Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewflnr | Hacker News Reader

That makes it weird, but it doesn't (itself) mean they literally used her voice. It just means they were inspired by the movie. It's not illegal to be weird.

View on HN

Legally they don’t need to have literally used her voice to have broken the law, never mind violating many people’s basic sense of what’s right and wrong.

They don't? Because if it's true that they used a sound-alike voice actress for the actual model, I don't see how any reasonable complaint about that could stand. You can't ban people from voice-acting who have similar voices to other celebrities. There needs to be something more to it.

The something more is intent.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

> You can't ban people from voice-acting who have similar voices to other celebrities

Actually, you probably can.[0]

[0] https://casetext.com/case/waits-v-frito-lay-inc

Edit: Added the context for the reply

Well that's... concerning? I'm not sure I disagree with the decision there but to apply it any more widely would be a problem.

It's such a huge problem that it's only brought up in the context of someone (probably) doing exactly what it's designed to prevent... By some miracle, this actually isn't used to outlaw satire or put Elvis impersonators out of work. It's used to prevent people from implying endorsement where none exists.

I think it’s less the voice and more about how they went about it. They were apparently in negotiations with her and they fell apart. Then they tried to resume negotiations with her two days before the new model launched.

If it was just an actor, it might be a case of inspiration gone awry. But this particular actor sued Disney in 2021 after making a lot of movies and a lot of money making movies for them.

Deliberately poking a fight with a litigation happy actor is weird. Most weird is really benign. But this is the kind of weird that forces out of court settlements. It’s reckless.

Edit - mistyped the date as 2001. Changed to 2021.

Oh, sure. There's plenty of other ways OpenAI have been boneheaded. I'm just saying the mere fact of referencing "Her" implies very little.

That's a fair statement if you take the "Her" post out-of-context and without the corroborating retort from ScarJo and his history. Which, of course, is not possible and also pretty boneheaded itself.

This isn't some college kid with an idea and too much passion.

Perpetual benefit of the doubt given for every implication as though it’s happening in a vacuum is how humanity keeps putting megalomaniacs and sociopaths into positions of power and influence.

It’s really a shame.

If we're going to pillory Sam Altman, it's important to do it for the right reasons. That was not a good reason. I really should not need to defend this principle.

What reason do you suggest is more appropriate to “pillory Sam Altman”

Most of the other ones in this thread?

The founding principle of Silicon Valley.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com