
| if it was unintentionally similar or an imitation and
| attempting to pay her for use of her voice is clear
| evidence they wanted it because of it or they perceived
| the voices where overly similar. Either of those are
| possible, but to then use the voice anyway became
| problematic.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| It doesn't matter if they "could" have made a copy of her
| voice if they didn't actually do it, and the voice
| actress who recorded Sky's voice is saying just that.
| Retric wrote:
| Read up on Glover vs Universal, the likeness doesn't have
| to be that close to run into issues and that's for the
| studio who owned the character.
|
| I'm not saying Sky did anything wrong. But the final
| result is close enough many people assumed it was Scarlet
| without promoting, that's problematic when they are
| making references to her role as an AI voice and
| obviously wanted to make a deal.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Glover v. Universal was settled out of court at the
| behest of Universal's insurer. We don't know who would
| have prevailed if it had continued.
|
| And of course, some specific aspects of the case are
| unique. Universal used a face mold they had made of
| Glover's face, for instance.
| Retric wrote:
| The uncertainty is itself information. I would have
| assumed Universal would have been fine, but presumably
| expert legal advice thought the risk was fairly high.
|
| I'll give you the mold makes the intent more clear, but I
| doubt the jury is going to be debating intent. Pulling
| the voice suggests OpenAI thinks this is either a real
| risk or bad publicity.
| orangecat wrote:
| "Similar" in that it's a friendly flirty female voice? Is
| that entire category supposed to be off the table after
| SJ declined?
| Retric wrote:
| There's literally thousands of flirty female voices which
| would have sounded like a different actress, singer, etc
| who they didn't approach and therefore would have been
| less risky.
|
| Really using a voice on a digital assistant that sounds
| like the actress playing a role of a digital assistant is
| just dumb. Especially if you then tweet about the film
| days before releasing the voice.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| they hired the VA before they even contacted Scarlett.
|
| Here's what probably happened. OpenAI people realize they can
| do TTS for ChatGPT so they hire some voice actors. Some
| people point out that it would be cool if it could be as good
| as it is in Her, especially with 4o on the way, so they
| decide to contact Scarlett Johansson either to do a voice or
| just some promotional thing. She declines, but after 4o is
| released OpenAI realizes they can fairly make the comparison
| to the movie based on the quality and speed of the voice.
| Simply subtly referencing the film via an obvious parallel
| doesn't constitute deceptive impersonation.
| Retric wrote:
| That seems like an extremely generous interpretation on
| OpenAI's behalf especially the timing of when they first
| think of the movie.
|
| Personally there's many ways they could have been less
| suspicious from my perspective. Have a large number of
| voices or the ability to tweet them in many ways and no one
| voice seems important. Contact many famous people and it
| would have seemed like a promotional rather than a
| reference. Have someone lower on the totem pole than the
| CEO of a multi billionaire dollar corporation trying to
| make the deal. This not being about an actor playing an AI
| assistant in a movie vs the voice of an AI product. Not
| actually making the reference in a tweet.
|
| The phrase 'the preponderance of the evidence' comes to
| mind.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, they didn't. The opposite thing happened. They hired and
| recorded this voice actor _months before they reached out to
| Johanssen_. People are scrambling to hold bits of this
| original story together, but it 's dead, Jim.
| Retric wrote:
| It was recorded first, but not used publicly beforehand.
|
| If they had released the voice they could have argued they
| wanted something different, but by waiting and going with
| Sky after the negotiations failed it's a different matter.
| tptacek wrote:
| No, I don't think you can walk this back:
|
| _they tried to get Scarlet to do the voice and after she
| declined OpenAI found someone_
|
| This is _exactly_ the question the Washington Post set
| out to answer, and the answer is "no": that didn't
| happen.
| Retric wrote:
| There's no walking back. My initial post said: "used Sky
| from the beginning" If they had released Sky's voice
| publicly before contacting Scarlet it would have been a
| different situation, but _they made the decision_
| afterwards.
|
| Simply recording Sky's voice beforehand doesn't imply a
| different intent. This isn't animation where you're
| trying to match two mediums and you want the actors
| recording first. Having a similar voice to work with
| would have been useful internally to know if they wanted
| to pay what it might cost to use her voice.
| bnralt wrote:
| Even further - they hired multiple female and male voice
| actors to create various voices that people can choose
| from. There isn't one ChatGPT voice that would have either
| gone to this actress or Johansson. People are making the
| assumption that if Johansson agreed, Johansson's voice
| would have replaced the Sky voice option, but there's no
| evidence that this would have happened. It's likely that
| Johansson's would have been just another voice option, in
| addition to Sky and all the other options available.
| Retric wrote:
| If they had 1,000 voices I would definitely be onboard
| with that interpretation, especially if they then went on
| trying to contact dozens of famous people for their
| voices.
|
| But it's a small number of voices who all sound distinct.
| So it seems unlikely they wanted to released two similar
| voices in that context. Especially when it specifically
| sounds like the voice actor in a film as an AI.
| thih9 wrote:
| You mean the voice actor's natural speaking pattern is more
| similar to the OpenAI Sky voice than ScarJo's performance in
| Her movie? Perhaps. But isn't that expected?
|
| They still created a voice that sounds like ScarJo - and many
| signs point to that being intentional. Overall, not unlike the
| case in "Tom Waits vs. Frito-Lay, Inc".
