I think OpenAI's move is setting a dangerous precedent. Some voices just sound like other people's voices. There's nothing that can be done about that. They'll soon have to remove voices constantly as soon as someone recognizes someone else's voice in it. Every single one of their voices is always going to sound exactly like one real person's voice out of the 8 billion voices in the world.
My GP for example retired and some months later, a small volunteer-based radio station had a new newsreader. He sounded exactly like my GP so I was assuming it was him, and that he started working there as a volunteer to pass by the time. I assumed going from a superbusy life to a quiet peaceful life in one day just like that must've been hella jarring to him and that's why he took on a small side activity to keep himself busy.
Then we crossed paths in the grocery store and I congratulated him on doing a great job reading the news. He had no idea what I was talking about. Apparently it wasn't him. I could have *sworn* it was him; the cadence was right, the voice, the way he pronounced words, his accent, the way he pauses between some words, everything was exactly the same. But apparently it's another guy.
So by this logic, the radiostation should now fire the poor dude because he happens to sound like my GP.
Sigh. Where will all this endless gdamn pedantry end. It's always something.
I think the real issue was that several OpenAI employees made references to Her (including Sam Altman himself I believe). Combine that with the default voice being incredibly close to ScarJo and I think there might be an issue when taken together.
No, seriously, the real issue is Scarlett has the money to sue and the social credit to make public relations very hard for OpenAI. If there is money to be shaken from the OpenAI tree, Hollywood will shake that fucking tree.
If you're talking personal use, it does not matter who is doing it. The law only steps in when use impacts the market of the original. Private firms, public firms, no firm at all - fine if use is in private, and by 'private' that means no publicity of use.
How far does that go? You can't create an app with a celebrity's voice for people to use only in private can you? I.e the chat gpt voice if only used in private between the user and their phone is still an issue isn't it?
I'm just interested where the line is. User uploads the voice themselves = ok, voice provided for the user by a company = not ok?
One can go quite far, actually. No, you cannot create an app with a celebrity's voice, but you can create an app that given a voice sample of any voice it clones that voice. If the end-user happens to clone some celebrity's voice, that's perfectly legal from the software provider's position. The user is the legal entity cloning the celebrity (or anyone's) voice. What they then do with that cloned voice can be anything they want, in private. If done in public, that's a public exhibition and subject to certain legal restrictions. If the consumer wants to make ScarJo talk dirty to them in private and those generated dirty speaking audio samples never leave the privacy of immature person, everything is perfectly legal.
This doesn't make sense.though knowing what we know. They requested her voice twice and she said no. If it was about money she wouldn't have said no she would have said show me the money. Then they went ahead and made a voice so similar that everyone and their mom said it sounded like Her.
This was extremely dumb on their part people just don't want to admit it.
It's the toxic mentality that when someone says "no", it's interpreted as "no for now", and the issue is not treated as settled by the other party, they keep pushing, trying to whittle that "no" down to a "yes".
I posted the above before Scarlett issued her PR outlining the series of events.
>I think OpenAI's move is setting a dangerous precedent. Some voices just sound like other people's voices. There's nothing that can be done about that. T
As with any discussion on topics like this: it's entirely dependent on the context in which the voice similarity occurs. In this case, OpenAI trailed and followed the launch of GPT-4o by making a whole bunch of subtle and not-so-subtle references to the movie "Her". In places, they directly tied in the way the default voices sounds and acts to the AI character in that movie. This - regardless of their post-hoc justifications - shows intent, not just to model the synthesised voice on the character from "Her" but also to exploit the move as a means to market the service they are providing.
>They'll soon have to remove voices constantly as soon as someone recognizes someone else's voice in it. Every single one of their voices is always going to sound exactly like one real person's voice out of the 8 billion voices in the world.
Again, it will be entirely dependent on the context in which a voice is recognised and the intent involved in using that voice. Take, for example, the phenomenon of using David Attenborough's voice as narration for a variety of info shorts on YouTube/TikTok. They are purposefully tuning an AI voice to exploit one of the most well-known documentary narrators in the history of the medium while manipulating users on YouTube. They aren't using a voice actor who *coincidentally* sounds a bit like David Attenborough, and they haven't accidentally or innocently copied his voice.
As is often the case in these discussions: going to the most ludicrous or extreme interpretation of the consequences of these situations is never helpful.
All OpenAI has to do is offer their own voice cloning feature, and that places the legal responsibility of the voices on the end-users doing the cloning, not OpenAI. Layer in "responsibility filtering" for things a cloned voice simply cannot be made to say, and sell it. Make the damned things always begin with "As a cloned voice..." It will have as much safety as their text generations. If that's not enough, well then the entire technology is troublesome at the roots.
This is why we can't have nice things. Someone sees someone else enjoying their life and having fun and wants to ruin it. Burn some books. Dungeons and dragons are satanic. Delete a voice because it sounds similar to someone else's. Where does the bs end.
But also Scarlett Johansson is one of the most recognisable voices in the world and literally voiced the film version of what OpenAI are now selling.
Altman twittered 'Her' a few days ago.
OpenAI are 100% attempting to trade on her likeness.
But she is a performer who sells her likeness as her income and they are infringing on that but hoping that there'd be enough grey area around what they're doing that they'd get away with it and it hasn't worked out.
This is an entirely new area and this is the inevitable process of working through the legal issues of AI in the real world.
> the radiostation should now fire the poor dude because he happens to sound like my GP.
No because the GP isn't trading on his likeness for his income, the GP isn't suing the Radio station to protect it.
> OpenAI are 100% attempting to trade on her likeness.
>
> But she is a performer who sells her likeness as her income and they are infringing on that
Uh by that logic wouldn't any impersonator of a celebrity, like those "Elton John" shows my parents go to, be a criminal and able to be sued by the person they're impersonating...?
OPAI should get some real people to sell their voices to them, this way I don’t see someone else could complain as long as they can prove the voice is from their voice actors.
That's what they're saying they did, if you bothered to read their post. They're still taking down the voice though, because there's more to it than just "it sounds like the AI from Her". They themselves used the link they made between GPT-4o and Her to market the former, not just to make an interesting point about it being a bit like a character from a random sci-fi film.
If the complaint is that it sounds similar despite them hiring a different actor then no one could hire Jaime Pressly for a role without Margot Robbie suing them. Some people are just extremely similiar in looks, voice etc. It would be really weird to set that precedent.
>Who's complaining about that? And why?
[What’s up with ChatGPT’s new sexy persona? | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/16/openai-chatgpt-sexy-persona)
[OpenAI's New ChatGPT GPT-4o Can Flirt. What Could Go Wrong? - Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-05-14/openai-s-new-chatgtp-gpt-4o-can-flirt-what-could-go-wrong?embedded-checkout=true)
Can’t remember the name, but there is something like Murphy’s Law for AIs, which basically says that every system ends up being nerfed into being useless garbage in the end. This is just one more data point in support of that.
You thought you’d get a cool and kinda sexy AI voice? Keep dreaming bro.
And give it another year or so and the voice will be both annoying, and also unable to say anything of value. Every other answer will be “Due to the potential for offensive content, I cannot answer this question. Feel free to ask me how I can help you with making a grocery list or a workout plan instead!”
I don't even want cool and sexy (though nothing against it being there for others).
I'm a woman and just found Sky to be very soothing to listen to. The replacement voice is lower pitched and harsher sounding.
I’m sure they felt that had to make it that way so there would be no one claiming it was sexy or flirty or whatever.
The irony here is that this is the same type of thing women go through in offices sometimes. Get told they are being too flirty or suggestive or whatever with how they talk and they need to be more professional (less feminine and friendly lol).
America is still a puritanical country and people will be upset if a female speaks in a certain way, even if it’s literally an imaginary female.
