Artificial Intelligence

feds-to-get-early-access-to-openai,-anthropic-ai-to-test-for-doomsday-scenarios

Feds to get early access to OpenAI, Anthropic AI to test for doomsday scenarios

AI safety, ai safety institute, Anthropic, Artificial Intelligence, NIST, openai, Policy, us ai safety institute / /

“Advancing the science of AI safety” —

AI companies agreed that ensuring AI safety was key to innovation.

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Feds to get early access to OpenAI, Anthropic AI to test for doomsday scenarios

OpenAI and Anthropic have each signed unprecedented deals granting the US government early access to conduct safety testing on the companies’ flashiest new AI models before they’re released to the public.

According to a press release from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the deal creates a “formal collaboration on AI safety research, testing, and evaluation with both Anthropic and OpenAI” and the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute.

Through the deal, the US AI Safety Institute will “receive access to major new models from each company prior to and following their public release.” This will ensure that public safety won’t depend exclusively on how the companies “evaluate capabilities and safety risks, as well as methods to mitigate those risks,” NIST said, but also on collaborative research with the US government.

The US AI Safety Institute will also be collaborating with the UK AI Safety Institute when examining models to flag potential safety risks. Both groups will provide feedback to OpenAI and Anthropic “on potential safety improvements to their models.”

NIST said that the agreements also build on voluntary AI safety commitments that AI companies made to the Biden administration to evaluate models to detect risks.

Elizabeth Kelly, director of the US AI Safety Institute, called the agreements “an important milestone” to “help responsibly steward the future of AI.”

Anthropic co-founder: AI safety “crucial” to innovation

The announcement comes as California is poised to pass one of the country’s first AI safety bills, which will regulate how AI is developed and deployed in the state.

Among the most controversial aspects of the bill is a requirement that AI companies build in a “kill switch” to stop models from introducing “novel threats to public safety and security,” especially if the model is acting “with limited human oversight, intervention, or supervision.”

Critics say the bill overlooks existing safety risks from AI—like deepfakes and election misinformation—to prioritize prevention of doomsday scenarios and could stifle AI innovation while providing little security today. They’ve urged California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, to veto the bill if it arrives at his desk, but it’s still unclear if Newsom intends to sign.

Anthropic was one of the AI companies that cautiously supported California’s controversial AI bill, Reuters reported, claiming that the potential benefits of the regulations likely outweigh the costs after a late round of amendments.

The company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, told Newsom why Anthropic supports the bill now in a letter last week, Reuters reported. He wrote that although Anthropic isn’t certain about aspects of the bill that “seem concerning or ambiguous,” Anthropic’s “initial concerns about the bill potentially hindering innovation due to the rapidly evolving nature of the field have been greatly reduced” by recent changes to the bill.

OpenAI has notably joined critics opposing California’s AI safety bill and has been called out by whistleblowers for lobbying against it.

In a letter to the bill’s co-sponsor, California Senator Scott Wiener, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, suggested that “the federal government should lead in regulating frontier AI models to account for implications to national security and competitiveness.”

The ChatGPT maker striking a deal with the US AI Safety Institute seems in line with that thinking. As Kwon told Reuters, “We believe the institute has a critical role to play in defining US leadership in responsibly developing artificial intelligence and hope that our work together offers a framework that the rest of the world can build on.”

While some critics worry California’s AI safety bill will hamper innovation, Anthropic’s co-founder, Jack Clark, told Reuters today that “safe, trustworthy AI is crucial for the technology’s positive impact.” He confirmed that Anthropic’s “collaboration with the US AI Safety Institute” will leverage the government’s “wide expertise to rigorously test” Anthropic’s models “before widespread deployment.”

In NIST’s press release, Kelly agreed that “safety is essential to fueling breakthrough technological innovation.”

By directly collaborating with OpenAI and Anthropic, the US AI Safety Institute also plans to conduct its own research to help “advance the science of AI safety,” Kelly said.

Feds to get early access to OpenAI, Anthropic AI to test for doomsday scenarios Read More »

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Artists claim “big” win in copyright suit fighting AI image generators

AI, AI image generators, Artificial Intelligence, copyright infringement, copyright law, deviantART, generative ai, LAION-5b, MidJourney, Policy, runway ai, Stability AI, Stable Diffusion / /

Back to the drawing board —

Artists prepare to take on AI image generators as copyright suit proceeds

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Artists claim “big” win in copyright suit fighting AI image generators

Artists defending a class-action lawsuit are claiming a major win this week in their fight to stop the most sophisticated AI image generators from copying billions of artworks to train AI models and replicate their styles without compensating artists.

In an order on Monday, US district judge William Orrick denied key parts of motions to dismiss from Stability AI, Midjourney, Runway AI, and DeviantArt. The court will now allow artists to proceed with discovery on claims that AI image generators relying on Stable Diffusion violate both the Copyright Act and the Lanham Act, which protects artists from commercial misuse of their names and unique styles.

“We won BIG,” an artist plaintiff, Karla Ortiz, wrote on X (formerly Twitter), celebrating the order. “Not only do we proceed on our copyright claims,” but “this order also means companies who utilize” Stable Diffusion models and LAION-like datasets that scrape artists’ works for AI training without permission “could now be liable for copyright infringement violations, amongst other violations.”

Lawyers for the artists, Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick, told Ars that artists suing “consider the Court’s order a significant step forward for the case,” as “the Court allowed Plaintiffs’ core copyright-infringement claims against all four defendants to proceed.”

Stability AI was the only company that responded to Ars’ request to comment, but it declined to comment.

Artists prepare to defend their livelihoods from AI

To get to this stage of the suit, artists had to amend their complaint to better explain exactly how AI image generators work to allegedly train on artists’ images and copy artists’ styles.

