Sky actor says no one ever compared her to ScarJo before OpenAI drama

OpenAI is sticking to its story that it never intended to copy Scarlett Johansson's voice when searching for an actor for ChatGPT's “Sky” voice mode.

The company provided to the Washington Post with documents and recordings clearly intended to support OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's defense of Johansson's claims that Sky was “eerily similar” to his critically acclaimed voice acting performance in the sci-fi film . Her.

Johansson alleged that OpenAI hired a lookalike to steal her image and confirmed that she refused to provide Sky's voice. Experts said Johansson would have a strong case if she decided to sue OpenAI for violating her right of publicity, which gives the actress exclusive rights to the commercial use of her likeness.

In OpenAI's defense, The Post reported that the company's appeal flyer was not looking for a “clone of actress Scarlett Johansson,” and early voice test recordings of the unnamed actress hired to voice Sky showed that its “natural voice is identical to that of AI”. -Sky voice generated. “For this reason, OpenAI has argued that “Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson”.

Additionally, an agent for the unnamed Sky actress, who was chosen to protect her client's anonymity, confirmed to the Post that her client said she was never asked to impersonate Johansson or her character In Her. She simply used her own voice and got the job.

The agent also provided a statement from her client saying she had never been compared to Johansson before the backlash began.

This all feels personal to me,” the voice actress said, “since it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to it by people who know me closely.

However, OpenAI apparently contacted Johansson after casting the voice actress from Sky. During outreach last September and again this month, OpenAI appeared to want to replace the voice of the Sky actress with Johansson's, which is ironically what happened when Johansson was chosen to replace the original actress hired to voice her character in Her.

Altman clarified that timeline in a statement provided to Ars that emphasized that the company “never intended” for Sky to resemble Johansson. Instead, OpenAI tried to convince Johansson to voice the role after apparently performing just as Her Director Spike Jonze felt that the voice could potentially resonate with more people if Johansson did it.

“We apologize to Ms. Johansson for not communicating better,” Altman's statement said.

Johansson has not yet publicly indicated that she intends to sue OpenAI over this alleged communications issue. But if she did, legal experts told the Post and Reuters that his case would be strong because of the legal precedent set in the high-profile lawsuits filed by singers Bette Midler and Tom Waits, preventing companies from misappropriating their votes.

Why Johansson could win if she sued OpenAI

In 1988, Bette Midler for follow-up Ford Motor Company for hiring a soundalike to perform Midler's song “Do You Want to Dance?” in an ad intended to appeal to “young yuppies” by referencing popular songs from their college years. Midler had refused to do the ad and accused Ford of exploiting his voice to promote its product without his consent.

This groundbreaking case proved that a distinctive voice like Midler's cannot be deliberately imitated to sell a product. It didn't matter that the singer used in the ad used her natural voice, because “a number of people” told Midler that the performance “sounded exactly like her.”

Midler's case set a powerful precedent preventing companies from appropriating parts of artists' identities, thereby preventing anyone from stealing a well-known voice that otherwise could not be purchased.

“A voice is as distinctive and personal as a face,” the court ruled, concluding that “when a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated to sell a product, sellers have appropriated that voice. which is not theirs. “.

As in Midler's case, Johansson could argue that many people think Sky's voice sounds like him and that OpenAI's product might be more popular if it had a Her-like voice mode. Comics from popular late-night shows have joked about the similarity, including Johansson's husband, Saturday Night Live the actor Colin Jost. And other people close to Johansson agreed that Sky looked like him, Johansson said.

Johansson's case differs from Midler's, apparently mainly because of the casting schedule that OpenAI strives to uphold.

OpenAI seems to think that because Johansson was offered the job after the Sky actor was cast, she has no basis for claiming they hired the other actor after he turned it down.

However, timing may not matter as much as OpenAI thinks. In the 1990s, Tom Waits cited the case of Midler when he won a $2.6 million contract. trial after Frito-Lay hired a Waits impersonator to perform a song that “echoed the rhyming wordplay” of a Waits song in a Doritos commercial. Waits won his case even though Frito-Lay never attempted to hire the singer before choosing the soundalike.