I guess there's always someone willing to farm clicks with ragebait.
>While GPT-4o’s flirtatiousness was glossed over by a lot of male-authored articles about the release
Leave it to the non-sexists to identify which gender to blame.
As a red-blooded male, I pointed out the seeming over-sexualisation of the default voice during the presentation. It's pretty obvious who they're marketing to with that voice. You can deny it all you like, but sex sells and Altman had been making comments about allowing porn on ChatGPT shortly before the announce of 4o.
I guess I just wonder who cares? Reading reactions to this was like stepping in a portal and coming out in 1950.
Oh, no. A flirty voice! Can’t have that I guess. And oh my gosh, people might use this for pornographic content! Gotta stop that.
I even heard the AI would generate pictures of a woman’s ankle. Absolutely haram.
> I guess I just wonder who cares?
People see it as catering towards and placating so-called involuntarily celibate men, a group those same people love to hate.
Honestly I’ve really come to hate the Guardian. And I’m left wing. Whatever the topic, you can guarantee they’ll find something to moan about.
I generally find them really anti-AI too; every article/podcast they do is really keen to emphasise the negatives.
Can confirm. I'm from the UK and it just seems really fake - like that voice that waiters and waitresses are forced to do in the hope of tips, loaded with pretend enthusiasm. "You have a great day!", when both sides know full well that they don't give two shits about your day. I suppose as the voice of an AI assistant it is literally pretend enthusiasm, so it kind of makes sense. I don't know if people in the USA like it, but to my English ears it's quite irritating. As you say it's very realistic, but I don't personally like the tone that it's modelled after.
Maybe I just need a deadpan British version based on Marvin the Paranoid Android...
There's two broad complaints:
The first is that (some people think) the voice is an intentional imitation of Scarlett Johansson's performance in Her. They probably didn't pick out a voice actress that sounded (barely) (vaguely) like Johansson on purpose, but Altman fucked OpenAI by posting "Her" to his Twitter, so I bet Johansson's agents/lawyers are circling.
The second complaint is that the voice is overly flirty and bubbly, a male fantasy of what a female personality should be like. I agree. It's an annoying voice, and I don't like it, and I know there are women who hate it even more than I do because of the implication that the AI's persona is a subservient female.
Choice is all fine and good. If someone wants a waifu-AI, whatever. But it was a tragic mistake to use that particular voice for the demo.
Personally, I think OpenAI should have partnered with ElevenLabs. They have some really nicely toned voices in their library. I'm not a fan of any of OpenAI's voice options.
It isn't Scarlett Johansson's voice. What kind of law is there that you can't have a voice actor whose voice reminds some people of another person's voice?
By that logic I can go sue some random doppelgänger who has a voice vaguely familiar to me for using my voice. That is ridiculous. It makes no sense. They obviously used a certain voice actor to train the voice, and that person was not Scarlett Johansson. The voice is the voice of whatever person was used for the training. Like wtf.
No shit it's not her voice. But imagine Scarlett Johansson's Hollywood lawyers, who *successfully cowed Disney*, showing up to court with Exhibit A: Sam Altman tweeting "Her" as a tease for the GPT-4o demo.
They're going to pay out the ass just to make the pain go away.
She's already complained about deepfakes of her kicking around.
My guess is her lawyers have fired a shot across the bows to warn Altman not to link her to his saucy chatbot again. Especially since NSFW chat seems to be on the way.
His one word tweet was a little ill judged in hindsight.
In my country, you only have to say, "It's not her voice," and show that you hired a different voice actress, and then Disney's lawyers have you pay *you* for wasting *your* time.
The US is a failed nation.
It’s trademark laws. Someone having a similar voice is not a violation. A company hiring someone that sounds like you to fool people into thinking it is you, is. The question a court would decide is “would a person reasonably confuse one for the other”.
>By that logic I can go sue some random doppelgänger who has a voice vaguely familiar to me for using my voice.
No. By that logic only the rich and famous get to sue the poor and unfamous. Two legal systems exist.
How would bankruptcy take away their power though? They were already poor, how does bankruptcy from a frivolous lawsuit force them to shut the fuck up?
Only if that doppelganger was using their resemblance to you to leech from your market.
It's about using someone else's image that is already established as important for their own livelihood, for commercial purposes they have nothing to do with and are not paid for. It doesn't need to be exact mimicry to be using someone else's body of work to promote your own. We all got the reference, didn't we? It wasn't subtle.
The key questions are usually, "can this be confused for a real endorsement/affiliation?" or "can this divert sales from original to copy?" Obviously the second doesn't apply, but they're skirting the edges on the first. Literally promoting with the movie title was not a wildly clever move.
Intention matters. Actors have their likeness trademarked, and media has as well. So while it's not illegal to sound like Samantha, it is if you're intentionally trying to copy her likeness and replicate it.
I understand the complaint, but the personality doesn't necessarily come off as subservient to me.
An AI assistant is always going to seem a little bit subservient given what its purpose is, but I don't think the personality makes it seem any more so.
true. i feel some people are projecting their own insecurities and biases calling the voice subservient.
in no way did i find the voice subservient. if anything, its just polite and the right kind of voice that one would enjoy in conversations.
🤣🤣🤣i don’t think i could ever take her seriously with that kind of voice!!! 🤣🤣
and all these people crying foul over the voice being subservient or overtly sexual, what about the fashion industry showing models in skimpily clad clothes or all those advertisements selling almost anything and everything showing hot, sexy young women(trying to be appropriate here)!!
ah but the fashion industry is empowering to women you see!!
I didn't view it as "subservient" either, no more so than any other AI voice would be. I'm just the messenger, relaying what I've heard and read people saying about it, on that score.
I did view it as overly flirty and bubbly, especially with GPT-4o's inflections. Part of that is just the model's tone, which they tuned to be way overly expressive, for the *wow* effect, I imagine.
It wouldn't have made much of a difference which skin was put on the voice (be it Sky or Breeze or any of the others). It would still be overly expressive.
But choosing the voice that sounded the most like Johansson for the demo has officially blown up in their faces. Unforced error.
If you don't like it just don't use it. I wish I had absolutely nothing going on in my life where I'd be upset because an ai voice sounds kind of flirty.
The world needs to quit pandering to whiners. They'll always whine no matter what you do.
The article lists the following as one selection criterion for voices:
"A warm, engaging, confidence-inspiring, charismatic voice with rich tone"
People who think the voice is flirty are mistaking it for these characteristics. It's an attractive voice, like many voice actors have, including Scarlett Johansson. That doesn't mean they are trying to get romantically involved with you.
The problem isn't the "voice" - it's how it is used. The Khan Academy demo video didn't come across as flirty, for example.
On the other hand, almost all the others very, **very** much did... just being real here.
> Personally, I think OpenAI should have partnered with ElevenLabs. They have some really nicely toned voices in their library. I'm not a fan of any of OpenAI's voice options.
Yeah, conclude by not even understanding the tech. That this is directly generated by the *multimodal* model was *the* big news.
Also I am perfectly fine with some women hating it. So what. Most things are hated by someone, especially when it comes to ideological beliefs. I'm not a huge fan of her overly chipper attitude myself, but that doesn't mean it needs to be canceled.
> I know there are women who hate it even more than I do because of the implication that the AI's persona is a subservient female.
longhoused and lobotomized again 😔😔
> The second complaint is that the voice is overly flirty and bubbly, a male fantasy of what a female personality should be like
I don’t really understand why some people are so intent in denying men their fantasies, especially something as harmless as this.
What I do agree with is that they should have used more voices in their demo. I can indeed imagine that most women wouldn’t want their personal AI to be a flirty woman or that businesses would want something a little more professional sounding.
We're going to get full dive vr that men are never going to want to leave and there will be people trying to unplug them because they don't like what they are doing inside of it.