For example, they were told that if they “contend Stable Diffusion contains ‘compressed copies’ of the Training Images, they need to define ‘compressed copies’ and explain plausible facts in support. And if plaintiffs’ compressed copies theory is based on a contention that Stable Diffusion contains mathematical or statistical methods that can be carried out through algorithms or instructions in order to reconstruct the Training Images in whole or in part to create the new Output Images, they need to clarify that and provide plausible facts in support,” Orrick wrote.

To keep their fight alive, the artists pored through academic articles to support their arguments that “Stable Diffusion is built to a significant extent on copyrighted works and that the way the product operates necessarily invokes copies or protected elements of those works.” Orrick agreed that their amended complaint made plausible inferences that “at this juncture” is enough to support claims “that Stable Diffusion by operation by end users creates copyright infringement and was created to facilitate that infringement by design.”

“Specifically, the Court found Plaintiffs’ theory that image-diffusion models like Stable Diffusion contain compressed copies of their datasets to be plausible,” Saveri and Butterick’s statement to Ars said. “The Court also found it plausible that training, distributing, and copying such models constitute acts of copyright infringement.”

Not all of the artists’ claims survived, with Orrick granting motions to dismiss claims alleging that AI companies removed content management information from artworks in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Because artists failed to show evidence of defendants altering or stripping this information, they must permanently drop the DMCA claims.

Part of Orrick’s decision on the DMCA claims, however, indicates that the legal basis for dismissal is “unsettled,” with Orrick simply agreeing with Stability AI’s unsettled argument that “because the output images are admittedly not identical to the Training Images, there can be no liability for any removal of CMI that occurred during the training process.”

Ortiz wrote on X that she respectfully disagreed with that part of the decision but expressed enthusiasm that the court allowed artists to proceed with false endorsement claims, alleging that Midjourney violated the Lanham Act.

Five artists successfully argued that because “their names appeared on the list of 4,700 artists posted by Midjourney’s CEO on Discord” and that list was used to promote “the various styles of artistic works its AI product could produce,” this plausibly created confusion over whether those artists had endorsed Midjourney.

“Whether or not a reasonably prudent consumer would be confused or misled by the Names List and showcase to conclude that the included artists were endorsing the Midjourney product can be tested at summary judgment,” Orrick wrote. “Discovery may show that it is or that is it not.”

While Orrick agreed with Midjourney that “plaintiffs have no protection over ‘simple, cartoony drawings’ or ‘gritty fantasy paintings,'” artists were able to advance a “trade dress” claim under the Lanham Act, too. This is because Midjourney allegedly “allows users to create works capturing the ‘trade dress of each of the Midjourney Named Plaintiffs [that] is inherently distinctive in look and feel as used in connection with their artwork and art products.'”

As discovery proceeds in the case, artists will also have an opportunity to amend dismissed claims of unjust enrichment. According to Orrick, their next amended complaint will be their last chance to prove that AI companies have “deprived plaintiffs ‘the benefit of the value of their works.'”

Saveri and Butterick confirmed that “though the Court dismissed certain supplementary claims, Plaintiffs’ central claims will now proceed to discovery and trial.” On X, Ortiz suggested that the artists’ case is “now potentially one of THE biggest copyright infringement and trade dress cases ever!”

“Looking forward to the next stage of our fight!” Ortiz wrote.

Artists claim “big” win in copyright suit fighting AI image generators Read More »

elon-musk-sues-openai,-sam-altman-for-making-a-“fool”-out-of-him

Elon Musk sues OpenAI, Sam Altman for making a “fool” out of him

agi, AI, AI safety, Artificial Intelligence, chatbot, elon musk, existential risks, generative ai, GPT-4, GPT-4o, grok, microsoft, openai, Policy / /

“Altman’s long con” —

Elon Musk asks court to void Microsoft’s exclusive deal with OpenAI.

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Elon Musk and Sam Altman share the stage in 2015, the same year that Musk alleged that Altman's

Enlarge / Elon Musk and Sam Altman share the stage in 2015, the same year that Musk alleged that Altman’s “deception” began.

After withdrawing his lawsuit in June for unknown reasons, Elon Musk has revived a complaint accusing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman of fraudulently inducing Musk to contribute $44 million in seed funding by promising that OpenAI would always open-source its technology and prioritize serving the public good over profits as a permanent nonprofit.

Instead, Musk alleged that Altman and his co-conspirators—”preying on Musk’s humanitarian concern about the existential dangers posed by artificial intelligence”—always intended to “betray” these promises in pursuit of personal gains.

As OpenAI’s technology advanced toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) and strove to surpass human capabilities, “Altman set the bait and hooked Musk with sham altruism then flipped the script as the non-profit’s technology approached AGI and profits neared, mobilizing Defendants to turn OpenAI, Inc. into their personal piggy bank and OpenAI into a moneymaking bonanza, worth billions,” Musk’s complaint said.

Where Musk saw OpenAI as his chance to fund a meaningful rival to stop Google from controlling the most powerful AI, Altman and others “wished to launch a competitor to Google” and allegedly deceived Musk to do it. According to Musk:

The idea Altman sold Musk was that a non-profit, funded and backed by Musk, would attract world-class scientists, conduct leading AI research and development, and, as a meaningful counterweight to Google’s DeepMind in the race for Artificial General Intelligence (“AGI”), decentralize its technology by making it open source. Altman assured Musk that the non-profit structure guaranteed neutrality and a focus on safety and openness for the benefit of humanity, not shareholder value. But as it turns out, this was all hot-air philanthropy—the hook for Altman’s long con.

Without Musk’s involvement and funding during OpenAI’s “first five critical years,” Musk’s complaint said, “it is fair to say” that “there would have been no OpenAI.” And when Altman and others repeatedly approached Musk with plans to shift OpenAI to a for-profit model, Musk held strong to his morals, conditioning his ongoing contributions on OpenAI remaining a nonprofit and its tech largely remaining open source.

“Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a nonprofit,” Musk told Altman in 2018 when Altman tried to “recast the nonprofit as a moneymaking endeavor to bring in shareholders, sell equity, and raise capital.”

“I will no longer fund OpenAI until you have made a firm commitment to stay, or I’m just being a fool who is essentially providing free funding to a startup,” Musk said at the time. “Discussions are over.”

But discussions weren’t over. And now Musk seemingly does feel like a fool after OpenAI exclusively licensed GPT-4 and all “pre-AGI” technology to Microsoft in 2023, while putting up paywalls and “failing to publicly disclose the non-profit’s research and development, including details on GPT-4, GPT-4T, and GPT-4o’s architecture, hardware, training method, and training computation.” This excluded the public “from open usage of GPT-4 and related technology to advance Defendants and Microsoft’s own commercial interests,” Musk alleged.

Now Musk has revived his suit against OpenAI, asking the court to award maximum damages for OpenAI’s alleged fraud, contract breaches, false advertising, acts viewed as unfair to competition, and other violations.

He has also asked the court to determine a very technical question: whether OpenAI’s most recent models should be considered AGI and therefore Microsoft’s license voided. That’s the only way to ensure that a private corporation isn’t controlling OpenAI’s AGI models, which Musk repeatedly conditioned his financial contributions upon preventing.

“Musk contributed considerable money and resources to launch and sustain OpenAI, Inc., which was done on the condition that the endeavor would be and remain a non-profit devoted to openly sharing its technology with the public and avoid concentrating its power in the hands of the few,” Musk’s complaint said. “Defendants knowingly and repeatedly accepted Musk’s contributions in order to develop AGI, with no intention of honoring those conditions once AGI was in reach. Case in point: GPT-4, GPT-4T, and GPT-4o are all closed source and shrouded in secrecy, while Defendants actively work to transform the non-profit into a thoroughly commercial business.”

Musk wants Microsoft’s GPT-4 license voided

Musk also asked the court to null and void OpenAI’s exclusive license to Microsoft, or else determine “whether GPT-4, GPT-4T, GPT-4o, and other OpenAI next generation large language models constitute AGI and are thus excluded from Microsoft’s license.”

It’s clear that Musk considers these models to be AGI, and he’s alleged that Altman’s current control of OpenAI’s Board—after firing dissidents in 2023 whom Musk claimed tried to get Altman ousted for prioritizing profits over AI safety—gives Altman the power to obscure when OpenAI’s models constitute AGI.

Elon Musk sues OpenAI, Sam Altman for making a “fool” out of him Read More »

ai’s-future-in-grave-danger-from-nvidia’s-chokehold-on-chips,-groups-warn

AI’s future in grave danger from Nvidia’s chokehold on chips, groups warn

AI chips, ai industry, Antitrust law, Artificial Intelligence, department of justice, intel, Jensen Huang, monopoly, NVIDIA, Policy / /

Controlling “the world’s computing destiny” —

Anti-monopoly groups want DOJ to probe Nvidia’s AI chip bundling, alleged price-fixing.

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AI’s future in grave danger from Nvidia’s chokehold on chips, groups warn

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has joined progressive groups—including Demand Progress, Open Markets Institute, and the Tech Oversight Project—pressuring the US Department of Justice to investigate Nvidia’s dominance in the AI chip market due to alleged antitrust concerns, Reuters reported.

In a letter to the DOJ’s chief antitrust enforcer, Jonathan Kanter, groups demanding more Big Tech oversight raised alarms that Nvidia’s top rivals apparently “are struggling to gain traction” because “Nvidia’s near-absolute dominance of the market is difficult to counter” and “funders are wary of backing its rivals.”

Nvidia is currently “the world’s most valuable public company,” their letter said, worth more than $3 trillion after taking near-total control of the high-performance AI chip market. Particularly “astonishing,” the letter said, was Nvidia’s dominance in the market for GPU accelerator chips, which are at the heart of today’s leading AI. Groups urged Kanter to probe Nvidia’s business practices to ensure that rivals aren’t permanently blocked from competing.

According to the advocacy groups that strongly oppose Big Tech monopolies, Nvidia “now holds an 80 percent overall global market share in GPU chips and a 98 percent share in the data center market.” This “puts it in a position to crowd out competitors and set global pricing and the terms of trade,” the letter warned.

Earlier this year, inside sources reported that the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission reached a deal where the DOJ would probe Nvidia’s alleged anti-competitive behavior in the booming AI industry, and the FTC would probe OpenAI and Microsoft. But there has been no official Nvidia probe announced, prompting progressive groups to push harder for the DOJ to recognize what they view as a “dire danger to the open market” that “well deserves DOJ scrutiny.”

Ultimately, the advocacy groups told Kanter that they fear Nvidia wielding “control over the world’s computing destiny,” noting that Nvidia’s cloud computing data centers don’t just power “Big Tech’s consumer products” but also “underpin every aspect of contemporary society, including the financial system, logistics, healthcare, and defense.”

They claimed that Nvidia is “leveraging” its “scarce chips” to force customers to buy its “chips, networking, and programming software as a package.” Such bundling and “price-fixing,” their letter warned, appear to be “the same kinds of anti-competitive tactics that the courts, in response to actions brought by the Department of Justice against other companies, have found to be illegal” and could perhaps “stifle innovation.”

Although data from TechInsights suggested that Nvidia’s chip shortage and cost actually helped companies like AMD and Intel sell chips in 2023, both Nvidia rivals reported losses in market share earlier this year, Yahoo Finance reported.

Perhaps most closely monitoring Nvidia’s dominance, France antitrust authorities launched an investigation into Nvidia last month over antitrust concerns, the letter said, “making it the first enforcer to act against the computer chip maker,” Reuters reported.

