Was that really (famous person)?

George Rebane

The ethics of AI is currently a hotly debated topic.  The high tech companies are congratulating each other about practicing ‘high standards’ in that arena.  Today’s little ethics dust devil involves Scarlett Johansson in which she “rebukes OpenAI over ‘eerily similar’ ChatGPT voice”. (here and here)  The real problems in the use of such audios and videos, which can easily recognized to be like, similar to, or the same as known public personages will not involve ethics so much as questions of what exactly is considered as the intellectual property (IP) of an individual whose videos and speech are available every day in the public domain.

OpenAI asked for and did not receive permission to use Ms Johansson’s voice in their new AI assistant, but went ahead and lifted her ‘voice’ (actually her unique formants or frequency dependent speech building blocks) from available videos and films.  These were slightly modified, but not enough for the human ear to be confused and not recognize the speaker.  Ms Johansson objected and lawyered up; OpenAI pulled her voice from their product.

Similar things are happening in videos in which publicly recognized characters can be inserted into scenes which are slightly modified, but still recognizable as the intended person.  So the big questions going forward will be 1) what really are the IP boundaries of a person whose unique ‘persona parameters’ are captured and/or displayed daily in the public media, and 2) what are the sufficient metrics that characterize modifications so that the purveyor of such products can remain ‘litigation proof’.

Successfully answering these questions will open up new business and revenue possibilities for both producers of entertainment and advertising media as well as for those fortunates whose likenesses still have value or can be resurrected.  Nevertheless, today’s actors are already signing agreements that anticipate the use of their likenesses after their current job is over or after they die. (more here)  Of course, in this coming brave new world the opportunities for fraud will be endless, and launch yet another age of full employment for lawyers.

Comments

[The Estonian Fox]

Isn't it great that we have opened up new areas of human abilities? I wonder how AI will portray Pandora in the soon-to-be-released videos of her? Or just release the words as Pandoro, her just as talented transgendered alter-ego?

[scenes]

This strikes me as a temporary problem as you combine increased use of 100% synthetic voices/images in popular culture + the receding value of an artificial John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart.

I admit that the issue will exist in the short term and will probably require some sort of way to detect a quantitative difference from a real person and a court decision or three...maybe some extension of what youtube/facebook uses to determine copyright strikes. If anything, automation of the behaviors of New York entertainment lawyers will lock down the old-school world more than AI will open it up as it all cuts both ways.

Nothing really new here I guess. 'My Sweet Lord' took some work to figger out, and it isn't like Robert McGinnis was writing checks to James Coburn every month or two. https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50360872628_bb5d849966_b.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fmC5Fy2qL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

I have to admit that it still makes me laugh how easy it was to crack the nut of visual arts and popular music. Those things seemingly reserved to the Genius of Humanity are so full of tropes that it was some of the earliest commercial use of these large models.

[scenes]

" Pandoro, her just as talented transgendered alter-ego?"

or 'Pander', which is modern political philosophy in a nutshell.

It occurred to me that I mention images and music as relatively easy to pull off, as opposed to something like stocking supermarket shelves or plumbing, but didn't say anything about newspaper writing. My guess is that a clever person could replicate editorials, sports writing, and local news with a LLM running on an IBM PC-XT given the current quality of the thing.

[Scott O]

Here's another angle on AI's future:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/05/ai-and-green-on-collision-course.php

Of course it doesn't stop the increasing use of AI but it does bring up the consequences of our nation's rush to be "green".

[scenes]

FWIW: "OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show"

https://archive.is/

..but I can see the problem.

Sometimes I think that the answer is just to dump all IP law into the trash and see what happens. After all, per the Constitution, the idea is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts,", not "optimize profits for inventors and corporations". Maybe the best promotion is no law at all.

[scenes]

and...here...we...go.

"Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History
Buying fake William Morris prints on Etsy and other early signs of epistemological collapse"

https://maggieappleton.com/generative-forgery

Invest in antiques and original art sayeth I.

[George Rebane]

scenes 620am - for what it's worth, I didn't claim that OpenAI "copied" Scarlett's voice, but simply reported that they took her voice off available media and then modified it for publication. And that's my point - how much modification from the original is sufficient to avoid the charge of copying?

[Gregory]

Intent is probably part of the determination... asking the owner of the voice to consent to the duplication and having them decline the honor would seem to be definitive.

No means no.

[scenes]

GR@10:02AM

for some reason, the whole link didn't make it. Here's the full title of the article (Washington Post)

"OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show
A different actress was hired to provide the voice for ChatGPT’s ‘Sky,’ according to documents and recordings shared with the Washington Post."

"But while many hear an eerie resemblance between “Sky” and Johansson’s “Her” character, an actress was hired to create the Sky voice months before Altman contacted Johansson, according to documents, recordings, casting directors and the actress’s agent."

[scenes]

...now, I suppose you could sue a voice actor for sounding *like* a famous person.

I wonder if you could trace music samples to their original source, some drummer is gonna get rich (so to speak).

Copyright and it's brethren are a mess and the law has been broken down for some time. I'd say that it's mostly just to provide moats for the already wealthy.