The voice isn’t his to own in the first place. “They” have a right to use it as much as he does.
Ok this
isseems like a problem of trademark not copyright, or impersonation and fraud by pretending to be him. It’s about his name, not really about his voice. His voice is also pretty generic EDIT: it’s only in this specific market segment that it’s problematic.Not sure if the video said it was from him or not. It’s been taken down, so I can’t check, but I don’t think it ever made that claim. Someone just noticed it sounded the same as Jeff.
It’s copyright because they had to have fed the model with voice data from Jeff’s videos.
Legal plagiarism machine
I think this is pretty blatant. Sadly, I don’t think there is anything we’ll be able to do about this. The onus is on you and the prosecution to prove that they did.
I thought the fallout from that would lead to companies being careful about the AI voices they use for things like product demos and tutorials…
Oh, honey…
Oh so I guess piracy is fine if it’s citizens getting robbed huh? Funny how that works.
Sony will pirate from anyone who isn’t Sony. Same with Time-Warner. Same with Columbia. Same with every studio, every label, every publishing house.
Absolutely no-one in the industry takes piracy seriously until it’s their own stuff being pirated by someone else.
Moreover, they all are used to Hollywood accounting, in which lawyers try to justify not paying someone for work whenever they can.
Hollywood. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany.
A fantastic example is the Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony.
It samples a few seconds of a Rolling Stones song. For this, the former Stones manager Allen Klein sues them. The Verve gives up all royalties for the whole song. So the Stones are getting that money, right? No, Klein had the ownership of the piece in question go to himself.
Klein dies in 2009, and the rights to everything finally revert to the Stones in 2019. They think the whole sampling thing with the Verve is stupid, and relinquish the song’s rights back to them.
For about 20 years, it was not only morally OK to pirate that song, but morally obligatory. The execs of the industry don’t give a shit about the artists.
I think you misspelled capitalism.
Capitalism: steal first, apologize with no real repurcussions later
Sadly, it was Grace Hopper who said “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”
Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (9 December 1906 – 1 January 1992) was a U.S. Naval officer, and an early computer programmer. She was the developer of the first compiler for a computer programming language; at the end of her service she was the oldest serving officer in the United States Navy.
That brings me to the most important piece of advice that I can give to all of you: if you’ve got a good idea, and it’s a contribution, I want you to go ahead and DO IT. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
- The future: Hardware, Software, and People in Carver, 1983
Except she probably wasn’t referring to identity theft; just how to handle dumb shits in management.
Well, she did tell that she didn’t get a budget, so they just effectively stole from other departments. Want a table that’s not bolted down? Take it.
But that’s Navy internals, (arguably) not a massive for-profit company that’s going it out of sheer greed.
Dumb shits in military management. And she was an admiral; near the top of that management.
Yeah, there’s some key qualifiers in there
if you’ve got a good idea, and it’s a contribution
Identity theft is neither a good idea or a contribution to society
trump x biden fan fiction being voiced with deepfaked voices is both a good idea, and beneficial to society.
We are going to need much stronger image rights for individuals in the AI age.
There’s no way to stop the technology itself (although current development may plateau at some point), so there must be strong legal restrictions on abusing it.
Yeah, the genie is out of the bottle on this one. I can do voice cloning with consumer hardware and available models. That can’t be undone, but good legal protections would be nice.
That said, the Johanson case is a bad example because it really didn’t sound much like her at all. It was a chipper yound white lady sound, but to my ear sounded nothing like Johanson. It did sound kinda like a character she voiced, but I would not gave confused the two. They cloned the voice of someone they paid to give a similar inflection as the voice from Her. That’s far removed from cloning Johanson herself. It is closer to people making music “in the style of”.
Do you want the rich to be richer? Because that’s how you make the rich richer. People like Scarlett Johanson will be able to license their likeness for millions or billions. Of course, we would have the same rights; the same rights to own a mansion and a yacht. Feeling lucky?
That’s the kind of capitalism that Marx rages against: Laws that let people demand money without contributing labor.
You do realize that the vast majority of voice actors are not famous right? These are people working in a highly competitive labor market that has one of the few influential unions in the US outside of trades. Most of these AI companies aren’t going after Johansson and the like if they have to pay instead of steal. They’re going for those who are less established and trying to get a break, making them easier to exploit.
