OpenAI could have had a neat and legitimate crossover promotion between Her and ChatGPT if Scarlett had played along. It doesn't cost her anything, and they likely could have produced the voice they wanted with some material from her, maybe 10 minutes of talking?

However, the lady doth protest too much.

Actors and big media companies are doing their damnedest to prevent any progress, because technology is encroaching on their craft. It seems that entirely AI generated media at Hollywood blockbuster levels of audiovisual quality are a matter of engineering at this point.

Let's not impede progress so that we can play a pretend game that we need humans to do work that AI or software can do at the same level of quality.

Actors like Scarlett shouldn't be able to license or protect their voices or appearance, regardless of how distinctive. Someone's doppleganger shouldn't be limited in their own rights based on what they decide with regards to appearance in media. Someone that looks like Scarlett Johansson shouldn't be able to decide for her that they don't want to appear in any video.

If Scarlett decides to get plastic surgery and radically alters her face or body, should she retain any rights over how she used to appear? What about twins separated at birth? Can I get plastic surgery to appear like 1980s Tom Cruise and start an acting career?

What if I want to copy Bradley Cooper's nose from Maestro, Scarlett's eyebrows from Asteroid City, and Legolas' ears from Lord of the Rings? Should I have to pay royalties for visual styles of individual components of a look? What about shades of hair - Demi Moore's hair is the same color as my own. Should she pay me royalties for copying "my" style?

This is absurdist territory, and the entitlement is raw and kind of disgusting. I can get on board with protecting someone's creative work, allowing copyright that ensures a clean protection of that individual's ability to profit from their own efforts. Recordings of music or performances, copies of scripts or writings, those things are clear work product.

Granting someone any rights or protections based on the sound of their voice, or the shape of their face, or the color of their skin, or any other integral feature, regardless of how engineered or refined it might be, is crazy. They didn't earn and don't own the features they were born with. Don't validate the entitled assumptions and crazy rent seeking schemes of Hollywood middlemen.

As long as OpenAI didn't claim any association with work product, they'd have been OK. By Tweeting "Her," Altman potentially infringed on work product by trying to use the movie to hype his own product. There might have been a fair use argument, if there was more nuance. Altman wanted to associate ChatGPT with Her, however, and didn't necessarily have the legal right to do that, especially in a commercial context. With it being free, however, maybe not profiting from the potential infringement will mean they get a slap on the wrist and a little embarrassed?

There are some deep and convoluted discussions ahead with regards to licensing and copyright issues. We should steer clear of granting individuals rights to things they did not earn and that may be shared with others - people shouldn't be granted extra rights because they're pretty and famous, nor should pretty and famous people be limited by the rights of some doppleganger.

If some Harrison Ford lookalike wants to license their appearance, then they should be perfectly free to do so as long as they don't infringe on any of the real Ford's work product. Same deal for voices or any other output by any individual where there's a reasonable possibility of mistaken identity. That probably means deepfake porn will end up being legal, so long as the underlying work product or identity isn't infringed on.

OpenAI should be free to use any voice they want. The ethical thing is definitely to approach the individuals with voices they want to emulate, but as long as they don't infringe on protected work product or claim association with the original voice, there shouldn't be any limitation.