Every time OpenAI launches an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model, there is a conundrum. This time, Hollywood is involved, with actor Scarlett Johansson accusing the company of using her voice from her 2013 film ‘Her’ in the newest version of ChatGPT, Sky.
She blasted OpenAI for using a sultry voice she called “eerily similar” to her performance in the movie ‘Her’ in which she played a flirty AI girlfriend Samantha. She hired a legal counsel and sent letters to OpenAI demanding an explanation, according to a statement released later.
Johansson’s statement, released on Monday, said she was “shocked, angered, and in disbelief” by OpenAI’s model using a voice she called “so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.”
She also revealed that she had turned down a request from OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman to voice ChatGPT last year. He reached out to her again two days before Sky’s demo, as reported by Wired.
Altman, in a statement issued on Monday, said “the voice is not Scarlett Johansson’s and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms Johansson.”
Microsoft, which is the largest investor in OpenAI, has so far not commented on the issue.
How OpenAI is Embroiled in Copyright Issues
The New York Times in 2023 filed a lawsuit against Microsoft alleging copyright infringement in both the input and output of OpenAI’s models.
“Defendants’ use of Times content encoded within models and live Times content processed by models produces outputs that usurp specific commercial opportunities of The Times,” the suit claims.
Large language models (LLMs) are fed with a huge amount of data, which helps them analyse patterns and train on language, visual data, etc. The Times argued this leads to a situations in which chatbots compete with news publications as sources of reliable information.
The Times is seeking to hold both firms accountable for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages that they owe for the unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.”
OpenAI said in the filing that the Times “paid someone to hack OpenAI’s products,” adding that ChatGPT “is not in any way a substitute for a subscription” to the Times.
In another lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI in September, the Authors Guild of America, on behalf of tens and thousands of authors, alleged willful violation of copyright laws.
It said that the two companies “reproduced and appropriated” the copyrighted work of tens and thousands of authors to “train their artificial intelligence models”.
What about Personality Rights in India?
Personality rights or publicity rights are a subset of “celebrity right” claimed by famous celebrities. For example, the name, voice, signatures, images or any other features identified by public as the markets of the celebrity’s personality come under the personality rights.
Footballer Gareth Bale has trademarked the heart sign he makes with his hands while celebrating a goal. The idea behind such rights is that only the creator or owner of the unique features can gain commercial benefit from them.
The Delhi High Court on May 15 restrained e-commerce stores, AI chatbots from using actor Jackie Shroff’s name, image, voice and likeness without his consent to protect his personality and publicity rights.
The court observed that attributes “over which the plaintiff exercises exclusive control constitute his ‘personality rights’ and ‘publicity rights’. The unauthorised use of these characteristics for commercial purposes not only infringes upon these rights but also dilutes the brand equity painstakingly built by the plaintiff over the years”.
In a case involving Anil Kapoor last September, the Delhi HC granted an ex parte, omnibus injunction restraining 16 entities from using the actor’s name, likeness, and image using technological tools like AI, face morphing, and GIFs for commercial purposes.
Earlier in November 2022, the Delhi HC had dealt with a similar case involving Amitabh Bachchan. From using variations of his name such as “Big B” to including his “unique style of addressing the computer as ‘Computer ji’ and ‘lock kiya jaye’”, the HC injuncted the use of his personality rights.
Debate Over AI and IP Rights
In the music industry, Universal Music Group has asked streaming services such as Spotify to stop developers from scraping its material to train AI bots in making new songs.
In India, the laws need an update keeping in mind the AI wave. For instance, in India, creative works are regulated under the Copyright Act of 1957.
The definition of an “author” under the Act includes any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer generated, the person who causes the work to be created.
An important constriction in copyright protection of AI works is that, according to the law, the work needs to be original and creative to qualify for copyright protection. Section 13 of the Indian Copyright Act states that there is copyright protection for “original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works.”
AI-generated content may not meet the criteria of originality or creativity since it is based on data taken from several pre-existing sources across the Internet and fed into its system.
As per ChatGPT’s terms and conditions, “Due to the nature of machine learning, output may not be unique across users and the services may generate the same or similar output for OpenAI or a third party.”
