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No, they used another (consenting) actress's voice who happens to sound a lot like Scarlett Johansson.
Scarlett Johansson doesn't have an IP right to "female voices that sound vaguely like Scarlett Johansson." As long as they can produce the receipts to show that this is actually what happened, she'd have no case.
That Altman referenced "Her" does not really bear on this. You can like or dislike the world portrayed in Her. Personally I found it a pretty uplifting vision of what a near-singularity future could look like, at least up to a few minutes before the ending. And you can like or dislike the voice that they demoed. Personally I can't stand it, and the sultry, flirty, overtly sexy affect really doesn't appeal to me. (But I'm a homo, so presumably I'm not the target audience, and maybe I'd be a big fan of some Josh Hartnett soundalike with an analogously please-fuck-me inflection, I dunno.) But neither has anything to do with whether Scarlett Johansson has somehow been wronged. She hasn't.
In any event, my distaste for the voice apparently was widely enough shared that they nixed it. But that just reflects a decent product sensibility and indicates nothing about this incredibly stupid attempt at a gotcha by you or all of the anti-progress Redditors who are joining you in hate-jerking over this as we speak.
We have correctly and broadly recognized that you can impersonate someone by using someone else's voice. This is the Siri equivalent of hiring a 55 year old teacher who just happens to be named Taylor Swift to endorse your brand of makeup
Here's when a snack company did the same thing to Tom Waits:
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/communications/waits.html
They hired some other female voice actor. They did not instruct her to imitate Scarlett Johansson and they did not mention the movie Her to her. I suppose you would have a point if you could find some internal documents that said something like "we've done auditions with 100 female voice actors and we suggest proceeding with Candidate #73 because she sounds the closest to Scarlett Johansson's voice," but absent that, there's no case. There's just a rush to judgment and condemnation from various nobodies on the internet who have axes to grind with OpenAI for various stupid reasons -- or who are technology "journalists" farming engagement from aforementioned nobodies.
How can we be certain that they didn't give those instructions? If you're resolute in that claim then I'd like to see some evidence or a strong intuition. All we know is that they tried to hire Mrs. Johansson, were unable to, made public references to the film 'Her' with respect to the AI voice, and then hired someone who subjectively the majority of people conflate the voice of with Mrs. Johansson.
If this was a more mundane dispute, say about a restaurant acquiring a hamburger recipe, all of these facts would probably lead us to believe there was an effort to get the goods without due permission. Adding in the prior of this particular company playing very loose with intellectual property rights and ownership pushes it to very likely that they did what everyone here is suspecting them of, and certainly if it was entirely innocuous, they did themselves no favours showing the contrary of our suspicions and made no effort to show anything dispositive in that respect.
How can we be certain that Russell's Teapot doesn't exist?
I guess my objection is that this whole dispute feels like it's in bad faith. A lot of people just hate OpenAI for various reasons (predominantly ideological safetyism and rank envy at how much they've succeeded), are channeling that regrettable ennui into becoming sudden converts to the vital public interest of protecting an obscure IP right in "likeness" on behalf of Hollywood celebrities, and are making whatever assumptions about the facts they need to make to paint OpenAI generally and Sam Altman specifically as a villain on that dubious stage. I just don't buy the notion that the vitality of your objection is genuinely rooted at this object level. It just looks like you're trying to throw stones, and you think that celebrity IP likeness rights are a good stone. But both your motivation to throw stones (rather than make the argument that is at the genuine root of your distaste for OpenAI) and your apparent willingness to pick up a turd and call it a stone are just... unbecoming, I guess.
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When not wanting AI to be controlled by sociopaths makes you "anti-progress"....
Look, AI is here whether we like it or not. There's not much that governments can or should do to control it. We simply don't have the regulatory tools, and Congress is comically out of their depth. But people like Sam Altman welcome regulation so they can slam the door shut on competitors and take all the value for themselves.
AI risk encompasses many scenarios. Obvious, the fast takeoff singularity attracts the most eyeballs. But that is not even the most likely risk.
Another very real risk is that one person or group is able to control the AI landscape. Whether that group is the Chinese Communist Party or OpenAI I don't want it. I don't want OpenAI to be the leaders because I believe that Sam Altman's actions (this is just a tiny example) make him unsuitable to lead the world's most important company.
I get that you hate Sam Altman and believe he is a sociopath. I don't understand where that hatred or conclusion are coming from, but I also don't particularly care. What I don't like is that your "fuck that guy" attitude seems to be motivating accusations of wrongdoing on other flimsy and pretextual grounds. It diminishes us to engage in that.
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I mean, there's definitely some male voice actor contributions that turn a piece much more memorable for me (eg, recent NakedSav+SpicyGayDog piece has a 'good puppy', a lot of LewdDev's work), enough that I avoid ASMR/audiobook/RVC stuff because I worry it'll be addictive.
But I don't really want that from a random app, and even as someone who would use (and has used) AI for adult content, I'm hoping that is has uses other than that.
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That's what OpenAI claims, whether it's true or not doesn't matter from a PR perspective now. I think it makes sense for them to nip in the bud and just end with this small controversy rather than make it an even bigger deal with actual lawsuits flying around (and perhaps having to reveal something they don't want to during discovery).
I would think enough people did like the voice that it would be worth keeping it around, especially since it's not like the other AI voices are any more popular or liked.
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No, but she has the rights to her own likeness, which OpenAI wanted to use. Did they? That could only be known through trial, it takes one sympathetic judge to hear the case and start discovery. And I find it extremely plausible that, on a large software engineering team, someone said something bad in an email. And a settlement wouldn't look good for OpenAI's PR either.
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No idea the truth to Altman's claim that it was a voice actress, but it definitely sounded like Johansson. I quite liked it and it's really odd how when I heard a different voice (the new one they put up) I was like who TF are you?
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Hmm yes, a female voice that teehees around and feigns innocence while attempting to manipulate men.
For some reason this doesn’t strike me as the most unique IP.
Hey now, no need to gloat. Count your blessings.
The estate of Marilyn Monroe will have to sue ScarJo for copyright infringement.
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