Since then, the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as the US, have heightened scrutiny, but their seeming lag to follow through with an official investigation may only embolden Nvidia, as the company allegedly “believes its market behavior is above the law,” the progressive groups wrote. Suspicious behavior includes allegations that “Nvidia has continued to sell chips to Chinese customers and provide them computing access” despite a “Department of Commerce ban on trading with Chinese companies due to national security and human rights concerns.”

“Its chips have been confirmed to be reaching blacklisted Chinese entities,” their letter warned, citing a Wall Street Journal report.

Nvidia’s dominance apparently impacts everyone involved with AI. According to the letter, Nvidia seemingly “determining who receives inventory from a limited supply, setting premium pricing, and contractually blocking customers from doing business with competitors” is “alarming” the entire AI industry. That includes “both small companies (who find their supply choked off) and the Big Tech AI giants.”

Kanter will likely be receptive to the letter. In June, Fast Company reported that Kanter told an audience at an AI conference that there are “structures and trends in AI that should give us pause.” He further suggested that any technology that “relies on massive amounts of data and computing power” can “give already dominant firms a substantial advantage,” according to Fast Company’s summary of his remarks.

AI’s future in grave danger from Nvidia’s chokehold on chips, groups warn Read More »

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Elon Musk’s X tests letting users request Community Notes on bad posts

AI, Artificial Intelligence, chatbot, community notes, disinformation, elon musk, fact checking, grok, misinformation, online news, Policy, Twitter, X / /
Elon Musk’s X tests letting users request Community Notes on bad posts

Continuing to evolve the fact-checking service that launched as Twitter’s Birdwatch, X has announced that Community Notes can now be requested to clarify problematic posts spreading on Elon Musk’s platform.

X’s Community Notes account confirmed late Thursday that, due to “popular demand,” X had launched a pilot test on the web-based version of the platform. The test is active now and the same functionality will be “coming soon” to Android and iOS, the Community Notes account said.

Through the current web-based pilot, if you’re an eligible user, you can click on the “•••” menu on any X post on the web and request fact-checking from one of Community Notes’ top contributors, X explained. If X receives five or more requests within 24 hours of the post going live, a Community Note will be added.

Only X users with verified phone numbers will be eligible to request Community Notes, X said, and to start, users will be limited to five requests a day.

“The limit may increase if requests successfully result in helpful notes, or may decrease if requests are on posts that people don’t agree need a note,” X’s website said. “This helps prevent spam and keep note writers focused on posts that could use helpful notes.”

Once X receives five or more requests for a Community Note within a single day, top contributors with diverse views will be alerted to respond. On X, top contributors are constantly changing, as their notes are voted as either helpful or not. If at least 4 percent of their notes are rated “helpful,” X explained on its site, and the impact of their notes meets X standards, they can be eligible to receive alerts.

“A contributor’s Top Writer status can always change as their notes are rated by others,” X’s website said.

Ultimately, X considers notes helpful if they “contain accurate, high-quality information” and “help inform people’s understanding of the subject matter in posts,” X said on another part of its site. To gauge the former, X said that the platform partners with “professional reviewers” from the Associated Press and Reuters. X also continually monitors whether notes marked helpful by top writers match what general X users marked as helpful.

“We don’t expect all notes to be perceived as helpful by all people all the time,” X’s website said. “Instead, the goal is to ensure that on average notes that earn the status of Helpful are likely to be seen as helpful by a wide range of people from different points of view, and not only be seen as helpful by people from one viewpoint.”

X will also be allowing half of the top contributors to request notes during the pilot phase, which X said will help the platform evaluate “whether it is beneficial for Community Notes contributors to have both the ability to write notes and request notes.”

According to X, the criteria for requesting a note have intentionally been designed to be simple during the pilot stage, but X expects “these criteria to evolve, with the goal that requests are frequently found valuable to contributors, and not noisy.”

It’s hard to tell from the outside looking in how helpful Community Notes are to X users. The most recent Community Notes survey data that X points to is from 2022 when the platform was still called Twitter and the fact-checking service was still called Birdwatch.

That data showed that “on average,” users were “20–40 percent less likely to agree with the substance of a potentially misleading Tweet than someone who sees the Tweet alone.” And based on Twitter’s “internal data” at that time, the platform also estimated that “people on Twitter who see notes are, on average, 15–35 percent less likely to Like or Retweet a Tweet than someone who sees the Tweet alone.”

Elon Musk’s X tests letting users request Community Notes on bad posts Read More »

court-ordered-penalties-for-15-teens-who-created-naked-ai-images-of-classmates

Court ordered penalties for 15 teens who created naked AI images of classmates

AI, ai child sex images, ai deepfakes, AI image generators, Artificial Intelligence, child sexual abuse materials, csam, face swapping, fake AI images, generative ai, nudity apps, Policy / /

Real consequences —

Teens ordered to attend classes on sex education and responsible use of AI.

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Court ordered penalties for 15 teens who created naked AI images of classmates

A Spanish youth court has sentenced 15 minors to one year of probation after spreading AI-generated nude images of female classmates in two WhatsApp groups.

The minors were charged with 20 counts of creating child sex abuse images and 20 counts of offenses against their victims’ moral integrity. In addition to probation, the teens will also be required to attend classes on gender and equality, as well as on the “responsible use of information and communication technologies,” a press release from the Juvenile Court of Badajoz said.

Many of the victims were too ashamed to speak up when the inappropriate fake images began spreading last year. Prior to the sentencing, a mother of one of the victims told The Guardian that girls like her daughter “were completely terrified and had tremendous anxiety attacks because they were suffering this in silence.”

The court confirmed that the teens used artificial intelligence to create images where female classmates “appear naked” by swiping photos from their social media profiles and superimposing their faces on “other naked female bodies.”

