OpenAI rescinded Johansson: “It’s all in her”: A spokesperson for the Voice of Sky and a lawsuit against Disney

Johansson’s statement, relayed to WIRED by her publicist, claims that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked her last September to provide ChatGPT’s new voice but that she declined. She describes being astounded to see the company demo a new voice for ChatGPT last week that sounded like her anyway.

On Monday, she claimed that she forced the reversal after her lawyers asked for more info about the new voice.

I was shocked, angry, and in disbelief when I heard the release demo because it sounded eerily similar to mine. It notes that Altman appeared to encourage the world to connect the demo with Johansson’s performance by tweeting out “her,” in reference to the movie, on May 13.

Sam Altman, creator of the voice of Sky, said in a statement that the voice was not intended to be like that of Sony’s glamour girl. He claimed the company contacted the voice actor before hiring Sky’s voice. “Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry that we did not communicate better.

It’s unclear if Johansson plans to take additional legal action against OpenAI. John Berlinski is a partner at Los Angeles firm Bird Marella, who represented her in a lawsuit against Disney claiming breach of contract. (OpenAI’s outside counsel working on this matter is Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati partner David Kramer, who is based in Silicon Valley and has defended Google and YouTube on copyright infringement cases.) Some intellectual property experts think it would be good to focus on the “right of publicity” laws that protect people from having their name or likeness used without permission.

The Problem of Hollywood and the Right to Publicity: Artificial Intelligence Can Be Misappropriated Without Your Constraints, And It Isn’t

Synthetic voices have been made easier withrative artificial intelligence. In January, voters in New Hampshire were bombarded with robocalls featuring a deepfaked voice message from Joe Biden. In March, OpenAI said it had developed a way to clone a person’s voice from a 15-second clip, but the company said it would not release the technology because of how it might be used.

There are other options she can take, but the case law for her position is in favor of her position.

Albers said that Johansson and other celebrities have the ability to invoke right to publicity laws which give them the right to protect their identity from being used without their permission. Albers says you could be violating someones right to publicity if you misappropriate their name, likeness, or voice.

Celebrities have previously won cases over similar-sounding voices in commercials. In 1988, Bette Midler sued Ford for hiring one of her backup singers for an ad and instructing the singer to “sound as much as possible like the Bette Midler record.” The commercial did not have Midler in it. That same year, Tom Waits sued Frito-Lay for voice misappropriation after the company’s ad agency got someone to imitate Waits for a parody of his song in a Doritos commercial. The cases were decided in favor of the celebrities. Christian Mammen, partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, said the wins by Waits and Midler had clear implications for the future of artificial intelligence.

What makes things difficult is the lack of federal right to publicity laws — instead, the laws are state by state, and not all states have one on the books. Each state also designs its likeness laws differently; for example, New York recognizes every individual has the right to control the commercial use of personal characteristics like their name, picture, voice, and even their signature. This right extends to a deceased person, whose estate must give prior consent for the use of a computer-generated replica. California, where OpenAI is headquartered, does not mention using digital replicas like AI-generated voices in its law. But California protects a living person’s voice from being used in commercial activities without consent. It states that using a person’s name, voice, or face can violate the protections.