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Comment by beeboobaa3 | Hacker News Reader

> It's probably not fine to hire a voice actor and tell them to imitate someone else.

Pretty sure this is fine, otherwise cartoons like the simpsons or south park would've gotten in trouble years ago.

This is specifically covered in cases like Midler v. Ford, and legally it matters what the use is for. If it's for parody/etc it's completely different from attempting to impersonate and convince customers it is someone else.

Midler v. Ford is a bit different from CahtGPT in that it was about a direct copy of a Midler song for a car ad, not just a voice sounding similar saying different stuff.

You can hear them here:

Midler version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFVhL0jbutU&t=22s

Car ad https://youtu.be/hxShNrpdVRs

One of male voice actor contractors impersonated Julia Childs for a commercial years ago, writing was in a parodying style. She sued and won.

Parody is a protected fair use case.

You can make a Saturday Night Live sketch making fun of Darth Vader.

You cannot use a Darth Vader imitator to sell light sabers.

Exactly, parody isn't a commercial product.

Sure, you can't sell light sabers. Can't you use a Darth Vader voice impersonator to sell vacuums? What about a voice that sounds like generic background actor 12?

You seem to be conveniently ignoring the fact that OpenAI is selling conversational AIs.

There's a distinction between parody and impersonation, yes.

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