Teens using AI to sexualize and harass classmates has become an alarming global trend. Police have probed disturbing cases in both high schools and middle schools in the US, and earlier this year, the European Union proposed expanding its definition of child sex abuse to more effectively “prosecute the production and dissemination of deepfakes and AI-generated material.” Last year, US President Joe Biden issued an executive order urging lawmakers to pass more protections.

In addition to mental health impacts, victims have reported losing trust in classmates who targeted them and wanting to switch schools to avoid further contact with harassers. Others stopped posting photos online and remained fearful that the harmful AI images will resurface.

Minors targeting classmates may not realize exactly how far images can potentially spread when generating fake child sex abuse materials (CSAM); they could even end up on the dark web. An investigation by the United Kingdom-based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) last year reported that “20,254 AI-generated images were found to have been posted to one dark web CSAM forum in a one-month period,” with more than half determined most likely to be criminal.

IWF warned that it has identified a growing market for AI-generated CSAM and concluded that “most AI CSAM found is now realistic enough to be treated as ‘real’ CSAM.” One “shocked” mother of a female classmate victimized in Spain agreed. She told The Guardian that “if I didn’t know my daughter’s body, I would have thought that image was real.”

More drastic steps to stop deepfakes

While lawmakers struggle to apply existing protections against CSAM to AI-generated images or to update laws to explicitly prosecute the offense, other more drastic solutions to prevent the harmful spread of deepfakes have been proposed.

In an op-ed for The Guardian today, journalist Lucia Osborne-Crowley advocated for laws restricting sites used to both generate and surface deepfake pornography, including regulating this harmful content when it appears on social media sites and search engines. And IWF suggested that, like jurisdictions that restrict sharing bomb-making information, lawmakers could also restrict guides instructing bad actors on how to use AI to generate CSAM.

The Malvaluna Association, which represented families of victims in Spain and broadly advocates for better sex education, told El Diario that beyond more regulations, more education is needed to stop teens motivated to use AI to attack classmates. Because the teens were ordered to attend classes, the association agreed to the sentencing measures.

“Beyond this particular trial, these facts should make us reflect on the need to educate people about equality between men and women,” the Malvaluna Association said. The group urged that today’s kids should not be learning about sex through pornography that “generates more sexism and violence.”

Teens sentenced in Spain were between the ages of 13 and 15. According to the Guardian, Spanish law prevented sentencing of minors under 14, but the youth court “can force them to take part in rehabilitation courses.”

Tech companies could also make it easier to report and remove harmful deepfakes. Ars could not immediately reach Meta for comment on efforts to combat the proliferation of AI-generated CSAM on WhatsApp, the private messaging app that was used to share fake images in Spain.

An FAQ said that “WhatsApp has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation and abuse, and we ban users when we become aware they are sharing content that exploits or endangers children,” but it does not mention AI.

Court ordered penalties for 15 teens who created naked AI images of classmates Read More »

tool-preventing-ai-mimicry-cracked;-artists-wonder-what’s-next

Tool preventing AI mimicry cracked; artists wonder what’s next

Artificial Intelligence, artists, Features, generative ai, Glaze, image generators, Nightshade, Policy, security research, the glaze project / /
Tool preventing AI mimicry cracked; artists wonder what’s next

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

For many artists, it’s a precarious time to post art online. AI image generators keep getting better at cheaply replicating a wider range of unique styles, and basically every popular platform is rushing to update user terms to seize permissions to scrape as much data as possible for AI training.

Defenses against AI training exist—like Glaze, a tool that adds a small amount of imperceptible-to-humans noise to images to stop image generators from copying artists’ styles. But they don’t provide a permanent solution at a time when tech companies appear determined to chase profits by building ever-more-sophisticated AI models that increasingly threaten to dilute artists’ brands and replace them in the market.

In one high-profile example just last month, the estate of Ansel Adams condemned Adobe for selling AI images stealing the famous photographer’s style, Smithsonian reported. Adobe quickly responded and removed the AI copycats. But it’s not just famous artists who risk being ripped off, and lesser-known artists may struggle to prove AI models are referencing their works. In this largely lawless world, every image uploaded risks contributing to an artist’s downfall, potentially watering down demand for their own work each time they promote new pieces online.

Unsurprisingly, artists have increasingly sought protections to diminish or dodge these AI risks. As tech companies update their products’ terms—like when Meta suddenly announced that it was training AI on a billion Facebook and Instagram user photos last December—artists frantically survey the landscape for new defenses. That’s why, counting among those offering scarce AI protections available today, The Glaze Project recently reported a dramatic surge in requests for its free tools.

Designed to help prevent style mimicry and even poison AI models to discourage data scraping without an artist’s consent or compensation, The Glaze Project’s tools are now in higher demand than ever. University of Chicago professor Ben Zhao, who created the tools, told Ars that the backlog for approving a “skyrocketing” number of requests for access is “bad.” And as he recently posted on X (formerly Twitter), an “explosion in demand” in June is only likely to be sustained as AI threats continue to evolve. For the foreseeable future, that means artists searching for protections against AI will have to wait.

Even if Zhao’s team did nothing but approve requests for WebGlaze, its invite-only web-based version of Glaze, “we probably still won’t keep up,” Zhao said. He’s warned artists on X to expect delays.

Compounding artists’ struggles, at the same time as demand for Glaze is spiking, the tool has come under attack by security researchers who claimed it was not only possible but easy to bypass Glaze’s protections. For security researchers and some artists, this attack calls into question whether Glaze can truly protect artists in these embattled times. But for thousands of artists joining the Glaze queue, the long-term future looks so bleak that any promise of protections against mimicry seems worth the wait.

Attack cracking Glaze sparks debate

Millions have downloaded Glaze already, and many artists are waiting weeks or even months for access to WebGlaze, mostly submitting requests for invites on social media. The Glaze Project vets every request to verify that each user is human and ensure bad actors don’t abuse the tools, so the process can take a while.

