this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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Legally maybe its fine, I’m not sure. But because they tried to license or get permission and involvement officially from her, but she declined, then they asked again , she declined again and two days later they released it with (possibly) her voice anyway. At best it displays them to be bad faith plundering abusers including of individuals’ likenesses. We in this type of forum are not surprised of course - its par for the course with these tech bros who’ve made a business out of other peoples content largely without consent. Respect to Johansonn for making this known publicly though. But even weirder that they then took it down when they saw the reaction. Highlighting themselves as Sociopaths. Plenty of those around, but with this much power and access to data? Creepy.
Yeah, it is kinda sketchy, though they might have backed down because they realized there was no winning this in the court of public opinion, regardless of whether they were trying to act in good faith prior to the controversy coming out.
IMO Johansonn making it public was an obvious strategic move because it gave her a strong position because of how unpopular AI is these days. She might have otherwise just paid some lawyers a lot of money to accomplish nothing if it was legally fine and she was adamant about them not using a voice that sounded like hers (guessing the best she would have gotten without going public is them paying her some money to continue using that similar voice or maybe a bit more money to use her actual voice, either way they would have gotten what they wanted).
Yeh she effectively chose an ethical position with no downside I can think of. Unless they made her sign an NDA / MOU which they clearly didn’t. Their sketchiness is enhanced if anything. Makes me wonder if they made some low level threat at that last minute approach. e.g we are using your voice anyway, now’s your chance to get onboard the gravy train or look bad. Just speculation of course. She wasnt aware apparently. Also the fact they want to mimic the “her” ai is just weird. They are worse than the cautionary fiction.