Unless they can clearly demostrate reproducing the voice from raw voice actor recordings, this could be just a parallel construction to cover their asses for exactly this sort of case.
When discovery happens and there’s a trail of messages suggesting either getting ScarJo or finding someone that sounds enough like her this isn’t going to look good with all the other events in timeline.
>> When discovery happens and there’s a trail of messages suggesting either getting ScarJo or finding someone that sounds enough like her this isn’t going to look good with all the other events in timeline.
I'm not a lawyer, but this seems unfair to the voice actor they did use, and paid, who happens to sound like ScarJo (or vice versa!)
So if I sound like a famous person, then I cant monetize my own voice? Who's to say it isnt the other way around, perhaps it is ScarJo that sounds like me and i'm owed money?
There isn't an unfairness to the voice actor. She did her job and got paid.
The problem here is that someone inside of OpenAI wanted to create a marketing buzz around a new product launch and capitalize on a movie. In order to do that they wanted a voice that sounded like that movie. They hired a voice actor that sounded enough like ScarJo to hedge against actually getting the actor to do it. When she declined they decided to implement their contingency plan.
If they're liable is for a jury to decide, but the case precedent that I've seen, along with the intent, wouldn't look good if I were on that jury.
>> There isn't an unfairness to the voice actor. She did her job and got paid.
If her customers can get sued for using her voice, then this voice actor can never get another job and can never get paid again -- all because she happens to sound like ScarJo. That seems unfair to the voice actor.
It is not that the voice is similar to Scarlett, it is that it appears that Scarlett's identity was intentionally capitalized on to market the voice.
If you had a voice like Scarlett, and you were hired to create the voice of an AI assistant, there's no legal problem - as long as the voice isn't marketed using references to Scarlett.
However, in this case, the voice is similar to Scarlett's, AND they referenced a popular movie where Scarlett voiced an AI assistant, and named the assistant in a way that is evocative of Scarlett's name, and reached out to Scarlett wanting to use her voice. It is those factors that make it legally questionable, as it appears that they knowingly capitalized on the voice's similarity to Scarlett's without her permission.
It is about intent, and how the voice is marketed. Voice sounds like a famous person = fine, voice sounds like a famous person and the voice is marketed as being similar to the famous person's = not fine.
It is not a clear-cut 'this is definitely illegal' in this case, it is a grey area that a court would have to decide on.
>> How is it unfair to the voice actor? Is she getting sued? Is she paying damages? Is she being prevented from doing her work? No.
Seems she is prevented from doing work, if companies can get sued for hiring/using voice actors who sounds like ScarJo, then any voice actor who sounds like ScarJo has effectively been de-platformed. Similarly, imagine I look very much like George Clooney -- if George Clooney can sue magazines for featuring my handsome photos, then I lose all ability to model for pay. (Strictly hypothetical, I am a developer, not a fashion model.)
>> It seems like you don't get the fundamental principal underlying "right of publicity" laws if you are asking this question.
Totally, i have no idea of the laws here, but very curious to understand what OpenAI did wrong here.
You are skipping past intent and turning it into strict liability. That's not the case.
>Totally, i have no idea of the laws here, but very curious to understand what OpenAI did wrong here.
It is illegal to profit off the likeness of others. If it wasn't, what's to stop any company from hiring any impersonator to promote that company as the person they are impersonating?
That's an impersonation of a parody song in his style. This is a voice actor who has a voice that's kinda similar to ScarJo and kinda similar to Rashida Jones but not quite either one doing something different.
Cases are not a spell you can cast to win arguments, especially when the facts are substantially different.
In both cases the companies are specifically trading on creating confusion of a celebrity’s likeness in an act that celebrity trades in, and with the motivation of circumventing that very celebrity’s explicit rejection of the offer for that very work.
Just because one is a singer and the other is an actor isn’t the big difference you think it is. Actors do voice over work all the time. Actors in fact get cast for their voice all the time.
Yelling, “Parody!” Isn’t some get out of jail free card, particularly where there is actual case law, even more particularly when there are actual laws to address this very act.
> In both cases the companies are specifically trading on creating confusion of a celebrity’s likeness in an act that celebrity trades in, and with the motivation of circumventing that very celebrity’s explicit rejection of the offer for that very work.
Are they? Where did they advertise this? The voice doesn't even sound that much like ScarJo!
> Just because one is a singer and the other is an actor isn’t the big difference you think it is. Actors do voice over work all the time. Actors in fact get cast for their voice all the time.
It's a very big difference when the jurisprudence here rests on how substantial the voice is as a proportion of the brand, especially in the presence of the other disanalogies.
> Yelling, “Parody!” Isn’t some get out of jail free card, particularly where there is actual case law, even more particularly when there are actual laws to address this very act.
Sure -- If you read that back, I'm clearly not doing that. An impression in a parody in the artist's unique style (Waits) was a case where it was a violation of publicity rights. This is radically different from that. It's not clear that Midler and Waits have much bearing on this case at all.
Which is not as similar as people keep saying though: both that case, and Bette Midler's involved singers, who perform as themselves and are their own brand.
Consider when a company recasts a voice actor in something: i.e. the VA Rick and Morty have been replaced, Robin Williams was not the voice of genie in Aladdin 2 or the animated series.