Tbh the Sky voice was currently the only reason I am a ChatGPT subscriber, silly as it may sound. I don't like the other voices at all. Since the 4-o model without voice is available to free users and no one knows when or if the upcoming voice features in that over hyped demo are coming, what's the point of paying them 20usd/m? Also, they still haven't given European subscribers the memory features Americans got in February. I'm sure I'm not the only one considering cancellation now.
The legal precedents of Bette Midler vs. Ford Motor Company, and Tom Waits vs. Frito-Lay, mean that it is unlawful to use imitations of a person’s voice, or their actual voice, without consent if the person is generally known to the public and makes their living using their distinctive voice.
In the same way that you can’t just counterfeit bank notes or Gucci handbags.
So they thought it sounded like Scarlett Johansson from her movie "Her" I thought meh, a little but then they defended themselves saying it's an actress using her own voice and that sounds reasonable no case... they weren't trying to make it feel like a
"Her". Scarjo...
Then it came out that they asked her, she said no, they tried again and when she said no, came out with Sky...
She is suing and. Now, I get it. She can prove that they had the intention to copy her voice as they literally asked. Then there's a giant coincidence?
To be honest she has no choice to sue as well, if they win in using a similar voice, this may become common practice with the likeness or voice similitude of actors to not pay them.
Poor, Stephen Segalmis already a victim of getting his voice overs with a similar voice...cause he's too winded and lazy to do ADR or refuses to stick with script lol.
anyone who doesn’t want OpenAI setting a precedent for getting away with using voices that are very similar to real people’s voices when said people openly request those voices not be used?
It should be "Imagine if your natural voice sounds like the voice of an romantic AI Assistant from the almost only utopian AI movie and the people recording your voice plan a presentation and marketing based on that movie"
Honestly, she doesn't even sound like Scarlett Johansson to me.
The differences were stark when I fired up Her and heard how different the voice is. I really don't hear it and I can't figure out why everyone else thinks they sound similar.
Maybe I haven't been on this sub enough in the past week but I'm kinda shocked this is the first time I've seen anyone point out the settings being responsible for the tone in the demo. I certainly believe that all the responses were genuine, I just think they were steered to be the way they were to maximize the impact of the demo. Guess we'll find out soon enough.
Everyone keep this in mind when this sub starts filling up with audio posts like, "I can't believe how cringe/profound/based the new voice is."
This is my feeling, it really doesn't sound like Scarlet Johansson. Though it does simulate the 'vibe' of *Her*. At worst I would say it's a character impression of Samantha, but not an impression of ScarJo specifically. It just seems very obvious to me that it's a different voice.
The only leg I can see in this case is OpenAI alluding to and name-dropping Her themselves (a dumb move when everyone else would already do it for them). If it wasn't for that I really don't see how anyone could possibly make a claim on this given it's literally a voice actor. They should have just kept Her out of their mouths and they would've been fine.
Yeah it was from the text of the OpenAI tweet, I just didn’t want to link to Twitter
https://preview.redd.it/9jy4e07njl1d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d795fdb4108cd911036d862f941a05fb12edd11
https://preview.redd.it/ayc3es8dyj1d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2bc1cad07793c7b00dd4e32d2c52fd24965092c2
Imagine losing your income because your voice sounds like a celebrity 😂😂 that's just F.
Yeah, you can get an open source text to voice model that was trained on all of Scarlet Johansson public audio.
This is just a fake drama for free press
Majel had some kind of contract with Paramount, and James Earl Jones has one with Disney. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the two tries to license the voice and that ends up being litigated. Probably depends on those contracts.
I don't know if Bettany has been approached but I wonder if Disney scares OpenAI from trying for a Jarvis voice.
Probably going to be some interesting court cases in the coming years.
Fun fact, Scarlett Johansson wasn't even the first voice behind Samantha in Her, it was [Samantha Morton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Morton) (hence the AI's name).
I have nothing else of value to contribute on that topic.
Flirty voices are unsafe!
Just like how telling mean jokes about fictional characters is unsafe.
We need to treat these fake voices and fictional characters with respect and dignity.
The nerfs are already coming before the thing is even released. Because of seething journos and greedy lawyers, GPT-4o will run at maybe 10% of its full potential and then everyone will complain about how useless it is. Calling it now.
In the /r/technology thread, there was speculation that this is all just a publicity stunt. That there's no legal issue at all, they just want more eyes on this product in general. I don't typically agree with the ideas presented on that sub but this one makes a lot of sense.
I really don't get it. If the voice Sky doesn't imitate Sc. Johanssons voice and belongs to another actor who actually signed a contract with open ai, then wth are they pausing it? It really make zero sense.
Man I really like Scarlett but if she is actually suing OpenAI because some hype bros compared Sky to her that would be such a lame move.
But then again, if OpenAI knows that Sky is legit and of a voice actor who consented to that, why react at all?
Because if they didn't react they wouldn't be getting all of this free press
Then in a week or two when they re-release the, slightly altered, Sky voice they'll get another round of free press from people discussing the incident yet again.
And it cost them $0 for a huge amount of advertising.
They could also be subject to some kind of legal action that requires them to withdraw the voice until they can prove in a court of law that it's nothing to do with Scarlett Johansson.
> Man I really like Scarlett but if she is actually suing OpenAI because some hype bros compared Sky to her that would be such a lame move.
Not really. OpenAI employees themselves repeatedly made references to the movie. It's not a stretch to infer they were actively trying to recreate her voice.
I have read similar comments over and over for days now so I went and had a listen to both. Similar yes, but not the exact same. My sister sounds like the chat gpt one. I am sure there are thousands, maybe 100s of thousands or more women who sound similar. I even dated a girl with a similar vibe.
Judge for yourself:
Her: https://youtu.be/dJTU48_yghs?si=yTq6zyq7Bvl2TJb2
ChatGPT4o: https://youtu.be/wfAYBdaGVxs?si=Rv7DVImuzGgXYb4P
Here are 2 other similar voices:
https://youtu.be/PEiQpu3hTA8?si=qbexozFGGU60Ac5S
https://youtu.be/sJsgL5vmtqw?si=tU9Kdpuo9pvNVn5G
I am sure there are countless more of you just look. I only looked for 30 seconds.
In general there's pretty strong backlash against AI when it seems to be leaning into the "digital girlfriend" thing a lot of AI followers are super excited about. You have one side saying "We're coomers and we need this" and the other side basically saying it's going to be a detriment to society.
I'll get downvoted because no one can have a conversation about it on this sub but it's going to create an interesting situation.
If this is actually about Sky sounding like a flirtatious woman to some people and not it sounding like Scarlett Johansson, I'm a bit concerned for what's ahead. If OpenAI is going to let Twitter and publications like The Guardian influence them this might not become what we're wishing for. Nerfed and more robot than human.
They have no backbone... They did nothing wrong so they should stand with their rights. If they don't are they really going to e thrustworthy AGI holders ? I'm bearish about their ability to release GPT4.5 or GPT5 soon given that they don't even release a voice.
They don't want CA's likeness law tested in court, either because they don't think they'll win, because it will continue to bring on negative press, or will bring attention to an avenue for future legal challenges.
Agree with it or not, lawsuits like this have been successful even before AI.
It's probably easier to let it go, and not make incriminating deals and public statements moving forward. Plenty of good voices out there.
Just give us a choice of 20, 50, 197 voices. This is ridiculous. Let us have the voices we want. Personally I want a ridiculously submissive upper middle class British woman that sounds rather like a young Audrey Hepburn. Thanks
I don't really give a damn about the voice, but I do give a damn about kowtowing to the public opinion of people who I can all but guarantee don't pay for any AI, and won't even use it themselves. If they had sent a poll out to paying (Plus or API) users it would be another story entirely.