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Not looking forward to a future in which some media company
| owns a couple hundred voices whose "sounds similar to" halo
| cover 99.99% of human voices.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Yep I've had a similar thought. Heck, in my personal life
| I've been confused with so many people both celebrity and
| locals, that I just shrug at this point and move on with my
| life.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| It's by far the most obvious outcome of this AI hate fueled
| rage on this topic. In 10 years the very same people
| complaining on twitter and here will be complaining that
| the big 3 music labels are taking down smaller musicians.
|
| A voice isn't that unique in the grand scheme of things.
| tacocataco wrote:
| This reminds me of this article on a couple of people
| trying to make every "possible song" public domain.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-
| algorithmic...
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| It's not an impression, isn't a close match (and is a closer
| match to another actress!), isn't performing a song (or
| similar) in the same vocal style, isn't explicitly designed
| to parody the artist, wasn't advertised in a way that trades
| on the publicity rights of the artist, the voice of an
| actress is a smaller portion of their public image than the
| voice and style of a singer (a large factor considered in
| right of publicity cases), and a particular vocal performance
| in one film is much less protectable under right of publicity
| than a unique vocal style of a singer.
|
| The Waits case is highly dissimilar, IMO. But tbf this isn't
| an area of law I'm expert in, and my knowledge of Right of
| Publicity law is mostly from law school, which was... a while
| back.
| mvkel wrote:
| The Sky voice has been in the app for... at least 8 months? The
| 4o voice stuff hasn't even been released.
| pwil30 wrote:
| Funny timing as I just revisited the brilliant "Step Right Up"
| (and the entire Small Change album) a few days ago, and had no
| idea about this case. Glad Tomcat won. Can't help but see some
| parallels between this and current Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI
| debacle.
|
| My very favourite line, among many, from "Step Right Up": __The
| large print giveth and the small print taketh away.__
| ecjhdnc2025 wrote:
| Her debut solo album was Waits and Waits/Brennan covers:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anywhere_I_Lay_My_Head
|
| Eclectic choices even for Waits songs. Though I'd like to hear
| her take on _Poor Edward_ or _Fish And Bird_ or _Soldier 's
| Things_
| drewzero1 wrote:
| > Can't help but see some parallels between this and current
| Scarlett Johansson vs. OpenAI debacle.
|
| I think that's why this was posted... I saw it referenced in a
| comment on that thread.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The logical parallels might be there but in legal substance
| they are different cases. A deliberate replication of an
| artist's distinct singing voice, while singing lyrics
| associated with that artist, is very different than a passing
| similarity to someone's non-unique speaking voice. Note that
| the Johansson issue is playing out only in the court of public
| opinion.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| If you think they weren't trying to replicate sj's voice, I
| can only assume you've got open ai stock clouding your
| judgement... It looks like they caaaaarefully avoided writing
| down 'sound like sj' while choosing+directing a sound-alike
| actor for the role.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> If you think they weren't trying to replicate sj's voice
|
| Coevolution. The AI and the now-famous actor are the end
| products of a selection process aimed at a similar
| audience. The AI creators were likely aiming for the most
| attractive female voice, according to a bunch of young men.
| That parallels the process used by those casting action
| movies, which are also aimed at young men. It should be to
| nobody's great surprise that the end products of both share
| many features.
|
| What is very odd is how similar celeb faces actually are.
| There really is a mathematical standard for beauty when it
| comes to female faces, which is why so many celebs are have
| eerily identical proportions. There is probably a model too
| for voices.
|
| https://gotobeauty.com/plastic-surgery/how-math-shapes-
| moder...
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > Coevolution. The AI and the now-famous actor are the
| end products of a selection process aimed at a similar
| audience
|
| This might hold water if the actor weren't famous for
| more than a decade before the voice model existed
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Non-unique? What?
|
| "Passing similarity"? All her friends and coworkers say it
| sounds like her - she describes being contacted by friends
| who thought she'd done it. A lot of the public, including
| HNers, identified the voice as hers, independently - not in
| some A/B test, but they heard it and said to themselves
| "Johanasson did the voice for this."
|
| You're the only person in the room who thinks OpenAI didn't
| use samples of her voice for their voice model - or that the
| voice has "passing similarity."
|
| Altman approached her asking her to do it. She refused; they
| went ahead and did it anyway, probably using interviews since
| the audio would be very clean - and two days before they went
| live with it, Altman tried to negotiate a second time and was
| rebuffed. Released it anyway.
|
| Why would Altman feel the need to panic-negotiate a second
| time, days before they went live, if they hadn't used her
| voice for it?
|
| If OpenAI designed it to sound like her, that's Midler tort.
| They actually used her voice to train it, which means Midler
| tort _and more_. The question will be how much more - I hope
| they get sued into the ground.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| > You're the only person in the room who thinks OpenAI
| didn't use samples of her voice for their voice model
|
| Really? No one seems to be claiming that anywhere I've
| seen.
|
| We know that they really did use a voice actress, and that
| it really is her actual voice, and that she was hired for
| it before ScarJo was approached. There's no "panic
| negotiation" there -- the most panic needed would be if
| someone internally identified that there could be a PR
| issue if people _mistakenly thought_ it was close enough to
| seem like intentional impersonation.
