> refuted some of the more serious accusations (that OpenAI got a Johannson impersonator - they didn’t
A lot of the argument here comes down to whether the article does refute that. I don't believe it does.
What it refutes is the accusation that they hired someone who sounds like Johansson after she told them she would not do it herself. That was certainly a more damning accusation, but it's not an identical one.
But in my view, it requires a pretty absurd level of benefit of the doubt to think that they didn't set out to make a voice that sounds like the one from the movie.
Maybe good for them that they felt icky about it, and tried to get her for real instead, but she said no, and they didn't feel icky enough about it to change the plan.
Do you believe the article "refutes" that? Does it truly not strike you as a likely scenario, given what is known, both before and after this reporting?
> A lot of the argument here comes down to whether the article does refute that.
It clearly refutes the claims that they got a Johansson impersonator. The article says this is a voice actress, speaking in her normal voice, who wasn’t told to mimic Johansson at all. You can say that you personally think she was chosen because people thought she sounded similar to Johansson, even though there’s no evidence for that at this point. But the claim - which was made several times in discussions on here before - that she is a Johansson impersonator is factually incorrect.
> But in my view, it requires a pretty absurd level of benefit of the doubt to think that they didn't set out to make a voice that sounds like the one from the movie.
I tried it several times in the past and never once thought it sounded like Johansson. When this controversy came out I looked at videos of Her, because I thought Johansson could have been using a different voice in that movie, but no - the voice in her is immediately recognizable as Johannson’s. Some have said Sky’s was much closer to Rashida Jones, and I agree, though I don’t know how close.
I think this is quibbling over the definition of "impersonator"?
I think the most plausible thing that happened is that they thought "hey it would be so awesome to have an AI voice companion like the one in Her, and we can totally do that with these new models", and then auditioned and hired someone that sounded like that.
Does it not fit the definition of "impersonator", since they didn't explicitly tell the person the hired to impersonate the voice from the movie? Sure, fine, I guess I'll give it to you.
But it doesn't refute "they wanted to use a voice that sounded like the one in Her", and there are a number of indications the this was indeed the case.
A lot of the argument here comes down to whether the article does refute that. I don't believe it does.
What it refutes is the accusation that they hired someone who sounds like Johansson after she told them she would not do it herself. That was certainly a more damning accusation, but it's not an identical one.
But in my view, it requires a pretty absurd level of benefit of the doubt to think that they didn't set out to make a voice that sounds like the one from the movie.
Maybe good for them that they felt icky about it, and tried to get her for real instead, but she said no, and they didn't feel icky enough about it to change the plan.
Do you believe the article "refutes" that? Does it truly not strike you as a likely scenario, given what is known, both before and after this reporting?