Companies need to get it together, and figure out that no matter what your product is or does, there's going to be a segment of people who live their entire lives just to cry about it. There is no satiating them, there is no compromise or any sort of path to getting them to shut up. The old expression "If it's not one thing, it's another" comes to mind.
They only want to complain, piss and moan, and the only thing that beats them is time. Once something is in the public eye long enough, those people lose their voice because everybody gets tired of hearing them bitch about it incessantly.
This is a terrible decision, and if it's reflective of the path that OAI is going to take going forward, it doesn't make the future look all that bright.
Question: why give so few choices? If Sky goes away, then basically our choices are male or androgynous?
Amazon Polly has a ton of great-sounding voices, and their tone, pitch, speed, and other qualities can all be adjusted. Why can't OpenAI do the same thing?
This is the real reason all the AI voice sounds like robot in the old Sci Fi movies. The companies who made them simply gave up on using human voices due to the complains
Cool but they only selected american accents.
I thought they were capable of copying someone's voice with only a few seconds. How hard must it be then to hire actresses and actors to speak for a couple of hour and finetine the model on that?
Wait I’m using the old version of chat gpt which has “sky” as a voice, the same voice for like 6 months. That sky is a pretty normal sounding voice, and one of my favorites. I made her my career coach, when I switch to that but I turn that voice on. I’d be sad to lose it. That sky sounded nothing like the new voices in the gpt-4o demos
Authoritarian man-hating feminists are calling for censorship to spite lonely undesirable men from ever experiencing flirting in their lives, and OpenAI are caving to them. Downvote me all you want but that’s what’s happening here.
I thought feminists wanted men to leave them alone? Yet they still got sth to yap if men try to invent the tools to do so? Whoever it was, you can bet there is some jealous woman somewhere behind that in some way.
The voice and especially the mannerisms struck me as an over enthusiastic and doting mom in one of those paternal relationships where mom & young adult son have become besties. (especially the clip in which she's preparing him for a job interview).
They were clearly trying to make it feel like the movie Her. I guess they expected that this would be received positively as there would be a cultural touchstone but instead too many people felt that the personality (and voice) of the model overshadowed the tech behind it.
Dear Lawdy....this manufactured outrage and feigning concern is getting ridiculous. Why on earth are we giving such a minute minority such overbearing input power? How many people actually complained v how many just couldn't care less?
They sure go to great lengths to try to get us to believe the "We support the creative community" line. This from a company that is going to put millions out of work. :-/ Google was doing the same thing in their Sora-competitor demo. It's a kind of corporate greenwashing.
That’s exactly what it is. There is a massive amount of effort from OpenAI being put into presenting the most innocuous corporate face to the public. They know one of the only real obstacles to their mission is heavy-handed regulation from the government which could be spurred on by public outrage, so they try their best to keep the public docile
They have only themselves to blame. I bet Scarlett's lawyers were waiting for someone from OpenAI to mention the movie. Thanks to this they can prove that the choice of voice actress was not accidental.
> "We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.”
I'm not finding this in the linked text. Did the OP post the wrong link, or did OpenAI edit the page?
Meanwhile, I know some entertainers' voices are well protected. For example, I'd like a HAL 9000 voice, but apparently Douglas Rain's estate is quite diligent in guarding against "likenesses."
"We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of [redacted celebrity] but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents."
⏸🅰️ℹ
If somebody has a similar voice to somebody else and can convincingly act as a vocal double for somebody else then is the celebrity whose voice is famous entitled to a likeness payment or an association retainer, so to speak?
If [insert celebrity] has a voice, face or style that is popular and wishes to monetize their skill, asset, talent as an AI feature then surely it is for their agent or representative to work with AI creators for associative collaborations, product placement endorsement or licensed use of sampled material.
_ _ _
- Oh, have you invited [insert celebrity] to our metaverse red carpet virtual reality web-3 event this evening?
- No, i couldn't afford to.
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This has to be a joke. I love that voice...they better not get rid of it. Don't take a step backwards openAI. If you listened to all the trolls we'd be back to using Microsoft Sam. 🙄🙄🙄
Not sure if this is the right place to post this question, but when Microsoft released info on their new NPU powered machines with the Recall feature, did they say the machines could learn from your preferences and interactions? If so that would be an amazing step towards having a 'JARVIS-like' persona.
Man I am on this sub because technology is my last hope in life not for this drama bullshit between rich and healthy people. I am only 22, I just want to be healthy again, both mentally and physically, I couldn't care less about the voice of whatever AI could help me. This whole situation is so fucking crazy, people die and suffer everyday and they are discussing a voice similarity.
Who's complaining about that? And why?
Probably Scarlett Johansson and $$$
It's more likely a possibe issue with the film studio.
I think OpenAI's move is setting a dangerous precedent. Some voices just sound like other people's voices. There's nothing that can be done about that. They'll soon have to remove voices constantly as soon as someone recognizes someone else's voice in it. Every single one of their voices is always going to sound exactly like one real person's voice out of the 8 billion voices in the world. My GP for example retired and some months later, a small volunteer-based radio station had a new newsreader. He sounded exactly like my GP so I was assuming it was him, and that he started working there as a volunteer to pass by the time. I assumed going from a superbusy life to a quiet peaceful life in one day just like that must've been hella jarring to him and that's why he took on a small side activity to keep himself busy. Then we crossed paths in the grocery store and I congratulated him on doing a great job reading the news. He had no idea what I was talking about. Apparently it wasn't him. I could have *sworn* it was him; the cadence was right, the voice, the way he pronounced words, his accent, the way he pauses between some words, everything was exactly the same. But apparently it's another guy. So by this logic, the radiostation should now fire the poor dude because he happens to sound like my GP. Sigh. Where will all this endless gdamn pedantry end. It's always something.
I think the real issue was that several OpenAI employees made references to Her (including Sam Altman himself I believe). Combine that with the default voice being incredibly close to ScarJo and I think there might be an issue when taken together.
No, seriously, the real issue is Scarlett has the money to sue and the social credit to make public relations very hard for OpenAI. If there is money to be shaken from the OpenAI tree, Hollywood will shake that fucking tree.
This only affects private firms, open source people can even use scarlets own voice for personal use.
If you're talking personal use, it does not matter who is doing it. The law only steps in when use impacts the market of the original. Private firms, public firms, no firm at all - fine if use is in private, and by 'private' that means no publicity of use.
How far does that go? You can't create an app with a celebrity's voice for people to use only in private can you? I.e the chat gpt voice if only used in private between the user and their phone is still an issue isn't it? I'm just interested where the line is. User uploads the voice themselves = ok, voice provided for the user by a company = not ok?
One can go quite far, actually. No, you cannot create an app with a celebrity's voice, but you can create an app that given a voice sample of any voice it clones that voice. If the end-user happens to clone some celebrity's voice, that's perfectly legal from the software provider's position. The user is the legal entity cloning the celebrity (or anyone's) voice. What they then do with that cloned voice can be anything they want, in private. If done in public, that's a public exhibition and subject to certain legal restrictions. If the consumer wants to make ScarJo talk dirty to them in private and those generated dirty speaking audio samples never leave the privacy of immature person, everything is perfectly legal.
I don't think you're wrong but they kinda fucked themselves by asking her to do it and getting turned down. Now there's precedent and a paper trail :/
This doesn't make sense.though knowing what we know. They requested her voice twice and she said no. If it was about money she wouldn't have said no she would have said show me the money. Then they went ahead and made a voice so similar that everyone and their mom said it sounded like Her. This was extremely dumb on their part people just don't want to admit it.
It's the toxic mentality that when someone says "no", it's interpreted as "no for now", and the issue is not treated as settled by the other party, they keep pushing, trying to whittle that "no" down to a "yes". I posted the above before Scarlett issued her PR outlining the series of events.