The team is currently struggling to approve hundreds of requests submitted daily through direct messages on Instagram and Twitter in the order they are received, and artists requesting access must be patient through prolonged delays. Because these platforms’ inboxes aren’t designed to sort messages easily, any artist who follows up on a request gets bumped to the back of the line—as their message bounces to the top of the inbox and Zhao’s team, largely volunteers, continues approving requests from the bottom up.

“This is obviously a problem,” Zhao wrote on X while discouraging artists from sending any follow-ups unless they’ve already gotten an invite. “We might have to change the way we do invites and rethink the future of WebGlaze to keep it sustainable enough to support a large and growing user base.”

Glaze interest is likely also spiking due to word of mouth. Reid Southen, a freelance concept artist for major movies, is advocating for all artists to use Glaze. Reid told Ars that WebGlaze is especially “nice” because it’s “available for free for people who don’t have the GPU power to run the program on their home machine.”

Tool preventing AI mimicry cracked; artists wonder what’s next Read More »

ai-trains-on-kids’-photos-even-when-parents-use-strict-privacy-settings

AI trains on kids’ photos even when parents use strict privacy settings

AI, ai deepfakes, AI training, Artificial Intelligence, australia, child online safety, children's online privacy, generative ai, Human rights, image generators, large language models, Policy, youtube / /

“Outrageous” —

Even unlisted YouTube videos are used to train AI, watchdog warns.

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AI trains on kids’ photos even when parents use strict privacy settings

Human Rights Watch (HRW) continues to reveal how photos of real children casually posted online years ago are being used to train AI models powering image generators—even when platforms prohibit scraping and families use strict privacy settings.

Last month, HRW researcher Hye Jung Han found 170 photos of Brazilian kids that were linked in LAION-5B, a popular AI dataset built from Common Crawl snapshots of the public web. Now, she has released a second report, flagging 190 photos of children from all of Australia’s states and territories, including indigenous children who may be particularly vulnerable to harms.

These photos are linked in the dataset “without the knowledge or consent of the children or their families.” They span the entirety of childhood, making it possible for AI image generators to generate realistic deepfakes of real Australian children, Han’s report said. Perhaps even more concerning, the URLs in the dataset sometimes reveal identifying information about children, including their names and locations where photos were shot, making it easy to track down children whose images might not otherwise be discoverable online.

That puts children in danger of privacy and safety risks, Han said, and some parents thinking they’ve protected their kids’ privacy online may not realize that these risks exist.

From a single link to one photo that showed “two boys, ages 3 and 4, grinning from ear to ear as they hold paintbrushes in front of a colorful mural,” Han could trace “both children’s full names and ages, and the name of the preschool they attend in Perth, in Western Australia.” And perhaps most disturbingly, “information about these children does not appear to exist anywhere else on the Internet”—suggesting that families were particularly cautious in shielding these boys’ identities online.

Stricter privacy settings were used in another image that Han found linked in the dataset. The photo showed “a close-up of two boys making funny faces, captured from a video posted on YouTube of teenagers celebrating” during the week after their final exams, Han reported. Whoever posted that YouTube video adjusted privacy settings so that it would be “unlisted” and would not appear in searches.

Only someone with a link to the video was supposed to have access, but that didn’t stop Common Crawl from archiving the image, nor did YouTube policies prohibiting AI scraping or harvesting of identifying information.

Reached for comment, YouTube’s spokesperson, Jack Malon, told Ars that YouTube has “been clear that the unauthorized scraping of YouTube content is a violation of our Terms of Service, and we continue to take action against this type of abuse.” But Han worries that even if YouTube did join efforts to remove images of children from the dataset, the damage has been done, since AI tools have already trained on them. That’s why—even more than parents need tech companies to up their game blocking AI training—kids need regulators to intervene and stop training before it happens, Han’s report said.

Han’s report comes a month before Australia is expected to release a reformed draft of the country’s Privacy Act. Those reforms include a draft of Australia’s first child data protection law, known as the Children’s Online Privacy Code, but Han told Ars that even people involved in long-running discussions about reforms aren’t “actually sure how much the government is going to announce in August.”

“Children in Australia are waiting with bated breath to see if the government will adopt protections for them,” Han said, emphasizing in her report that “children should not have to live in fear that their photos might be stolen and weaponized against them.”

AI uniquely harms Australian kids

To hunt down the photos of Australian kids, Han “reviewed fewer than 0.0001 percent of the 5.85 billion images and captions contained in the data set.” Because her sample was so small, Han expects that her findings represent a significant undercount of how many children could be impacted by the AI scraping.

“It’s astonishing that out of a random sample size of about 5,000 photos, I immediately fell into 190 photos of Australian children,” Han told Ars. “You would expect that there would be more photos of cats than there are personal photos of children,” since LAION-5B is a “reflection of the entire Internet.”

LAION is working with HRW to remove links to all the images flagged, but cleaning up the dataset does not seem to be a fast process. Han told Ars that based on her most recent exchange with the German nonprofit, LAION had not yet removed links to photos of Brazilian kids that she reported a month ago.

LAION declined Ars’ request for comment.

In June, LAION’s spokesperson, Nathan Tyler, told Ars that, “as a nonprofit, volunteer organization,” LAION is committed to doing its part to help with the “larger and very concerning issue” of misuse of children’s data online. But removing links from the LAION-5B dataset does not remove the images online, Tyler noted, where they can still be referenced and used in other AI datasets, particularly those relying on Common Crawl. And Han pointed out that removing the links from the dataset doesn’t change AI models that have already trained on them.

“Current AI models cannot forget data they were trained on, even if the data was later removed from the training data set,” Han’s report said.

Kids whose images are used to train AI models are exposed to a variety of harms, Han reported, including a risk that image generators could more convincingly create harmful or explicit deepfakes. In Australia last month, “about 50 girls from Melbourne reported that photos from their social media profiles were taken and manipulated using AI to create sexually explicit deepfakes of them, which were then circulated online,” Han reported.