|
| Of course they wanted ScarJo, once they thought of it! It'd
| be great publicity. But that doesn't then mean that anyone
| who sounds somewhat like ScarJo (but certainly not
| identical) becomes retroactively unusable or makes it vocal
| impersonation.
| ano-ther wrote:
| > Note that the Johansson issue is playing out only in the
| court of public opinion
|
| It takes a while to get a lawsuit going. According to the
| article, Waits learned about the ad on October 3, 1988, filed
| a suit in November 1988, and the case was tried before a jury
| in April and May 1990.
| pjmorris wrote:
| I've got the same favorite line, it's pretty durable!
| appplication wrote:
| Thank you for reminding me about Step Right Up. I recall
| hearing this on NPR and rushing home to download this on
| Limewire at least 20 years ago.
| binarymax wrote:
| "Two and a half million bucks. Spent it all on candy."
|
| A true artist. Here's my favorite work of his:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psk3rmjonQA
| busyant wrote:
| > https://youtu.be/8h6TYV3Tz00?si=hT51w3JvdGsJTPmW
|
| There was a time in my life when I was aware of just about
| every bit of Waits arcana available to the public.
|
| Then I got older and lost my way.
|
| Thank you for that link. #PEHDTSCKJMBA
| cess11 wrote:
| "If there's one thing you can say about mankind
|
| There's nothing kind about man
|
| You can drive out nature with a pitch fork
|
| But it always comes roaring back again
|
| For want of a bird
|
| The sky was lost
|
| For want of a nail
|
| A shoe was lost
|
| For want of a life
|
| A knife was lost
|
| For want of a toy
|
| A child was lost"
|
| I like that Waits never became an entertainment industry
| pushover.
| facialwipe wrote:
| "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." --Tom
| Waits
| labrador wrote:
| My favorite Tom Waits story is the one when he was in a legal
| battle with an avante-garde French circus performer
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/08/tom-waits-angr...
| Theodores wrote:
| Interesting that the law suit was just against Frito Lay rather
| than PepsiCo.
|
| > When I was a kid, if I saw an artist I admired doing a
| commercial, I'd think, "Too bad, he must really need the money."
| But now it's so pervasive. It's a virus. Artists are lining up to
| do ads. The money and exposure are too tantalizing for most
| artists to decline. Corporations are hoping to hijack a culture's
| memories for their product. They want an artist's audience,
| credibility, good will and all the energy the songs have gathered
| as well as given over the years. They suck the life and meaning
| from the songs and impregnate them with promises of a better life
| with their product.
|
| Tom Waits did have a point that I think today's content creators
| need to take onboard. With music it was not always about money
| for everyone, the love of music was motivating enough, bringing
| people together for a good time.
|
| I do not see many content creators in it 'for the content' and
| bringing a community together. There are definitely some but the
| algorithm isn't helping them.
|
| > Eventually, artists will be going onstage like race-car drivers
| covered in hundreds of logos. John, stay pure. Your credibility,
| your integrity and your honor are things no company should be
| able to buy.
|
| I wish politicians were obliged to wear suits decorated in all
| the logos of their sponsors.
| WizardClickBoy wrote:
| The m3u link is broken but the recording of the "corn chip
| sermon" Waits was referring to is on the same site:
| http://www.tomwaitslibrary.info/audio/fritolay.mp3. I can see why
| he was upset, I'd fall for it.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| A fantastic read, but slightly different from the OpenAI debacle?
| It sounds like Frito-Lay got to air their commercial for the
| usual period. Yes, there was a _small_ downside in that it cost
| them $2.5M (plus their own lawyer 's fees), which I imagine was
| beyond their budget for Genuine 100% Certified Tom Waits, but
| they did at least achieve their aim.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > That said, with all the publicity around this, maybe OpenAI
| at least partially achieved their aim?
|
| I think they 1000% did, because despite all the fuss there is
| actually _no resemblance_ between the Sky voice and Scarlett
| Johansson 's. The Sky voice is in a different pitch, doesn't
| have the vocal fry, doesn't have the slightly nasal tone.
| Listen for yourself[1].
|
| This was a marketing coup for both OpenAI and Johannson.
| OpenAI, because they're in no danger of a negative judgment,
| Johansson because she gets her name all the place in the press
| and drums up free publicity for her film.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1cx1np4/voice_...
| lolinder wrote:
| > The Sky voice is in a different pitch, doesn't have the
| vocal fry, doesn't have the slightly nasal tone.
|
| In the sample you linked to you're correct, but in this
| sample the vocal fry is present and in fact quite pronounced:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYi3Wr7v_g
|
| I can't hear the nasal tone in either voice, but the video
| linked above sounds much closer to Johansson's than the
| sample the reddit poster chose. It's definitely not a home
| run, though.
| Grustaf wrote:
| "Killers, thieves, and lawyers"
| legitster wrote:
| > "Yeah, we nailed 'em. It was David and Goliath... They were
| lame. The problem with a big company like that is that its hands
| don't talk to its feet, and nobody knows what anyone else is
| doing. In this case, it was an ad agency that hired a fan of mine
| actually, in Texas."
|
| Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by
| incompetence (at least, until the legal team gets involved).