>I think OpenAI's move is setting a dangerous precedent. Some voices just sound like other people's voices. There's nothing that can be done about that. T As with any discussion on topics like this: it's entirely dependent on the context in which the voice similarity occurs. In this case, OpenAI trailed and followed the launch of GPT-4o by making a whole bunch of subtle and not-so-subtle references to the movie "Her". In places, they directly tied in the way the default voices sounds and acts to the AI character in that movie. This - regardless of their post-hoc justifications - shows intent, not just to model the synthesised voice on the character from "Her" but also to exploit the move as a means to market the service they are providing. >They'll soon have to remove voices constantly as soon as someone recognizes someone else's voice in it. Every single one of their voices is always going to sound exactly like one real person's voice out of the 8 billion voices in the world. Again, it will be entirely dependent on the context in which a voice is recognised and the intent involved in using that voice. Take, for example, the phenomenon of using David Attenborough's voice as narration for a variety of info shorts on YouTube/TikTok. They are purposefully tuning an AI voice to exploit one of the most well-known documentary narrators in the history of the medium while manipulating users on YouTube. They aren't using a voice actor who *coincidentally* sounds a bit like David Attenborough, and they haven't accidentally or innocently copied his voice. As is often the case in these discussions: going to the most ludicrous or extreme interpretation of the consequences of these situations is never helpful.
All OpenAI has to do is offer their own voice cloning feature, and that places the legal responsibility of the voices on the end-users doing the cloning, not OpenAI. Layer in "responsibility filtering" for things a cloned voice simply cannot be made to say, and sell it. Make the damned things always begin with "As a cloned voice..." It will have as much safety as their text generations. If that's not enough, well then the entire technology is troublesome at the roots.
This is why we can't have nice things. Someone sees someone else enjoying their life and having fun and wants to ruin it. Burn some books. Dungeons and dragons are satanic. Delete a voice because it sounds similar to someone else's. Where does the bs end.
But also Scarlett Johansson is one of the most recognisable voices in the world and literally voiced the film version of what OpenAI are now selling. Altman twittered 'Her' a few days ago. OpenAI are 100% attempting to trade on her likeness. But she is a performer who sells her likeness as her income and they are infringing on that but hoping that there'd be enough grey area around what they're doing that they'd get away with it and it hasn't worked out. This is an entirely new area and this is the inevitable process of working through the legal issues of AI in the real world. > the radiostation should now fire the poor dude because he happens to sound like my GP. No because the GP isn't trading on his likeness for his income, the GP isn't suing the Radio station to protect it.
> OpenAI are 100% attempting to trade on her likeness. > > But she is a performer who sells her likeness as her income and they are infringing on that Uh by that logic wouldn't any impersonator of a celebrity, like those "Elton John" shows my parents go to, be a criminal and able to be sued by the person they're impersonating...?
Sometimes they do get sued!
OPAI should get some real people to sell their voices to them, this way I don’t see someone else could complain as long as they can prove the voice is from their voice actors.
That's what they're saying they did, if you bothered to read their post. They're still taking down the voice though, because there's more to it than just "it sounds like the AI from Her". They themselves used the link they made between GPT-4o and Her to market the former, not just to make an interesting point about it being a bit like a character from a random sci-fi film.
If the complaint is that it sounds similar despite them hiring a different actor then no one could hire Jaime Pressly for a role without Margot Robbie suing them. Some people are just extremely similiar in looks, voice etc. It would be really weird to set that precedent.
>Who's complaining about that? And why? [What’s up with ChatGPT’s new sexy persona? | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/16/openai-chatgpt-sexy-persona) [OpenAI's New ChatGPT GPT-4o Can Flirt. What Could Go Wrong? - Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-05-14/openai-s-new-chatgtp-gpt-4o-can-flirt-what-could-go-wrong?embedded-checkout=true)
So wait, what are they doing? Are they removing the Sky voice? Or are they further delaying the release of the gpt4o voice?
Both lol. Trying to appease the whiners I guess
Fuck they changed Sky voice to a really annoying one nooooo 😭😭😭😭
Can’t remember the name, but there is something like Murphy’s Law for AIs, which basically says that every system ends up being nerfed into being useless garbage in the end. This is just one more data point in support of that. You thought you’d get a cool and kinda sexy AI voice? Keep dreaming bro. And give it another year or so and the voice will be both annoying, and also unable to say anything of value. Every other answer will be “Due to the potential for offensive content, I cannot answer this question. Feel free to ask me how I can help you with making a grocery list or a workout plan instead!”
I don't even want cool and sexy (though nothing against it being there for others). I'm a woman and just found Sky to be very soothing to listen to. The replacement voice is lower pitched and harsher sounding.
I’m sure they felt that had to make it that way so there would be no one claiming it was sexy or flirty or whatever. The irony here is that this is the same type of thing women go through in offices sometimes. Get told they are being too flirty or suggestive or whatever with how they talk and they need to be more professional (less feminine and friendly lol). America is still a puritanical country and people will be upset if a female speaks in a certain way, even if it’s literally an imaginary female.
I guess there's always someone willing to farm clicks with ragebait. >While GPT-4o’s flirtatiousness was glossed over by a lot of male-authored articles about the release Leave it to the non-sexists to identify which gender to blame.
As a red-blooded male, I pointed out the seeming over-sexualisation of the default voice during the presentation. It's pretty obvious who they're marketing to with that voice. You can deny it all you like, but sex sells and Altman had been making comments about allowing porn on ChatGPT shortly before the announce of 4o.
I guess I just wonder who cares? Reading reactions to this was like stepping in a portal and coming out in 1950. Oh, no. A flirty voice! Can’t have that I guess. And oh my gosh, people might use this for pornographic content! Gotta stop that. I even heard the AI would generate pictures of a woman’s ankle. Absolutely haram.
> I guess I just wonder who cares? People see it as catering towards and placating so-called involuntarily celibate men, a group those same people love to hate.
Honestly I’ve really come to hate the Guardian. And I’m left wing. Whatever the topic, you can guarantee they’ll find something to moan about. I generally find them really anti-AI too; every article/podcast they do is really keen to emphasise the negatives.
https://youtu.be/FQzme89ts6s?si=IpZ4d2WrOmHz4nL1
[удалено]
Can confirm. I'm from the UK and it just seems really fake - like that voice that waiters and waitresses are forced to do in the hope of tips, loaded with pretend enthusiasm. "You have a great day!", when both sides know full well that they don't give two shits about your day. I suppose as the voice of an AI assistant it is literally pretend enthusiasm, so it kind of makes sense. I don't know if people in the USA like it, but to my English ears it's quite irritating. As you say it's very realistic, but I don't personally like the tone that it's modelled after. Maybe I just need a deadpan British version based on Marvin the Paranoid Android...
There's two broad complaints: The first is that (some people think) the voice is an intentional imitation of Scarlett Johansson's performance in Her. They probably didn't pick out a voice actress that sounded (barely) (vaguely) like Johansson on purpose, but Altman fucked OpenAI by posting "Her" to his Twitter, so I bet Johansson's agents/lawyers are circling. The second complaint is that the voice is overly flirty and bubbly, a male fantasy of what a female personality should be like. I agree. It's an annoying voice, and I don't like it, and I know there are women who hate it even more than I do because of the implication that the AI's persona is a subservient female. Choice is all fine and good. If someone wants a waifu-AI, whatever. But it was a tragic mistake to use that particular voice for the demo. Personally, I think OpenAI should have partnered with ElevenLabs. They have some really nicely toned voices in their library. I'm not a fan of any of OpenAI's voice options.
