The future producer of “Himbo Heist”: I think Ari is understating the issue and that there’s a passing off claim to be made; especially after Altman’s ill-advised tweet, it seems clear that he wanted people to think this was the character from the movie. Does Johansson own the portrayal of that character? We need a judge to answer that.

Remember when everyone was absolutely certain about the thing that totally happened and exemplified everything wrong with "AI culture" that ended up being...not what happened? www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records showwww.washingtonpost.com A different actress was hired to voice OpenAI’s “Sky” months before CEO Sam Altman contacted Scarlett Johansson, according to documents and the actress’s agent.

Ari, this isn’t a great take. It’s still incredibly likely that they wanted to have people think it was her. bsky.app/profile/lega...

In voiceover work there’s a concept called a “soundalike” which is an actor chosen to impersonate someone more famous. My guess was always that this was what they did.

Ill admit to being not all that perturbed about soundalikes in general. I can agree that false claims that someone *actually* is the voice when they aren't is problematic, but it seems to be from other responses that everyone knew from the beginning it was a soundalike!

The point isn't if the people in the company knows, the point is what the public thinks when they market it and if they intentionally make it seem like it's her. Publicity rights don't work like copyright here

I did t say anything about what the company knows. Someone quoted the post saying "it's not news that it's a soundalike, nobody ever thought it was actually her, that's not the point." Well, if that's true....

Publicity rights cover likeness, if people who didn't know otherwise think that she did the voice then that's likely enough. It does not require convincing everybody she did the voice, it does not require direct copying. And apparently her own family thought the voice was hers.

I know what publicity rights are. And that's not really an accurate summary.

Is Wikipedia missing something? What part does not apply when they clearly wanted the voice to make people think of her? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_...

Midler v. Ford Motor Co. - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

Just because there’s an article on Wikipedia that’s kind of about an issue doesn’t make that article apposite to the topic under discussion. That judgment exists but isn’t really the state of the law on rights of personality nationwide.

I think Ari is understating the issue and that there’s a passing off claim to be made; especially after Altman’s ill-advised tweet, it seems clear that he wanted people to think this was the character from the movie. Does Johansson own the portrayal of that character? We need a judge to answer that.

I suspect if this goes to court we will see the Hollywood studios line up with Altman. Get ready for a lot of really stupid takes about how this is “proof” that the studios are aligned with AI developers. There’s a much simpler explanation.

Studios have a commercial interest in them (the copyright owners in the film) being the owners of the characters so they can do things like recast for sequels. This also aligns to current law.

There’s a fairly wide gulf to argue over in court. - Was the tweet referring to the concept or SJ? - Did Altman make the tie to SJ or did SJ do that herself? - If we all own our voices can a similar sounding actress be prevented from acting because someone more famous thinks they sound too similar?

Singing vs acting, but when Ava Max first dropped Psycho I absolutely thought it was a new Lady Gaga song when I heard it on the radio. If someone thought similar with Sky, I suppose the fact pattern would have to look at how much is consumer assumption vs intentionally false advertising.

Related to your third: the custom in Hollywood of actors taking a new name because there was already someone using theirs. (I understand this to be because SAG-AFTRA records are organized by name, but still.) As in: I bet there are things that actors and their lawyers think are the law but aren't.

I don't think studios should be able to do that for anything but distinct characters. There's already companies trying to effectively monopolize the rights to the likeness and voice of new actors for the smallest one time sum they can get away with.

If they didn't instruct how the voice should sound like, if it's not particularly distinct from the actor's normal voice, what even is there for the studio to own?

US law kind of disagrees with you. Character ownership only exists where the character is sufficiently distinctive that using the character is equivalent to using the work in which they were created. But the studio owns the work, as the owner of the copyright in the film. The actor owns nothing.

But if the character voice isn't copied because of the character itself but specifically because of the actor, should the actor still have no claim? In a case like The Simpsons with many distinct voices done by a few voice actors that makes more sense. People think of the character first.

I think it's almost kind of the opposite. It's the fact that people make the association of the character as Johansson that it could make it so the fact that she doesn't own the character moot, as rather than SJ ➡️ Character ⬅️ OpenAI it works like SJ ⬅️ Character ⬅️ OpenAI It's the direction of ⬆️

And in the worst case scenario for OpenAI, if studios claim ownership to the character AND SJ claims publicity rights (because the voice is recognizable as her) it's possible the courts decide they have to pay both

I think the studio claim to ownership of the character would undercut, perhaps fatally so in its own right, SJ's right to publicity claim.

This is the correct outcome if both of them claim ownership. I do think there's a passing off tort claim in there also, and that Altman didn't make his lawyer's job any easier.

He literally only had to not tweet one word. That fucking idiot.

But look at his whole way of doing "business". These people think laws are for the poors.

Why do you hate pronouns Ari?

If a client does something stupid in the woods and there's no lawyer around to see it, does their attorney still need a drink

The sort of adjacent thing that comes to mind to me (and feel free to tell me if this is a stupid analogy) but it reminds me of all those decades of Star Wars comics where publishers had the rights to Han Solo but not Harrison Ford's face, so you get artists trying to EVOKE him without depicting him

Inasmuch as like...ScarJo may not own the character, but someone who is not Sam Altman definitely does

I will say this is all brining me closer to @brianlfrye.bsky.social' plagiarism maximalism position.

That's part of what I said about the arrows. That if the character can be attributed to her (not in ownership, which is more dubious, but in the character reflecting the author), it wouldn't even matter if the character isn't owned by SJ – using her means to use the SJ characterization, which is SJ.

Someone better versed with the facts and law can tell me if this doesn't apply, but would it matter if OpenAI tweaked the sound-alike voice to be even closer to Johansson's voice? How much of the analysis turns on intent versus objective measurement?

Right that's the other part. I was getting to. I don't think creating a voice for a movie makes that voice part of YOUR identity in the same way as a singer's voice.

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