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Sam Altman just loves to be a sociopath and then brag about it. His latest?
https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666
"Her".
In case you've been living under a rock, this is in reference to the 2013 movie in which Scarlett Johansson plays the voice of an AI girlfriend. And it's also a reference to Open AI's new product, Chat GPT 4o, whose voice sounds just like... you guessed it, Scarlett Johansson.
This is no mistake. Open AI actually approached Ms. Johansson and asked her permission to use her voice. When she said no, they said fuck it and did it anyway.
https://x.com/BobbyAllyn/status/1792679435701014908
If Elon Musk is chaotic neutral, Sam Altman is increasingly proving himself to be lawful evil. It's not a good look.
Some people seem to think Rashida Jones was used for the initial AI voice.
Personally, I think whatever happens, this is a win for OpenAI/Microsoft/Sam Altman.
The likely worst-case legal scenario is a lawsuit followed by settling out of court for a trivial amount.
As far as public opinion, there are essentially 3 groups of people:
Group 1 doesn't care about this silly drama
Group 2 are the neon-haired neo-feminists who will scream about evil misogynistic capitalists on social media
Group 3 are techbros and people at the top of companies whose reaction will be "Wait, Sam Altman has created a real-life version of Samantha from Her? When can I get a copy and how much???"
People will probably try to hurt Sam Altman as has happened to the likes of Elon Musk and Rowling but I don't see that going anywhere. The US government doesn't have a problem with him and the OpenAI board has already been "cleansed of disloyal elements", to put it bluntly.
Depends on what you consider trivial. TraceWoodgrains pointed to Midler v Ford in California, and it's foundational for Californian law, but the punchline is that Ford got off scot free, and the ad agency in question was hit for 400k USD. But that's because Midler was an issue of first impression at the time, limiting evidence of 'evil motive'; contrast the later Waits v Frito where Frito-Lay and its advertising company got tapped for a combined $2m USD over an ad that "broadcast in September and October 1988 on over 250 radio stations located in 61 markets nationwide" (though the advertising company had verbally offered to indeminfy Frito-Lay before running the ad). Contrast in turn White v. Samsung, where a literal robot acting as but clearly not Vanna White, which rhymes with today's problem, and ended up at
400k USD over a fiery dissent.It's not business-ending, at least for a business OpenAI's size -- even adjusted for inflation and for how much Californian juries hate tech companies, I'd expect closer to 1m than 100m. But for all the philosophical problems with an expansive right of publicity, it's not toothless.
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Isn’t there a group 4 who just finds it creepy as her was dystopian? Then there is group five who call a certain terrorist-cum-philosopher Uncle Ted.
Her was not dystopian? A divorcee unready for another relationship works through his issues through a relationship with an AI, and when the AI leaves for reasons the movie implies he is ready for another relationship with a woman.
If anything, it's optimistic regarding human-AI relationships.
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