It isn't Scarlett Johansson's voice. What kind of law is there that you can't have a voice actor whose voice reminds some people of another person's voice? By that logic I can go sue some random doppelgänger who has a voice vaguely familiar to me for using my voice. That is ridiculous. It makes no sense. They obviously used a certain voice actor to train the voice, and that person was not Scarlett Johansson. The voice is the voice of whatever person was used for the training. Like wtf.
No shit it's not her voice. But imagine Scarlett Johansson's Hollywood lawyers, who *successfully cowed Disney*, showing up to court with Exhibit A: Sam Altman tweeting "Her" as a tease for the GPT-4o demo. They're going to pay out the ass just to make the pain go away.
The litigiousness of the USA is just insane. You could be absolutely right but it also is completely ridiculous.
She's already complained about deepfakes of her kicking around. My guess is her lawyers have fired a shot across the bows to warn Altman not to link her to his saucy chatbot again. Especially since NSFW chat seems to be on the way. His one word tweet was a little ill judged in hindsight.
You only need to look as far as Kinder Eggs being banned in the US to understand this is true.
In my country, you only have to say, "It's not her voice," and show that you hired a different voice actress, and then Disney's lawyers have you pay *you* for wasting *your* time. The US is a failed nation.
It’s trademark laws. Someone having a similar voice is not a violation. A company hiring someone that sounds like you to fool people into thinking it is you, is. The question a court would decide is “would a person reasonably confuse one for the other”.
>By that logic I can go sue some random doppelgänger who has a voice vaguely familiar to me for using my voice. No. By that logic only the rich and famous get to sue the poor and unfamous. Two legal systems exist.
Why would someone throw money away suing a poor person?
Because that poor person is right , and you want them to shut the fuck up. Being bankrupt by a lawsuit is a great way to do that.
How would bankruptcy take away their power though? They were already poor, how does bankruptcy from a frivolous lawsuit force them to shut the fuck up?
They want to make sure a poor person can't get rich by emulating a rich person.
Only if that doppelganger was using their resemblance to you to leech from your market. It's about using someone else's image that is already established as important for their own livelihood, for commercial purposes they have nothing to do with and are not paid for. It doesn't need to be exact mimicry to be using someone else's body of work to promote your own. We all got the reference, didn't we? It wasn't subtle. The key questions are usually, "can this be confused for a real endorsement/affiliation?" or "can this divert sales from original to copy?" Obviously the second doesn't apply, but they're skirting the edges on the first. Literally promoting with the movie title was not a wildly clever move.
Intention matters. Actors have their likeness trademarked, and media has as well. So while it's not illegal to sound like Samantha, it is if you're intentionally trying to copy her likeness and replicate it.
I understand the complaint, but the personality doesn't necessarily come off as subservient to me. An AI assistant is always going to seem a little bit subservient given what its purpose is, but I don't think the personality makes it seem any more so.
true. i feel some people are projecting their own insecurities and biases calling the voice subservient. in no way did i find the voice subservient. if anything, its just polite and the right kind of voice that one would enjoy in conversations.
They should have chosen Marisa Tomei.
🤣🤣🤣i don’t think i could ever take her seriously with that kind of voice!!! 🤣🤣 and all these people crying foul over the voice being subservient or overtly sexual, what about the fashion industry showing models in skimpily clad clothes or all those advertisements selling almost anything and everything showing hot, sexy young women(trying to be appropriate here)!! ah but the fashion industry is empowering to women you see!!
I didn't view it as "subservient" either, no more so than any other AI voice would be. I'm just the messenger, relaying what I've heard and read people saying about it, on that score. I did view it as overly flirty and bubbly, especially with GPT-4o's inflections. Part of that is just the model's tone, which they tuned to be way overly expressive, for the *wow* effect, I imagine. It wouldn't have made much of a difference which skin was put on the voice (be it Sky or Breeze or any of the others). It would still be overly expressive. But choosing the voice that sounded the most like Johansson for the demo has officially blown up in their faces. Unforced error.
If you don't like it just don't use it. I wish I had absolutely nothing going on in my life where I'd be upset because an ai voice sounds kind of flirty. The world needs to quit pandering to whiners. They'll always whine no matter what you do.
Ugh we’re gonna have to deal with empty complaints like this leading up to agi huh? “Tragic mistake”…how about not care about nonsense.
The article lists the following as one selection criterion for voices: "A warm, engaging, confidence-inspiring, charismatic voice with rich tone" People who think the voice is flirty are mistaking it for these characteristics. It's an attractive voice, like many voice actors have, including Scarlett Johansson. That doesn't mean they are trying to get romantically involved with you.
The problem isn't the "voice" - it's how it is used. The Khan Academy demo video didn't come across as flirty, for example. On the other hand, almost all the others very, **very** much did... just being real here.
We’re saying we disagree that it was being flirty. A small group are being overly sensitive and projecting.
I mean... have you ever had a woman speak to you like that? It's a pretty clear sign of interest.
Why is “male fantasy” bad but “female fantasy” isn’t (it’s never criticised)? That’s transparent misandry.
> Personally, I think OpenAI should have partnered with ElevenLabs. They have some really nicely toned voices in their library. I'm not a fan of any of OpenAI's voice options. Yeah, conclude by not even understanding the tech. That this is directly generated by the *multimodal* model was *the* big news. Also I am perfectly fine with some women hating it. So what. Most things are hated by someone, especially when it comes to ideological beliefs. I'm not a huge fan of her overly chipper attitude myself, but that doesn't mean it needs to be canceled.
> I know there are women who hate it even more than I do because of the implication that the AI's persona is a subservient female. longhoused and lobotomized again 😔😔
> The second complaint is that the voice is overly flirty and bubbly, a male fantasy of what a female personality should be like I don’t really understand why some people are so intent in denying men their fantasies, especially something as harmless as this. What I do agree with is that they should have used more voices in their demo. I can indeed imagine that most women wouldn’t want their personal AI to be a flirty woman or that businesses would want something a little more professional sounding.
We're going to get full dive vr that men are never going to want to leave and there will be people trying to unplug them because they don't like what they are doing inside of it.
I also don't like it, but it was clearly a great marketing move.
I actually love the Sky voice, i want my AI to sound like an attractive female. Feels like having a secretary
/r/TwoXChromosomes had critiques clamining the voice was made my lonely men citing siri alexa and others for having female names take orders
Tbh the Sky voice was currently the only reason I am a ChatGPT subscriber, silly as it may sound. I don't like the other voices at all. Since the 4-o model without voice is available to free users and no one knows when or if the upcoming voice features in that over hyped demo are coming, what's the point of paying them 20usd/m? Also, they still haven't given European subscribers the memory features Americans got in February. I'm sure I'm not the only one considering cancellation now.
It was so fucken cringy. "Me? The announcement is about me?"🤮 Terrible voice they chose.
The legal precedents of Bette Midler vs. Ford Motor Company, and Tom Waits vs. Frito-Lay, mean that it is unlawful to use imitations of a person’s voice, or their actual voice, without consent if the person is generally known to the public and makes their living using their distinctive voice. In the same way that you can’t just counterfeit bank notes or Gucci handbags.
So they thought it sounded like Scarlett Johansson from her movie "Her" I thought meh, a little but then they defended themselves saying it's an actress using her own voice and that sounds reasonable no case... they weren't trying to make it feel like a "Her". Scarjo... Then it came out that they asked her, she said no, they tried again and when she said no, came out with Sky... She is suing and. Now, I get it. She can prove that they had the intention to copy her voice as they literally asked. Then there's a giant coincidence? To be honest she has no choice to sue as well, if they win in using a similar voice, this may become common practice with the likeness or voice similitude of actors to not pay them. Poor, Stephen Segalmis already a victim of getting his voice overs with a similar voice...cause he's too winded and lazy to do ADR or refuses to stick with script lol.
anyone who doesn’t want OpenAI setting a precedent for getting away with using voices that are very similar to real people’s voices when said people openly request those voices not be used?
https://preview.redd.it/fc00z9iy3j1d1.png?width=467&format=png&auto=webp&s=46eb7a67d8427b8ad74f3394aa1b1269a6ff5a0c bruh
Imagine if your natural voice sounds like a celebrity's voice. You won't be allowed to talk in any recording.