|
| But in my experience, this is how 95% of corporate controversies
| happen - just some guy somewhere is an idiot and no one checks
| their work. But as soon as lawyers are involved they will pull
| out the Magna Carta if they have to in order to prove that you
| they were actually geniuses and within their rights to screw up.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Too bad there's no "Stephen Carter" to provide testimony for
| imitating ScarJo. It's amusing to think of an AI giving testimony
| in lawsuit, though.
|
| eta: all the folks saying the voice actor doesn't sound exactly
| like ScarJo and was hired before the negotiations with ScarJo are
| neglecting to remember: AI is really good at making voice
| imitations from snippets. So Sky's voice is almost certainly not
| unprocessed voice acting. That's how the There I Ruined It guy
| does his covers.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Too bad there's no "Stephen Carter" to provide testimony for
| imitating ScarJo. It's amusing to think of an AI giving
| testimony in lawsuit, though.
|
| Perhaps Andrey Karpathy if he has a change if heart - he's been
| hinted to have led the AI personality effort at OpenAI before
| he left.
|
| If not him, then the discovery process ought to be good.
| Scarlett's lawyers asked for details on how OpenAI trained the
| voice, then the voice got pulled -\\_(tsu)_/-.
|
| If/when the voice returns and this goes to court, we may find
| out if there was any fine-tuning on ScarJo's interviews/movie
| audio.
| codelikeawolf wrote:
| Tom Waits did _some_ advertising work when he narrated a dog food
| commercial [1], but I think his artistic integrity is still
| intact considering all he did was a voiceover (no singing). In
| true Tom Waits fashion, when he was asked about why he did it,
| his response was "I was down on my luck and I like dogs". One of
| the things I love about Tom Waits is that his interviews are just
| as entertaining as his songs.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/8h6TYV3Tz00?si=hT51w3JvdGsJTPmW
| chefandy wrote:
| Yeah. I agree that voiceover work is way different than having
| some amalgamated version of your primary artistic output and
| advertising copy get slapped on corn chips.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > The advertisers are banking on your credibility, but the
| problem is it's no longer yours.
|
| I think nowadays, the idea that doing a commercial damages your
| artistic integrity is considered sort of an anachronism. For
| better and worse, I guess, and largely driven by the
| consequences of technology in any case. But, a similar lawsuit
| today would probably be about damaging the monetary value of
| the artist's brand, rather than about damaging their artistic
| credibility _per se_ , as it was with Waits at the time.
|
| It used to be a truism that taking money from sponsors changed
| your allegiances, and changed the nature of your art. For the
| worse. Whether time has been proven that true or false is an
| exercise for the reader. Point is, that's where Waits seems to
| be coming from. It's not about "they didn't pay me first," it's
| about the commercial diminishing his credibility because it
| looks like he might have agreed to do it in the first place.
| ska wrote:
| > is considered sort of an anachronism.
|
| I'm not sure this is true. It was always the case that these
| things were contextual and based a lot on how the
| artist/musician/author presented themselves. The whole idea
| of "selling out" is predicated on the assumption you have
| some high ground to give up, or at least that the action you
| are taking would undermine strongly held beliefs of your fan
| base.
|
| When popularity swings more to (obviously) commercially
| driven output, there is plenty of selling, but less selling
| "out", as it were. The pendulum will likely swing again.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Are you saying the actual anachronism is that artists are
| even associated with credibility, integrity, or
| authenticity to sell out in the first place? If so, I guess
| that's a more precise way of saying why selling out isn't a
| thing anymore.
|
| Personally, I think it's more a change in how artists view
| themselves in relation to the market--and how audiences
| view them as well--and that artists can still stay true to
| that understanding and have it be a kind of ethos... just a
| very different one than we had when I formed my opinions on
| music.
|
| What I'm saying is, artists can still perform acts of
| betrayal, and lose their credibility to their audience. So,
| they must have some to lose it. It's more that licensing
| their music is not one of those acts anymore.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Are you saying the actual anachronism is that artists
| are even associated with credibility, integrity, or
| authenticity to sell out in the first place?
|
| ska can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what ska is
| saying is that the focus of the population is currently
| on artists who don't value their authenticity.
|
| There remain many artists who are associated with
| authenticity, but they've lost the focus of the general
| population (for now).
| ska wrote:
| Yes, that's close to what I had in mind. I don't think
| it's even so much that the (popular) artists don't value
| their authenticity is that it isn't part of the
| conversation as much because it's not in tension with the
| work they are doing. At other times, there is more
| tension.
| jfyi wrote:
| Their personal view of their authenticity is not at
| conflict with selling the sound track to a commercial is
| all. I would bet largely it's quite the opposite, they
| wouldn't be the authentic them if they didn't take the
| payout.
|
| There are certainly some genres where the audience values
| this sense of authenticity of course. That and people
| like Waits who actively cultivate this as part of their
| public image. Otherwise I wouldn't expect it as a norm.
|
| Personally, I'm still waiting to see Maynard sing Hooker
| With a Penis on a Coke commercial.
| dmurray wrote:
| For some artists, embracing commercialism _is_ more
| authentic than pretending not to care about money.
|
| Being a successful businesswoman is part of Taylor
| Swift's artistic identity, where it wasn't for Loretta
| Lynn. Selling sneakers is part of Kanye West's artistic
| identity, where it wasn't for Tupac. It doesn't make any
| of them less authentic.
| m463 wrote:
| > I think nowadays, the idea that doing a commercial damages
| your artistic integrity is considered sort of an anachronism.
