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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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I’m not disputing that it could sound like her, and I think if I had been primed to it like you, I might have made the connection as well.

My point is that SJ is not a voice actor, and isn’t doing a specific “character” or something the way that Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gotfried are.

Her voice is generic. It’s why there aren’t SJ impersonators the way there are for Donald Trump, for instance, who has a very distinct way of speaking. Searching for a SJ voice impersonator returns 0 results for me on YouTube at least.

And by the way I say this as somebody who likes a lot of the movies she has been in and sought them out. Girl With the Pearl Earring, The Island, Her, Lost in Translation; these were all movies I loved and largely sought out because she was in them. She wasn’t being hired for her voice.

My point is that SJ is not a voice actor, and isn’t doing a specific “character” or something the way that Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gotfried are.

Her voice is generic.

Really? She was hired for the movie Her because of her voice. She came in to replace another actress (Samantha Morton) because her voice didn't work. SJ might not be primarily a voice actor, but her voice is distinctive enough to be considered an upgrade from Morton's voice.

Sydney Sweeney is getting a lot of work right now.

If Elon decides that Grok needs to have a visual avatar, and wants to hire SS to model for it (because she is very attractive), but she declines, and he goes with a different blonde woman with enormous...eyes...should SS be able to sue for this?

In your case, the replacement would at lease be a different real life human being with their own body. If Elon instead made a digital avatar based off of SS's body cast, should she have the right to sue?

Yes. But that is not what OpenAI did. They hired a completely different real human being a trained an AI model on her voice.

I might stand corrected. I thought the whole problem was that they trained the AI on ScarJo's voice

My point is that SJ is not a voice actor, and isn’t doing a specific “character” or something the way that Fran Drescher or Gilbert Gotfried are.

True.

She wasn’t being hired for her voice.

In general maybe, but I think she was specifically brought in on Her to replace Samantha Morton - herself a great actor - because the existing actor wasn't working. If she was there for promotional/greenlighting reasons (which I'm sure played a role in films like Ghost in the Shell, Lucy, etc.) you'd assume she'd get cast from the start because her profile is incomparable.