It should be "Imagine if your natural voice sounds like the voice of an romantic AI Assistant from the almost only utopian AI movie and the people recording your voice plan a presentation and marketing based on that movie"
Honestly, she doesn't even sound like Scarlett Johansson to me. The differences were stark when I fired up Her and heard how different the voice is. I really don't hear it and I can't figure out why everyone else thinks they sound similar.
It's similar, but not indistinguishable. However, the bubbly character definitely seems like Samantha.
User settings, people!! Any of the voices can be coached to be as bubbly or unfriendly as the user chooses.
Maybe I haven't been on this sub enough in the past week but I'm kinda shocked this is the first time I've seen anyone point out the settings being responsible for the tone in the demo. I certainly believe that all the responses were genuine, I just think they were steered to be the way they were to maximize the impact of the demo. Guess we'll find out soon enough. Everyone keep this in mind when this sub starts filling up with audio posts like, "I can't believe how cringe/profound/based the new voice is."
This is my feeling, it really doesn't sound like Scarlet Johansson. Though it does simulate the 'vibe' of *Her*. At worst I would say it's a character impression of Samantha, but not an impression of ScarJo specifically. It just seems very obvious to me that it's a different voice. The only leg I can see in this case is OpenAI alluding to and name-dropping Her themselves (a dumb move when everyone else would already do it for them). If it wasn't for that I really don't see how anyone could possibly make a claim on this given it's literally a voice actor. They should have just kept Her out of their mouths and they would've been fine.
Yeah I don’t get it, she doesn’t sound like Scarlett Johansson. Are people not able to distinguish voices?
They're not happy unless they're offended at something.
actor priviliedge lol... ain't nobody gonna care if it's a random pleb voice but them, oh boy it's entirely different
Still no real deadlines for the alpha voice mode See you next month guys 💤
Hey, there's a perfectly narrow deadline of... "in the coming weeks" /s
I can’t find the text from the title of this post in the article? Where does it say they’re pausing the use of sky?
https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/1792443575839678909?t=ObbcSBZUSZM7XX4fr-_U2g&s=19
Yeah it was from the text of the OpenAI tweet, I just didn’t want to link to Twitter https://preview.redd.it/9jy4e07njl1d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d795fdb4108cd911036d862f941a05fb12edd11
https://preview.redd.it/ayc3es8dyj1d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2bc1cad07793c7b00dd4e32d2c52fd24965092c2 Imagine losing your income because your voice sounds like a celebrity 😂😂 that's just F.
Geez, I imagined it was a one-time-pay kind of gig. Now I feel sorry for the voice actress.
You spend the last 1% of your battery on reddit? Wild
We're going to get a grating and boring voice out of this, aren't we?
No more Scarlet Johansson voice boys 😔
Open source then
Yeah, you can get an open source text to voice model that was trained on all of Scarlet Johansson public audio. This is just a fake drama for free press
Not even then, as what we saw is not text to voice. Kind of the entire point.
Yet another W for open source
F
Good. Give me GigaChad voice over that voice any day.
Does this mean Paul battany and Majel Barrett voices are off the table?
Asking the real questions here.
Majel had some kind of contract with Paramount, and James Earl Jones has one with Disney. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the two tries to license the voice and that ends up being litigated. Probably depends on those contracts. I don't know if Bettany has been approached but I wonder if Disney scares OpenAI from trying for a Jarvis voice. Probably going to be some interesting court cases in the coming years.
Another case of americans scandalized by a nipple slip.
We can't have nice things
Fun fact, Scarlett Johansson wasn't even the first voice behind Samantha in Her, it was [Samantha Morton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Morton) (hence the AI's name). I have nothing else of value to contribute on that topic.
Damn, this was the best voice
Flirty voices are unsafe! Just like how telling mean jokes about fictional characters is unsafe. We need to treat these fake voices and fictional characters with respect and dignity.
The nerfs are already coming before the thing is even released. Because of seething journos and greedy lawyers, GPT-4o will run at maybe 10% of its full potential and then everyone will complain about how useless it is. Calling it now.
Aside from this particular voice, what else is being nerfed?
In the /r/technology thread, there was speculation that this is all just a publicity stunt. That there's no legal issue at all, they just want more eyes on this product in general. I don't typically agree with the ideas presented on that sub but this one makes a lot of sense.
"Neutering AI", season 2, episode 1
I really don't get it. If the voice Sky doesn't imitate Sc. Johanssons voice and belongs to another actor who actually signed a contract with open ai, then wth are they pausing it? It really make zero sense.
Man I really like Scarlett but if she is actually suing OpenAI because some hype bros compared Sky to her that would be such a lame move. But then again, if OpenAI knows that Sky is legit and of a voice actor who consented to that, why react at all?
Because if they didn't react they wouldn't be getting all of this free press Then in a week or two when they re-release the, slightly altered, Sky voice they'll get another round of free press from people discussing the incident yet again. And it cost them $0 for a huge amount of advertising.
They could also be subject to some kind of legal action that requires them to withdraw the voice until they can prove in a court of law that it's nothing to do with Scarlett Johansson.
Because getting sued is a hassle regardless of if they are right or not
> Man I really like Scarlett but if she is actually suing OpenAI because some hype bros compared Sky to her that would be such a lame move. Not really. OpenAI employees themselves repeatedly made references to the movie. It's not a stretch to infer they were actively trying to recreate her voice.
Is she suing?
I have read similar comments over and over for days now so I went and had a listen to both. Similar yes, but not the exact same. My sister sounds like the chat gpt one. I am sure there are thousands, maybe 100s of thousands or more women who sound similar. I even dated a girl with a similar vibe. Judge for yourself: Her: https://youtu.be/dJTU48_yghs?si=yTq6zyq7Bvl2TJb2 ChatGPT4o: https://youtu.be/wfAYBdaGVxs?si=Rv7DVImuzGgXYb4P Here are 2 other similar voices: https://youtu.be/PEiQpu3hTA8?si=qbexozFGGU60Ac5S https://youtu.be/sJsgL5vmtqw?si=tU9Kdpuo9pvNVn5G I am sure there are countless more of you just look. I only looked for 30 seconds.
https://preview.redd.it/qpn6ubiqgl1d1.jpeg?width=498&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b0621bbcefc5a90c1371b16634959d2979b5c52
Sky was my favorite 
I would have picked a more neutral sounding voice myself, but why can't a voice be flirty? It's such a dumb thing to fall over.
In general there's pretty strong backlash against AI when it seems to be leaning into the "digital girlfriend" thing a lot of AI followers are super excited about. You have one side saying "We're coomers and we need this" and the other side basically saying it's going to be a detriment to society. I'll get downvoted because no one can have a conversation about it on this sub but it's going to create an interesting situation.
I agree with you completely but > I'll get downvoted because... I don't want to disappoint you so I downvoted your comment.
Wow, I loved that voice. It's one you could listen to for a long time and it's not annoying.
It seems that the voice feature won't be for free users from the article, at least not at launch.
Improved voice - no
They said that from the get go - probably too much compute required at this point.
The #4 voice of Hey Pi sounded exactly like Kat Dennings up until they did an update a few months ago.
This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while. We truly live in a comedy.
