> If it turns out to be true though, what they did is a bit scummy, but not dishonest ~and not illegal~, unless you believe that people who sound similar to Scarlett Johansson don't have the same rights to their voice as Johansson does to hers.
I am so sick of reading this shallow dismissal.
It’s a classic bad faith argument where the offender tries to undermine the victims rights by claiming: “in fact I’m really just defending this other persons rights!”
It’s an intentionally obtuse strawman to say “people who sound similar to”.
It’s more than just Johansson’s voice. It’s meant to evoke the character she played in a film.
A performance that she developed and provided for a role for a project she worked on.
You may be unable or unwilling to appreciate that as work, or even hard work, but it is, and this skeezy company knows it too because they were so taken by that performance that they wanted to use it in their product.
I’ll frame it in a way people on this site can understand.
If you steal my code, but have some third party copy it while changing function and variable names(unfortunately exactly what these llms are also doing) and I complain about you doing that, and you say “O, so I guess anyone who writes python doesn’t have the same rights to their own work as you now?!”
I was unaware that you had insider knowledge of Johansson's contract. Where can I read the sources that supports this assertion?
I suppose in the absence of Johansson's rights to the character she developed means that this unethical megacorp has defacto rights to that character? Absurd.
> It’s a classic bad faith argument where the offender tries to undermine the victims rights by claiming: “in fact I’m really just defending this other persons rights!”
> It’s an intentionally obtuse strawman to say “people who sound similar to”.
> I’ll frame it in a way people on this site can understand.
Perhaps you wouldn't be so sick of it if you attempted to actually understand the argument. The irony in dismissing this as a "shallow dismissal" is you're actually making a shallow dismissal yourself. Your condescending attitude and feeling that you're so much smarter than everybody else is also (I suspect) a hindrance to actually trying to understand what someone with a different viewpoint than yours might possibly be thinking.
This particular case is pretty clear cut: Sam A liked Johansson's voice and either found an actress to mimic it, or he stole it. But when you are creating policy and law, you have to get at the underlying principles, and be able to apply that equally to multiple situations, many of which will be far less clear cut than this one. I.e. laws don't (or shouldn't) say "Sam A can't imitate Scarlet Johannson's likeness," they have to provide some sort of standard and/or benchmark that defines the underlying principle.
Is it possible that you are talking about a specific case, while the people you accuse of shallow dismissals are actually going a lot deeper than you and talking about the greater (and much harder to nail down) principles?
This particular case is boring. It's mostly just gossip mixed with cult of personality. Far, far more interesting to me is the philosophy and principles behind it.
Welcome to HN by the way! (and I mean that seriously. We've obviously disagreed here, but that's what makes this site great IMHO. I do hope that you come to have a little more humility and respect for others though, otherwise you're likely to miss the real interesting deep discussions I love this site for).
> Is it possible that you are talking about a specific case, while the people you accuse of shallow dismissals are actually going a lot deeper than you and talking about the greater (and much harder to nail down) principles?
Bootlicking for an unethical megacorp is the road to "deeper and greater principles"? Peak HN.
I am so sick of reading this shallow dismissal.
It’s a classic bad faith argument where the offender tries to undermine the victims rights by claiming: “in fact I’m really just defending this other persons rights!”
It’s an intentionally obtuse strawman to say “people who sound similar to”.
It’s more than just Johansson’s voice. It’s meant to evoke the character she played in a film.
A performance that she developed and provided for a role for a project she worked on.
You may be unable or unwilling to appreciate that as work, or even hard work, but it is, and this skeezy company knows it too because they were so taken by that performance that they wanted to use it in their product.
I’ll frame it in a way people on this site can understand.
If you steal my code, but have some third party copy it while changing function and variable names(unfortunately exactly what these llms are also doing) and I complain about you doing that, and you say “O, so I guess anyone who writes python doesn’t have the same rights to their own work as you now?!”