|
| Scarlett Johansson might beg to differ.
|
| I think some people just happen to create art.
|
| I think others make it part of their personal definition, and
| to those integrity is part of it (if they choose to have it)
| cdme wrote:
| I'm glad he got paid. It was done in bad faith (much like the
| ScarJo case). He does allow for covers -- Rod Stewart's Downtown
| Train cover paid for his swimming pool.
| cossatot wrote:
| The Blind Boys of Alabama do great covers of Jesus Gonna Be
| Here and Way Down in the Hole, both on the _Spirit of the
| Century_ album. The version of Amazing Grace set to the music
| of House of the Rising Sun, though, is to me the standout on an
| excellent album.
| Hasu wrote:
| In the US, artists don't get to 'allow' for covers or not. The
| words and composition of a song are covered under a mechanical
| license. The recording and performance is covered under a
| different license. Under U.S. law, the mechanical license is a
| compulsory license - the rightsholder must give a license to
| anyone who applies and pays for it. The payment is standardized
| and includes royalties, so it's a pretty good deal for anyone
| who writes a song that gets a popular cover.
| dzink wrote:
| There is a very strong music copyright system in the US and in
| the Tom Waits case they had both music and voice impersonation.
| In Sky situation a person who sounds similar to Scarlet also
| sounds similar to some % of humanity as well. But no creative
| work of Scarlet was infringed upon. You can't protect just a
| voice. People are born with it and if that was possible, many
| people on TikTok would liable for sounding like some celebrity.
| Being a celebrity doesn't entitle you to a share of income from
| anyone who sounds like you and broadcasts.
| lupusreal wrote:
| They didn't infringe on a Tom Waits song, they got an
| impersonator to sing an entirely novel song.
|
| My take is that for a certain cohort of AI hypersters and Sam
| fans, it is _literally impossible_ for OpenAI to do wrong. Sam
| could probably shoot a man in cold blood on national television
| and we 'd have somebody explaining how technically it's legal
| because reasons.
| nsvd wrote:
| And similarly, some people are always hungry for an
| opportunity to villanize OpenAI. This kind of polarized,
| black-and-white thinking is not productive.
| hitekker wrote:
| Neither is false balance or enlightened centrism. The point
| of the GP is that we shouldn't worshipping these companies.
| They're not your Lord.
| tavavex wrote:
| Yes, and the point of the "enlightened centrist" is that
| bad actions by a company don't mean that _any_ complaints
| thrown at them are automatically valid, or that every
| employee at the company is acting maliciously. Pledging
| your allegiance to a megacorp is bad, but thinking that
| the court of public opinion is always correct is just as
| foolish.
| lupusreal wrote:
| We're not talking about _any_ complaint, we 're talking
| about _a specific_ complaint. In the other thread there
| are about a dozen OpenAI fanboys saying the OpenAI
| copycat is different from the Ford copycat for a reason
| which is refuted by the Tom Waits case; the Tom Waits
| impersonator _wasn 't_ singing a Tom Waits song, they
| were singing about chips.
| tavavex wrote:
| I'm not. Your comment said that, for a certain group of
| superfans, OpenAI can do no wrong and will always be
| biased in their favour. nsvd added that other people want
| to see OpenAI fail and will view anything regarding them
| negatively. I'm just elaborating on that. For one reason
| or another, this discourse has become personal for many
| people - the specific complaints don't matter, many
| people will be coming in with preconceived notions no
| matter what.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The claim is that Sam fanboys would defend Sam in any
| circumstance, not that Sam is guilty in any circumstance.
| The distinction shouldn't require explaination. If you're
| confused, then ask the chatbot to explain it to you.
| bmitc wrote:
| OpenAI hasn't made it hard. Releasing ChatGPT has made a
| lot of peoples' lives worse, and their bait and switch from
| non-profit to profit are just the tip of the iceberg.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Wait whos lives are made worse by ChatGPT? I have not yet
| seen a claim like this
| bmitc wrote:
| Teachers, for starters.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Ok I can see that teachers cant tell if a student has
| written an essay or used ChatGPT but how is that
| materially different from students paying for other
| people to write their essays? Its cheaper and easier? I
| knew students who payed for essays well before ChatGPT
| existed.
|
| Any other examples? Not trying to defend OpenAI just
| interested in this idea that it has actually made anyones
| lives worse.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > There is a very strong music copyright system in the US and
| in the Tom Waits case they had both music and voice
| impersonation.
|
| The article explicitly mentions the Tom Waits case did _not_
| include a copyright component as he didn 't own the copyright,
| and Frito-Lay probably obtained _synch_ rights from the
| copyright owner.
|
| Tom Waits won the suit without invoking copyright violations -
| read into that what you may.
| spiralpolitik wrote:
| Bette Midler won a similar case where Ford licensed a Midler
| track and got a sound-a-like to perform it for a commercial.
|
| If OpenAI's lawyers thought they were going to get away with
| it then OpenAI needs to get better lawyers.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Huge disanalogies between the Midler case and this.
| Certainly not clear in its applicability.
| ska wrote:
| > then OpenAI needs to get better lawyers.
|
| Part of being a good lawyer is sometimes "well, this didn't
| work in 1992 (or whatever) but it might fly now. Let's try
| it, worst case is X". And, as always, the devil is in the
| details.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Rick Astley v. Hauri is a recent case in the same vein:
| https://unicourt.com/case/ca-la23-richard-rick-paul-
| astley-v...