You do realize that the vast majority of voice actors are not famous right?
Yes, that’s the point. You are not defending voice actors by demanding likeness rights.
I am not sure why this is so difficult to understand. Maybe there is some confusion about the technology. You only need a few seconds of audio to clone a voice. You don’t need hours of audio from a professional. That’s why the tech can be used for scams. Likeness rights won’t create jobs for voice actors. Only free money for famous people. You can also generate random voices.
Leading AI voice companies like Elevenlabs require you to have permission to clone a voice. But how can they check if their customers are being truthful? In practice, it simply means that famous people, whose voices are known, may not be imitated. Likeness rights, by their nature, can only be enforced, with any kind of effectiveness, for the rich and famous.
OpenAI tried to hire Johansson. When she declined, they hired a different, less famous actress. Maybe they did that to defend against lawsuits, or maybe it gives better results. If they had engineered a nonexistent voice, it would be almost impossible to make the case that they did not imitate Johansson. But still, everyone is talking about that poor famous, rich person who got ripped off. What about the actress who actually provided the voice? I guess she can look for another job, because Johansson owns that voice type.
one of the few influential unions in the US
You mean Ronald Reagan’s old outfit? Do you even know who Ronald Reagan was?
Yes, that’s the point. You are not defending voice actors by demanding likeness rights.
Knowing people who are not famous but are SAG-AFTRA actors, I’m going to have to disagree very much on that. A regular contractual battle is the “in perpetuity” clause for one’s likeness. This happens at all levels. Essentially, clients often try to sneak a clause in that grants them the exclusive right to use the actor’s likeness forever. While this does not mean that the actor does not receive pay, it binds them to the client in a way that prevents them from getting other work and diminishes their bargaining ability.
But still, everyone is talking about that poor famous, rich person who got ripped off. What about the actress who actually provided the voice? I guess she can look for another job, because Johansson owns that voice type.
If the actress was performing in an affectation to impersonate Johansson, she was effectively acting no better than a scab and enabling corpos to violate consent. Knowingly impersonating another loving actor for purposes other than parody is a scummy thing to do and the actress was ethically bound to refuse the job.
Being famous doesn’t make someone less of a person. They’re just people like the rest of us (though generally more financially lucky). We all have a right to our identity and likeness and to decide how our likeness is used. Legitimatizing the violation of that consent is not a path that benefits any worker.
You mean Ronald Reagan’s old outfit? Do you even know who Ronald Reagan was?
That’s a poor and fallacious argument there. California is Ronnie “Pull Up the Ladder” Reagan’s home state does that make all Californians Reaganites by association?
There’s no future where this affects me in the slightest. Okay, so jeff Goldblum can get a few more shekels for renting his voice. This doesn’t affect me: that’s his JOB, whether they stole his likeness and paid him, paid him and cloned his voice, or paid him to do the speaking. It’s the same thing, imho.
Talk to me when people who don’t have their voice recorded get an unfair leg-up for selling it. I’ll be okay with it then, too, but let me know.
The real risk is the voice being sold to Disney or Sony Music, and then youtube videos are getting removed because of similarities.
Voice tones aren’t all that unique in most cases and there’s too much room for abuse imo. The Scarjo and open ai scandal is a good example of this. The voices weren’t that similar and I’m just not interested in having celebrities own whole spectrums like that.
And it’s a landlord’s job to collect rent. It’s Elon Musk’s job to maximize shareholder value.
It’s ok if you watch out for numero uno. I’m not expecting more. But you are wrong to think that this doesn’t affect you. You can’t opt out of society. You won’t be able to avoid products with licensed voices. Your taxes will be paying for enforcement against “pirates”. And most importantly, every new privilege for the rich and famous changes society. With every step, the elite becomes more entrenched and the bottom more hopeless. It’s a matter of enlightened self-interest. If we only reject what directly hurts us individually, then the elites will simply build themselves a new feudalism.
And it’s a landlord’s job to collect rent. It’s Elon Musk’s job to maximize shareholder value.
Are you really conflating people who make their living based upon their acting skills and likeness with landlords?.. Wow.