For First Nations children—”including those identified in captions as being from the Anangu, Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara, Pintupi, Tiwi, and Warlpiri peoples”—the inclusion of links to photos threatens unique harms. Because culturally, First Nations peoples “restrict the reproduction of photos of deceased people during periods of mourning,” Han said the AI training could perpetuate harms by making it harder to control when images are reproduced.

Once an AI model trains on the images, there are other obvious privacy risks, including a concern that AI models are “notorious for leaking private information,” Han said. Guardrails added to image generators do not always prevent these leaks, with some tools “repeatedly broken,” Han reported.

LAION recommends that, if troubled by the privacy risks, parents remove images of kids online as the most effective way to prevent abuse. But Han told Ars that’s “not just unrealistic, but frankly, outrageous.”

“The answer is not to call for children and parents to remove wonderful photos of kids online,” Han said. “The call should be [for] some sort of legal protections for these photos, so that kids don’t have to always wonder if their selfie is going to be abused.”

AI trains on kids’ photos even when parents use strict privacy settings Read More »

apple-intelligence-and-other-features-won’t-launch-in-the-eu-this-year

Apple Intelligence and other features won’t launch in the EU this year

AI, Apple, apple intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, dma, EU, European Commission, European Union, gaming, generative ai, ios 18, macos sequoia, privacy, Tech / /

DMA —

iPhone Mirroring and SharePlay screen sharing will also skip the EU for now.

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A photo of a hand holding an iPhone running the Image Playground experience in iOS 18

Enlarge / Features like Image Playground won’t arrive in Europe at the same time as other regions.

Apple

Three major features in iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia will not be available to European users this fall, Apple says. They include iPhone screen mirroring on the Mac, SharePlay screen sharing, and the entire Apple Intelligence suite of generative AI features.

In a statement sent to Financial Times, The Verge, and others, Apple says this decision is related to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Here’s the full statement, which was attributed to Apple spokesperson Fred Sainz:

Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies accessible to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features — iPhone Mirroring, SharePlay Screen Sharing enhancements, and Apple Intelligence — to our EU users this year.

Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.

It is unclear from Apple’s statement precisely which aspects of the DMA may have led to this decision. It could be that Apple is concerned that it would be required to give competitors like Microsoft or Google access to user data collected for Apple Intelligence features and beyond, but we’re not sure.

This is not the first recent and major divergence between functionality and features for Apple devices in the EU versus other regions. Because of EU regulations, Apple opened up iOS to third-party app stores in Europe, but not in other regions. However, critics argued its compliance with that requirement was lukewarm at best, as it came with a set of restrictions and changes to how app developers could monetize their apps on the platform should they use those other storefronts.

While Apple says in the statement it’s open to finding a solution, no timeline is given. All we know is that the features won’t be available on devices in the EU this year. They’re expected to launch in other regions in the fall.

Apple Intelligence and other features won’t launch in the EU this year Read More »

ai-trained-on-photos-from-kids’-entire-childhood-without-their-consent

AI trained on photos from kids’ entire childhood without their consent

AI, ai dataset, ai deepfakes, Artificial Intelligence, children's online privacy, generative ai, LAION, LAION-5b, online child safety, openai, Policy / /
AI trained on photos from kids’ entire childhood without their consent

Photos of Brazilian kids—sometimes spanning their entire childhood—have been used without their consent to power AI tools, including popular image generators like Stable Diffusion, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned on Monday.

This act poses urgent privacy risks to kids and seems to increase risks of non-consensual AI-generated images bearing their likenesses, HRW’s report said.

An HRW researcher, Hye Jung Han, helped expose the problem. She analyzed “less than 0.0001 percent” of LAION-5B, a dataset built from Common Crawl snapshots of the public web. The dataset does not contain the actual photos but includes image-text pairs derived from 5.85 billion images and captions posted online since 2008.

Among those images linked in the dataset, Han found 170 photos of children from at least 10 Brazilian states. These were mostly family photos uploaded to personal and parenting blogs most Internet surfers wouldn’t easily stumble upon, “as well as stills from YouTube videos with small view counts, seemingly uploaded to be shared with family and friends,” Wired reported.

LAION, the German nonprofit that created the dataset, has worked with HRW to remove the links to the children’s images in the dataset.

That may not completely resolve the problem, though. HRW’s report warned that the removed links are “likely to be a significant undercount of the total amount of children’s personal data that exists in LAION-5B.” Han told Wired that she fears that the dataset may still be referencing personal photos of kids “from all over the world.”

Removing the links also does not remove the images from the public web, where they can still be referenced and used in other AI datasets, particularly those relying on Common Crawl, LAION’s spokesperson, Nate Tyler, told Ars.

“This is a larger and very concerning issue, and as a nonprofit, volunteer organization, we will do our part to help,” Tyler told Ars.

Han told Ars that “Common Crawl should stop scraping children’s personal data, given the privacy risks involved and the potential for new forms of misuse.”

According to HRW’s analysis, many of the Brazilian children’s identities were “easily traceable,” due to children’s names and locations being included in image captions that were processed when building the LAION dataset.

And at a time when middle and high school-aged students are at greater risk of being targeted by bullies or bad actors turning “innocuous photos” into explicit imagery, it’s possible that AI tools may be better equipped to generate AI clones of kids whose images are referenced in AI datasets, HRW suggested.

“The photos reviewed span the entirety of childhood,” HRW’s report said. “They capture intimate moments of babies being born into the gloved hands of doctors, young children blowing out candles on their birthday cake or dancing in their underwear at home, students giving a presentation at school, and teenagers posing for photos at their high school’s carnival.”