|
| This one is unique because Hauri (aka "Yung Gravy") is
| another music artist. The Midler case is actually mentioned
| in the court filings, too.
|
| It's interesting to think about the blurry line between art
| and commercial products.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Huh TIL, I like the song in question interestingly enough
| (Yung Gravy - Betty) but didn't know that the Rick Astley
| bit wasn't actually his voice.
| ryandrake wrote:
| If you made me take the Pepsi challenge, I probably would not
| be able to distinguish most similarly-aged Hollywood actress's
| voices from one another in a blind test. No matter how distinct
| they start out, hanging around LA seems to turn their voices
| very similar: Young, white woman, slightly Californian accent,
| singsong vocal inflections, a little valley girl, a little
| vocal fry... After a few years, a lot of them kind of start
| sounding the same.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if there were literally thousands of
| voice actors that sounded close enough to any given actress to
| pass as her.
| lolinder wrote:
| > You can't protect just a voice.
|
| I'm pretty sure this is exactly why TFA was posted--apparently
| you can, in fact, protect a voice under California law. Of the
| $2.6 million in damages awarded in TFA $2 million were for
| "voice misappropriation".
|
| This seems to be the relevant section of the civil code:
|
| https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/civil-code/civ-sect-3344/
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| I think if SJ went to court and won (though I doubt it'd ever get
| that far), the precedent would be downright dooming for the
| entire VA industry. If your voice sounded close to any other
| major VA, no one would touch you for fear of their liability
| going through the roof.
|
| It probably could be stretched to musicians as well. Maybe
| lookalike actors too if we go down that route.
|
| I just can't imagine it'd be a good thing to have your voice be
| owned by someone else just because they became famous first.
| superb-owl wrote:
| I disagree with the slippery slope argument here.
|
| Waits won because they were clearly intending to impersonate
| his voice, while singing his song. Not because a random guy on
| the radio sounded like him.
|
| Ditto for SJ--there was a clear intent to reproduce _her
| specific voice_ , based on her role in "Her".
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >Ditto for SJ--there was a clear intent to reproduce her
| specific voice, based on her role in "Her".
|
| Again, there wasn't. An article literally came out today that
| they had contracted the VA before contacting SJ. [1]
|
| Honestly this argument right here is what the slippery slope
| argument is all about. If you continue any further, you're
| just further proving it. They literally didn't even contact
| SJ before hand.
|
| >while singing his song
|
| You even added this caveat before, its already the slippery
| slope in action. No song was being sung here.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/22/open
| ai-...
| philistine wrote:
| Do keep in mind that the supposed soundalike actor they
| supposedly used for the voice that sounds exactly like SJ is
| not coming forward at this point to defend their work, and
| OpenAI refuses to make them available to journalists. It's
| understandable at this point, but with how duplicitous OpenAI
| has shown itself to be, I will need proof of their existence
| beyond just OpenAI saying so.
|
| I'm betting on the actor sounding nothing like SJ at all. Their
| voice was used as a baseline in the training of the tool, but
| ultimately it was modified to copy SJ.
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| If it were me, I would absolutely be unwilling to come
| forward.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Do keep in mind that the supposed soundalike actor they
| supposedly used for the voice that sounds exactly like SJ is
| not coming forward at this point to defend their work
|
| The potential legal issue is much more about the details of
| the commercial presentation and marketing of the work by
| OpenAI than it is about her work itself, beyond whether the
| work has sufficient similarity to make the particular manner
| of commercial use a legal issue. There's nothing for her to
| defend.
| chefandy wrote:
| That assumes an _incredibly_ slippery slope.
|
| > I just can't imagine it'd be a good thing to have your voice
| be owned by someone else just because they became famous first.
|
| Are you saying that anyone being able to train generative AI on
| someone's work or a facsimile to directly compete with them is
| actually _better_ for commercial artists?
| ghaff wrote:
| I think what they're saying is directors of films,
| commercials, etc. probably at least start with a certain type
| of voice they're looking for. And might well communicate that
| to a casting director by naming some specific actors they're
| familiar with.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| The country I'm in dubs a lot of usa films. Rambo in
| another language is hilarious, other actors are played by
| different VAs so eg schwarzenegger sounds different every
| film. So sj will be played by many vactresses...In many
| countries.
| chefandy wrote:
| It's seems like the slippery slope argument is saying it
| would be risky for an AD to say "we need a deep gravelly
| voice, but more like Donald Sutherland than Robert Loggia.
| Let's see who we get that has that vibe." I don't see it.
| What the industry wants to be able to do is say "We want
| Donald Sutherland but don't want to pay his rates. Let's
| pay this company that has modeled his voiceover style so we
| can have our own Donald Sutherland."
|
| I think the Marvin Gaye ruling is concerning, especially
| because no mere mortal could hope to either launch or
| defend themselves against such an action. However, I don't
| think those extremes are a reason to just say "oh well. I
| guess fair use should apply to nearly all derivative use,
| even commercially. If that means creativity is only
| commercially viable for AI companies now, so be it."
| Professional creative expertise can't be replaced by
| generative AI, and it's important to or society, but
| copyright is the only set of guardrails on the only viable
| market for many creative fields. I'd love to abolish
| copyright, but first is love to live in a society that
| could support the millions of people that use it as
| currency.