I am asking this in good faith as a neurodivergent individual:
Could you please clarify where you’re coming at this from?
Is it that you feel that actors and other creatives are less legitimate as workers than others?
Is it that you think that LLMs could be a path towards AGI that could save humans from themselves?
Is it something else entirely?
Myself, I am coming at it from the perspective of someone who has worked in the tech industry for a while, and is familiar with the underlying technologies and how hyped they’ve been. I additionally personally know several professional actors, SAG-AFTRA and non-union, who have been materially impacted by AI and corpo bad faith in recent years (especially streaming services and game companies). On top of that, as a millennial, I have experienced significant financial setbacks due to unfettered corporate greed and know many peers who are much worse off than myself because of price gouging and stagnant wages.
My main motivations in AI conversations are undermining hype and ensuring that people take ethics into consideration, while looking at technologies that do have some actually interesting use cases and could lead to other interesting things.
Sorry but you can’t own a voice. You can sue if it is implied that a voice is you, but you can’t own the voice. If you could, you’d run into all kinds of problems. Imagine getting sued because your natural voice sounds too much like someone with more money and lawyers than you. Of if you happened to look like a celebrity/politician.
My voice developed through a combination of my body structure, my upbringing, speech therapy and a lot of training to do VO work. I absolutely own it. I have worked very hard on it.
I own my voice the same way I own my legs.
I’m sorry but that isn’t true. A voice is a natural trait. There are other people with similar or identical voices out there.
Let’s just say you can “own” a voice. In that world, what happens when two people naturally sound similar? Who gets the rights?
Similar voices are not the same voice. You can analyze them and show that they are different.
So the answer is that the person who said it gets the rights. Because it’s their voice.
The idea that you don’t own something that is a unique part of you is ludicrous.
There is no way to exactly fingerprint a voice. There isn’t a mathematical definition of a voice. Even fingerprints and DNA aren’t completely unique; think of twins. This means that a subjective judgement would have to be made when deciding ownership.
Look, I’m obviously not going to convince you. But I hope, for your sake, that this legal framework doesn’t come to exist because you will not be the winner. Disney, Warner Brothers, or some other entity with deep pockets will own just about everything because they have the lawyers and money to litigate it.
There are real problems and dangers of trying to turn everything that has value into capital for capital owners.
There isn’t a mathematical definition of a voice.
The subtle and human imperceptible difference between two similar yet distinct sounds (voices) is absolutely demonstrable through mathematical analysis, more specifically, signal analysis.
You’re right. It’s not like there’s anything out there like voiceprint identification or anyth-
https://www.phonexia.com/knowledge-base/voice-biometrics-essential-guide/
Oh.
“You can’t own your own voice”
Talking out of your dystopian ass, aren’t you?
Ok, so how would that work? What does happen if you happen to sound like someone else? Who gets the rights to that voice?
In this case, it is likely that they wanted to use his voice if the videos done in collaboration went particularly well. So the fact that it’s hus voice has a specific reason to be. This could hold as a claim, I think.
That might be a valid claim. But I would find it to be a very weak one unless they can come up with evidence that their use actually pretended to be him. The strongest argument here in my opinion would be that they hoped people would assume it’s him, even though they never state it. In the end it would be a very fact-reliant case, and subjectively I wouldn’t be convinced of an attempt to mislead based just on the use of a voice alone.
So you’d be ok with someone taking your fedia.io account and just posting whatever they wanted? I mean it’s just an account it’s not you is it?
Again, I’m asking what, in a perfect world where this kind of protection existed, would happen if two people had similar (or identical) sounding voices? Which entity would gain the legal rights and protections?
Impersonating exists, the difference there is if someone was impersonates you and says something defamatory, you can sue that person, what this article is suggesting is if I made an AI model of your voice I am not liable for anything I make that voice say
I never argued that you can’t sue for implied endorsement or defamation. That is illegal. What isn’t legal is owning a voice outright. You’re conflating the two.
There is no impersonation so good that it is totally indistinguishable from the person being impersonated when seriously analyzed.
They stole it? Did they send a robot to surgically remove his vocal cords?
No, instead they raped his rights with some ToS…