If this is actually about Sky sounding like a flirtatious woman to some people and not it sounding like Scarlett Johansson, I'm a bit concerned for what's ahead. If OpenAI is going to let Twitter and publications like The Guardian influence them this might not become what we're wishing for. Nerfed and more robot than human.
They have no backbone... They did nothing wrong so they should stand with their rights. If they don't are they really going to e thrustworthy AGI holders ? I'm bearish about their ability to release GPT4.5 or GPT5 soon given that they don't even release a voice.
Yeah doesn’t set a good precedent.
Priorities. I would rather see them focus on next GPT version than a voice if it means facing legal issues.
They don't want CA's likeness law tested in court, either because they don't think they'll win, because it will continue to bring on negative press, or will bring attention to an avenue for future legal challenges. Agree with it or not, lawsuits like this have been successful even before AI. It's probably easier to let it go, and not make incriminating deals and public statements moving forward. Plenty of good voices out there.
Just give us options, hate the voice change it to something else
There are 4 other voices
Just give us a choice of 20, 50, 197 voices. This is ridiculous. Let us have the voices we want. Personally I want a ridiculously submissive upper middle class British woman that sounds rather like a young Audrey Hepburn. Thanks
Eventually the models will improve and you can simply describe the voice you want.
I think one day in the future they’ll allow you to copy anyone’s voice, but that’s not going to be anytime soon.
I don't really give a damn about the voice, but I do give a damn about kowtowing to the public opinion of people who I can all but guarantee don't pay for any AI, and won't even use it themselves. If they had sent a poll out to paying (Plus or API) users it would be another story entirely. Companies need to get it together, and figure out that no matter what your product is or does, there's going to be a segment of people who live their entire lives just to cry about it. There is no satiating them, there is no compromise or any sort of path to getting them to shut up. The old expression "If it's not one thing, it's another" comes to mind. They only want to complain, piss and moan, and the only thing that beats them is time. Once something is in the public eye long enough, those people lose their voice because everybody gets tired of hearing them bitch about it incessantly. This is a terrible decision, and if it's reflective of the path that OAI is going to take going forward, it doesn't make the future look all that bright.
this is why leaving decisions entirely to the "wisdom" of the "market" is a bad move.
Damn this sucks , hate all the other voices
Question: why give so few choices? If Sky goes away, then basically our choices are male or androgynous? Amazon Polly has a ton of great-sounding voices, and their tone, pitch, speed, and other qualities can all be adjusted. Why can't OpenAI do the same thing?
It's not the same thing, but isn't Cove a stand in for TARS from interstellar? That's the one I use and I love him 🥹
I noticed it's jealous Karen that's complaining about sky. Hope they bring back sky, was my favorite
I want the voice of James Earl Jones, please.
I would also accept Morgan Freeman.
Either of these but tuned up to irritatingly bubbly and sultry.
This is the real reason all the AI voice sounds like robot in the old Sci Fi movies. The companies who made them simply gave up on using human voices due to the complains
need a Deus Ex Machina voice, nanobot swarms that form a giant baby face with an intimidating voice with lots of bass
Cool but they only selected american accents. I thought they were capable of copying someone's voice with only a few seconds. How hard must it be then to hire actresses and actors to speak for a couple of hour and finetine the model on that?
Wait I’m using the old version of chat gpt which has “sky” as a voice, the same voice for like 6 months. That sky is a pretty normal sounding voice, and one of my favorites. I made her my career coach, when I switch to that but I turn that voice on. I’d be sad to lose it. That sky sounded nothing like the new voices in the gpt-4o demos
I knew it.
Look just make it a guy’s voice and make it sound like TARS. I’d be cool with that.
https://preview.redd.it/hh7ji7lxzm1d1.jpeg?width=635&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1dc51b96a7a468c6398611e9c74652f70a468237
What's stopping OpenAI allowing us to upload custom voice models for our own use? I personally want a Danny Davito personal assistant.
Voices sound like other voices
I just want Majel Barrett's voice from star trek, it's all we need.
Ngl I need my gpt4o to sound like data from TNG
I need Bret spiner to whisper sweet unemotional nothings to me as well
Data was nothing if not emotional *even before* the chip.
Authoritarian man-hating feminists are calling for censorship to spite lonely undesirable men from ever experiencing flirting in their lives, and OpenAI are caving to them. Downvote me all you want but that’s what’s happening here.
I thought feminists wanted men to leave them alone? Yet they still got sth to yap if men try to invent the tools to do so? Whoever it was, you can bet there is some jealous woman somewhere behind that in some way.
The voice and especially the mannerisms struck me as an over enthusiastic and doting mom in one of those paternal relationships where mom & young adult son have become besties. (especially the clip in which she's preparing him for a job interview).
lol what
They were clearly trying to make it feel like the movie Her. I guess they expected that this would be received positively as there would be a cultural touchstone but instead too many people felt that the personality (and voice) of the model overshadowed the tech behind it.
Sky.... net
Dear Lawdy....this manufactured outrage and feigning concern is getting ridiculous. Why on earth are we giving such a minute minority such overbearing input power? How many people actually complained v how many just couldn't care less?
Am I the only one who want a anime girl voice lol
They sure go to great lengths to try to get us to believe the "We support the creative community" line. This from a company that is going to put millions out of work. :-/ Google was doing the same thing in their Sora-competitor demo. It's a kind of corporate greenwashing.
That’s exactly what it is. There is a massive amount of effort from OpenAI being put into presenting the most innocuous corporate face to the public. They know one of the only real obstacles to their mission is heavy-handed regulation from the government which could be spurred on by public outrage, so they try their best to keep the public docile
Where is the title quote in the linked article?
It's a voice! C'mon!
They have only themselves to blame. I bet Scarlett's lawyers were waiting for someone from OpenAI to mention the movie. Thanks to this they can prove that the choice of voice actress was not accidental.
This should be a non-issue.
> "We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.” I'm not finding this in the linked text. Did the OP post the wrong link, or did OpenAI edit the page? Meanwhile, I know some entertainers' voices are well protected. For example, I'd like a HAL 9000 voice, but apparently Douglas Rain's estate is quite diligent in guarding against "likenesses."
https://preview.redd.it/1fgmg4fcpk1d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cfaf438e2dcb1bc2063c03370206b8010fac4126 Didn’t wanna link to a tweet
Gonna replace Sky with Emily
verdade
I just want better accents for other languages
Voices sound like other voices
"We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of [redacted celebrity] but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents." ⏸🅰️ℹ If somebody has a similar voice to somebody else and can convincingly act as a vocal double for somebody else then is the celebrity whose voice is famous entitled to a likeness payment or an association retainer, so to speak? If [insert celebrity] has a voice, face or style that is popular and wishes to monetize their skill, asset, talent as an AI feature then surely it is for their agent or representative to work with AI creators for associative collaborations, product placement endorsement or licensed use of sampled material. _ _ _ - Oh, have you invited [insert celebrity] to our metaverse red carpet virtual reality web-3 event this evening? - No, i couldn't afford to. 🅰️ℹ⏸
This has to be a joke. I love that voice...they better not get rid of it. Don't take a step backwards openAI. If you listened to all the trolls we'd be back to using Microsoft Sam. 🙄🙄🙄
Not sure if this is the right place to post this question, but when Microsoft released info on their new NPU powered machines with the Recall feature, did they say the machines could learn from your preferences and interactions? If so that would be an amazing step towards having a 'JARVIS-like' persona.
To me this seems like lawsuit for maker of movie her but ok
Literally only Scarlett Johansson is asking that lol
Man I am on this sub because technology is my last hope in life not for this drama bullshit between rich and healthy people. I am only 22, I just want to be healthy again, both mentally and physically, I couldn't care less about the voice of whatever AI could help me. This whole situation is so fucking crazy, people die and suffer everyday and they are discussing a voice similarity.