| nier wrote:
| SJ = Scarlett Johansson VA = Voice Actor
|
| Backstory:
| https://theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/20/chatg...
| ajross wrote:
| > If your voice sounded close to any other major VA, no one
| would touch you for fear of their liability going through the
| roof.
|
| That seems to be a leap. It's not at all hard to define a
| bright line between two people that merely sound the same and
| inappropriate appropriation. Lots of folks have deep voices
| similar to James Earl Jones, but if you hire one of them to
| voice a helmetted character named Tarf Later you'd expect to
| lose a suit under this statue, right?
|
| The case at hand isn't that Sky sounds like Johansson in the
| abstract (whose actual voice isn't even all that unique or
| notable), it's that _explicitly evocative of her role in Her_ ,
| and most damningly that they clearly tried to hire her to do
| it.
| harshreality wrote:
| The funniest thing about the whole affair is that it wouldn't
| have blown up except for psychological priming. And some people
| are so blind to this effect that they've formed what's
| effectively an army on these OpenAI-ScarJo threads.
|
| First, the "Her" reference from OpenAI.
|
| Then ScarJo saying "Hey that sounds like me. Even some of my
| friends think so."
|
| The voices sound kind of similar in some ways, and dissimilar
| in other ways. If the voice actor was trying to mimic ScarJo,
| she didn't do a very good job.
|
| Is a casual reference to the title character exemplifying the
| same concept, a female-voiced AI, in a movie that won best
| screenplay at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes, an IP
| violation? Even if that were the case, it would be a studio
| matter and not Scarlett's IP.
|
| I am curious why they reached out to ScarJo again 2 days prior,
| though.
|
| Did they want to use her purely for marketing? That seems
| doubtful, because they'd have to get movie studio clearance to
| use "Her" in official marketing.
|
| Did they have a separate model trained on her voice (I wouldn't
| put this past OpenAI) and were hoping they could get last-
| minute clearance to use it? This is actually my suspicion. That
| failed, so they just went with the voice models they already
| had clearance to use. That's not illegal. It's not even
| unethical. Anyone can try to train voice models on voice
| samples they collect. What's a problem is commercial use and
| representation of likeness.
|
| I don't think a casual reference to Her was a representation
| that the voice is like ScarJo. It was merely referencing (very
| effectively) the concept of the movie's always-there [female]
| AI-voiced AI-chatbot.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Ahhh the good old days before Frito Lay murdered people who were
| about to win lawsuits against them.
| robxorb wrote:
| Sorry, what?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >Tom Waits did not sue Frito-Lay for copyright infringement. At
| the time Waits didn't own the copyright (in the work of
| authorship) to the song "Step Right Up". This was, and is, owned
| by Fifth Floor Music Inc (controlled by Martin/ Herb, Evan
| Cohen). One might assume Frito-Lay did indeed obtain the "synch"
| license from Fifth Floor Music to use the song in the commercial.
| And as they were not using the song as recorded by Waits himself,
| they didn't have to worry about copyright in the musical work
| (owned by Elektra/ Asylum).
|
| Is there any reason why Elektra/Asylum didn't license the actual
| recording copyright[0] to Frito-Lay? I'm assuming Tom Waits (like
| any other musical artist) wouldn't have veto rights over
| licensing the recordings, in the same way he apparently couldn't
| stop Fifth Floor Music from licensing the song itself to Frito-
| Lay.
|
| The thing is, if Frito-Lay had actually licensed the recording,
| Tom Waits wouldn't have a leg to stand on in court, because of a
| very funny concept in copyright law called _federal preemption_.
| Any claim under any other law - state[1] or federal - that looks
| and quacks like a copyright is null and void. You only get to sue
| for copyright with copyright. So you can 't, say, trademark a
| public domain work[2] and then sue people for reproducing it.
| Misappropriation, false endorsement and publicity rights are very
| much trademark-shaped laws, so they also lack any jurisdiction
| over copyright matters. There really just isn't room in the law
| for "I license you this work" but also "you reproducing this work
| is a false endorsement". The public is not confused when
| copyrighted works are used with permission.
|
| However, I'm also not sure why suing for copyright infringement
| was off the table in the first place. The thing is, when you make
| a derivative work, you own what you added. If you and me both go
| to Disney and buy licenses to produce Avengers merch, but I
| decide to copy your design for the merch, you get to sue me. My
| license to make my own derivative version of something does not
| entitle me to copy _other_ derivatives of that same work. So
| Frito-Lay, having a license to record their own version of Step
| Right Up, doesn 't get the right to copy Tom Waits' recording of
| Step Right Up.
|
| Who knows, maybe recording copyright is a lot narrower than other
| forms of copyright, but it's hard not to shake the feeling that
| he could have gone up against Frito-Lay for a lot more.
|
| [0] Music copyright has two souls: the copyright over the song
| itself - lyrics, sheet music, and so on - and a separate
| copyright over a recording of a specific performance of the song.
| Originally you could only copyright the song and not the
| recording.
|
| [1] The reason why federal preemption exists is that states
| started inventing their own recording copyrights for music. Which
| sounds absolutely wild to lawyers today, who are taught that
| copyright is inherently a federal question and that states have
| no say in how it works. What's even more wild is that some state
| recording copyright laws were actually perpetual, this somehow
| survived the "for limited times" language in the Copyright
| Clause, we didn't establish federal preemption and shut down
| these schemes until the 1970s, and we didn't extinguish already
| extant _perpetual recording copyrights_ until the Music
| Modernization act in _2018_.
