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.
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.
> 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
The “smoking gun” is they (allegedly) reached out to Johansson, which shows it is her voice they were interested in. If they wanted to use the character they should have reach out to WB, but it is likely Johansson still have som say in how her act is used. A major point of contention in the recent actors strike was about to what extent studios could use ai models based on a performance.
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.