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".
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.
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."
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.
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.
>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.
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.
However knowing saying such a thing would be problematic they would be looking for workarounds. Considering they did giver her directions and the end result was closer to ‘her’ than the voice accesses natural voice they didn’t need to ask for a specific impersonation for people to make the connection.
I’m thinking of a number, bigger, no smaller. Keep playing the game and the end result is arbitrarily close to the number you’re thinking of.
The search space for generic seductive female voice is huge and they happened to end up with one that objectively sounds like someone they tried to recruit. They can’t argue random chance at this point.
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.
>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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
If it was created from ScarJo's voice to sound like her, then it was done badly, because it lacks her voice's most distinctive feature and sounds more like Rashida Jones than it does ScarJo.
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.