|
| [2] i.e. Disney putting Steamboat Willie in their logo
| robxorb wrote:
| They likely didn't license the original recording as the lyrics
| specifically and continually lampoon advertising and marketing.
| There's likely not a long enough section that could be used or
| even edited together that'd work.
|
| Eg:
|
| _That 's right, it fillets, it chops
|
| It dices, slices, never stops
|
| Lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn
|
| And it picks up the kids from school
|
| It gets rid of unwanted facial hair
|
| It gets rid of embarrassing age spots
|
| It delivers a pizza
|
| And it lengthens, and it strengthens
|
| And it finds that slipper that's been at large
|
| Under the chaise longe for several weeks
|
| And it plays a mean rhythm master
|
| It makes excuses for unwanted lipstick on your collar
|
| And it's only a dollar, step right up
|
| It's only a dollar, step right up_
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| As an aside, anyone know if Tom Waits is still making music? It's
| been thirteen years since his last album, and he's at the age
| where I wouldn't be surprised if he's done.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| I've seen this discussion a lot, but what about when they hire a
| sound-a-like voice actor for a cartoon after a popular movie?
|
| Case in point, Owen Wilson was the voice of the main character in
| the Cars movie, but they got a different voice actor for some of
| the cartoons who sounded similar. Same thing for the ghostbuster
| cartoon after the movie was a big success in the 80s.
|
| Why is that ok?
| fathyb wrote:
| Isn't because in Cars the character itself is the IP, not the
| actor? For example, if Owen Wilson started cosplaying as the
| Cars character and making money out of it, he could be sued.
|
| Reminds me of an Archer bit: https://youtu.be/c9uuITbtl-g?t=2
|
| - Oh my god, Slim Goodbody!
|
| - No! No, this is absolutely not that trademark character. Just
| a unitard with the systems of the human body on it. On a guy.
|
| - On a guy named TV's Michael Gray.
| LastTrain wrote:
| I keep seeing this point, in various forms, being regurgitated.
| The answer is: because it is OK with Owen Wilson is why. And
| likely stipulated in contract.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Work for hire vs. work owned by artist
| kleiba wrote:
| Corollary: what if the replacement voice isn't actually a voice
| actor but an AI?
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Probably part of the contract with Wilson. Actors usually don't
| own the characters they play and producers have the right to
| recast.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| I don't know the answer, but please notice the situation you
| describe is quite different: in this case, a lot of parties, if
| not all (showrunners of the cartoon, viewers, maybe even the
| actors, etc.) would prefer that the character still be voiced
| by the original actor; but usually, the talent is so much in
| demand that it would be too expensive.
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| I work in animation. There are two reasons this is okay. One,
| the company owns the rights to the character lightning McQueen
| and they own the performance of the character by way of their
| contract with the actor. This probably makes more sense when
| the specific voice performance is sounds more "charactery" and
| less like the actors speaking voice but the same principle
| applies.
|
| Additionally there is usually a provision explicitly allowing
| for this in the contract with the initial voice actor.
| Depending on the voice actor's leverage, they can negotiate for
| things like approval over the replacement, right of first
| refusal to voice the character or payment when a sound-a-like
| is used.
|
| The fact the character sounds exactly like Owen Wilson himself
| is somewhat incidental though understandably makes this
| confusing. What they couldn't do in this case is have an Owen
| Wilson soundalike voice a DIFFERENT Disney character. They only
| own Owen Wilson's voice as it pertains to portraying the
| character Lightning McQueen.
|
| In the OpenAI situation and Frito Lay there is no initial
| contract granting any rights to a voice performance.
| hbn wrote:
| OpenAI didn't want their voice to sound like Scarlett
| Johansson, they wanted it to sound like Samantha from Her.
| Does Warner Brothers have a right to AI voices that sound
| like Scarlett Johansson? Shouldn't it be them suing?
|
| What if she wasn't doing her own voice? Many actors have
| voiced characters not in their own voice over the years. Does
| Elmo's original voice actor own Elmo's voice or is it whoever
| owns Sesame Street?
|
| I'm not necessarily making any assertions, I'm genuinely
| asking cause I don't know what kind of precedent is here.
| Though personally I'm not convinced of the case against
| OpenAI, other than bad optics from Altman.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > OpenAI didn't want their voice to sound like Scarlett
| Johansson, they wanted it to sound like Samantha from Her
|
| That is likely the case they would try to make if they went
| to court. But this likely will be settled out of court if
| there's anything there
|
| OpenAI trying to contract Scarlett twice would likely put a
| big damper on the "We didn't want it to sound like her, we
| wanted it to sound like the character" too
|
| It's definitely not cut and dry
| localfirst wrote:
| Read the whole thing in his voice with _Going out West_ playing
| in the background. What a true boss.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> <object ... </object>_
|
| Oops. I hope they get that fixed. I love Tom Waits.
| bmitc wrote:
| Tom Waits is the ultimate artist. He is also quite intelligent
| and hilarious. I always liked his appearances on Letterman.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| We all read these things and are moved, but we do nothing. Let's
| do something.
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