She said no.
So they found a soundalike and Tweeted out references to the movie Her (starring Scarlett Johanssen as an AI chat bot) in the days leading up to launch.
Scummy as fuck from OpenAI regardless of the technical legal rights and issues involved.
If there were just two blonds in the world, one famous and the other not and you wanted a blonde actress for the role and she said no is it scummy to hire the other one?
Is it scummy to hire "discount" Matt Damon instead of Matt Damon?
It's illegal, you can't hire an impersonator and allude to it being the real deal. That's the issue.
> Is it scummy to hire "discount" Matt Damon instead of Matt Damon?
If you imply you've hired Matt Damon by tweeting something about Matt Damon and your "discount" had a profession as a Matt Damon impersonator, yes. Yes 100%.
This is illegal with or without AI. We've literally had these laws longer than the tech.
If Matt Damon said no (e.g. leaving a paper trail) and you want people to pretend it's Matt Damon anyway, yes. Look up Ford v. Milton. You can't just go behind an artist's back like that.
If you want to argue about soundalikes in spinoffs, those are discussed in contracts (and those kinds of figures are making 7+ figures as is, so it's fair on them to choose to let them do that).