If this is OK (and of course it is, no one has to accept any offer), how is OpenAI working with someone with a similar voice tone not OK?
If Sam used someone's voice without consent, that's illegal and immoral, but I see nothing wrong with Sam paying someone with a similar voice and using that voice instead.
The “her” tweet makes it exceptionally clear that it was always intended to be Johanssen’s likeness, not some other voice actor’s that happens to sound similar; OpenAI is just betting they can get away with it.
It seems like OpenAI were also betting on Johanssen not knowing her rights _de jure_in that area, which it appears they were quite wrong about. (And even if she didn’t, she would have quickly learned of them in this hyper-connected world, making the bet utterly incompetent…)
What's wrong with using a similar voice to the one in your vision of the demo/service, as it's the closest voice that you can (legally) use it?
Intent matters a lot in a situation like this and OpenAI very clearly documented their intent for every me to point and laugh at. Even in the hypothetical case I give above where they don’t try to hire Johanssen and just get someone similar-sounding, they could still be liable for appropriating Johanssen’s voice if they were coaching the voice actor to specifically sound like Johanssen rather than do her own performance.
You’re looking for a technicality but this stuff relies on human judgment for a reason.
As long as it's not literally her voice (or a model trained directly on her voice) they should have rights to do anything they want.
If a similar voice was used because it was _reminiscent of_ “Her” but was still a unique performance, then it probably wouldn’t be a problem. Where there’s a real problem is if it’s an intentional mimicry of a specific person’s specific vocal performance.
And Johanssen can show OpenAI had such intent in court pretty easily, between their attempts to get her consent to use her voice (which she denied) as well as their CEO’s “her” tweet promoting the voice.
That person's (Scarlet) voice just happens to be a great match for the intended tone and since they refused, they went to the next candidate.
Do you really think that everything exists in a a vacuum and must be decided from first principles, giving the maximum benefit of the doubt to one party over another? There is extensive case law on exactly this situation, and OpenAI has run afoul of it.
Like, for example, voicing an AI chatbot when that celebrity, one of the most highly paid in the world, has previously starred in a famous movie as an AI chatbot. And especially when the makers of the chatbot have repeatedly publicly referenced the movie as inspiration in creating the chatbot and have publicly pointed out the similarity between their chatbot and the movie. And especially when the makers of the chatbot have approached that celebrity to ask to use her persona and been denied.
Because if you do that you might just get your arse sued off.
The legal issue is that there are specific, established laws based on ideas like the above, known as "right to publicity" laws.