What rights does Scarlett Johansson have over a voice that sounds like hers?
Scarlett Johansson’s threat to take legal action against OpenAI over its use of a voice extremely similar to hers for the company’s generative AI assistant raises a number of interesting issues.
Firstly, the fact that the actress who, after comments from some of her friends, decided to take legal advice and demand the removal of the voice, which OpenAI quickly agreed to do. The company is now talking to the actress while insisting that although there is clearly a parallel with the actress’s role in “her”, and Sam Altman himself posted a comment on X referring to the movie, it wasn’t trying to mimic her, and that the voice is that of a voice actor who was selected well before any conversations with Johansson.
Is that the end of the matter? Obviously, a voice actor cannot be asked to stop working or say no to certain jobs because their voice resembles somebody else’s, just as we cannot silence a ventriloquist or an impersonator. But Scarlett Johansson clearly believes that her rights are being infringed.
She has a strong case: she has already reported the use of replicas of her voice created by AI without her consent in advertisements, and has repeatedly complained about the large number of pornographic deepfakes generated from her image. Now, the same actress whose…