There is less risk that the Brazilian kids’ photos are currently powering AI tools since “all publicly available versions of LAION-5B were taken down” in December, Tyler told Ars. That decision came out of an “abundance of caution” after a Stanford University report “found links in the dataset pointing to illegal content on the public web,” Tyler said, including 3,226 suspected instances of child sexual abuse material.

Han told Ars that “the version of the dataset that we examined pre-dates LAION’s temporary removal of its dataset in December 2023.” The dataset will not be available again until LAION determines that all flagged illegal content has been removed.

“LAION is currently working with the Internet Watch Foundation, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, Stanford, and Human Rights Watch to remove all known references to illegal content from LAION-5B,” Tyler told Ars. “We are grateful for their support and hope to republish a revised LAION-5B soon.”

In Brazil, “at least 85 girls” have reported classmates harassing them by using AI tools to “create sexually explicit deepfakes of the girls based on photos taken from their social media profiles,” HRW reported. Once these explicit deepfakes are posted online, they can inflict “lasting harm,” HRW warned, potentially remaining online for their entire lives.

“Children should not have to live in fear that their photos might be stolen and weaponized against them,” Han said. “The government should urgently adopt policies to protect children’s data from AI-fueled misuse.”

Ars could not immediately reach Stable Diffusion maker Stability AI for comment.

AI trained on photos from kids’ entire childhood without their consent Read More »

openai-backpedals-on-scandalous-tactic-to-silence-former-employees

OpenAI backpedals on scandalous tactic to silence former employees

Artificial Intelligence, censorship, non-disparagement, openai, Policy, sam altman / /

That settles that? —

OpenAI releases employees from evil exit agreement in staff-wide memo.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Enlarge / OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Former and current OpenAI employees received a memo this week that the AI company hopes to end the most embarrassing scandal that Sam Altman has ever faced as OpenAI’s CEO.

The memo finally clarified for employees that OpenAI would not enforce a non-disparagement contract that employees since at least 2019 were pressured to sign within a week of termination or else risk losing their vested equity. For an OpenAI employee, that could mean losing millions for expressing even mild criticism about OpenAI’s work.

You can read the full memo below in a post on X (formerly Twitter) from Andrew Carr, a former OpenAI employee whose LinkedIn confirms that he left the company in 2021.

“I guess that settles that,” Carr wrote on X.

OpenAI faced a major public backlash when Vox revealed the unusually restrictive language in the non-disparagement clause last week after OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever resigned, along with his superalignment team co-leader Jan Leike.

As questions swirled regarding these resignations, the former OpenAI staffers provided little explanation for why they suddenly quit. Sutskever basically wished OpenAI well, expressing confidence “that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial,” while Leike only offered two words: “I resigned.”

Amid an explosion of speculation about whether OpenAI was perhaps forcing out employees or doing dangerous or reckless AI work, some wondered if OpenAI’s non-disparagement agreement was keeping employees from warning the public about what was really going on at OpenAI.

According to Vox, employees had to sign the exit agreement within a week of quitting or else potentially lose millions in vested equity that could be worth more than their salaries. The extreme terms of the agreement were “fairly uncommon in Silicon Valley,” Vox found, allowing OpenAI to effectively censor former employees by requiring that they never criticize OpenAI for the rest of their lives.

“This is on me and one of the few times I’ve been genuinely embarrassed running OpenAI,” Altman posted on X, while claiming, “I did not know this was happening and I should have.”

Vox reporter Kelsey Piper called Altman’s apology “hollow,” noting that Altman had recently signed separation letters that seemed to “complicate” his claim that he was unaware of the harsh terms. Piper reviewed hundreds of pages of leaked OpenAI documents and reported that in addition to financially pressuring employees to quickly sign exit agreements, OpenAI also threatened to block employees from selling their equity.

Even requests for an extra week to review the separation agreement, which could afford the employees more time to seek legal counsel, were seemingly denied—”as recently as this spring,” Vox found.

“We want to make sure you understand that if you don’t sign, it could impact your equity,” an OpenAI representative wrote in an email to one departing employee. “That’s true for everyone, and we’re just doing things by the book.”

OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon told Vox that the company began reconsidering revising this language about a month before the controversy hit.

“We are sorry for the distress this has caused great people who have worked hard for us,” Kwon told Vox. “We have been working to fix this as quickly as possible. We will work even harder to be better.”

Altman sided with OpenAI’s biggest critics, writing on X that the non-disparagement clause “should never have been something we had in any documents or communication.”

“Vested equity is vested equity, full stop,” Altman wrote.

These long-awaited updates make clear that OpenAI will never claw back vested equity if employees leave the company and then openly criticize its work (unless both parties sign a non-disparagement agreement). Prior to this week, some former employees feared steep financial retribution for sharing true feelings about the company.

One former employee, Daniel Kokotajlo, publicly posted that he refused to sign the exit agreement, even though he had no idea how to estimate how much his vested equity was worth. He guessed it represented “about 85 percent of my family’s net worth.”

And while Kokotajlo said that he wasn’t sure if the sacrifice was worth it, he still felt it was important to defend his right to speak up about the company.

“I wanted to retain my ability to criticize the company in the future,” Kokotajlo wrote.

Even mild criticism could seemingly cost employees, like Kokotajlo, who confirmed that he was leaving the company because he was “losing confidence” that OpenAI “would behave responsibly” when developing generative AI.

In OpenAI’s defense, the company confirmed that it had never enforced the exit agreements. But now, OpenAI’s spokesperson told CNBC, OpenAI is backtracking and “making important updates” to its “departure process” to eliminate any confusion the prior language caused.

“We have not and never will take away vested equity, even when people didn’t sign the departure documents,” OpenAI’s spokesperson said. “We’ll remove non-disparagement clauses from our standard departure paperwork, and we’ll release former employees from existing non-disparagement obligations unless the non-disparagement provision was mutual.”

The memo sent to current and former employees reassured everyone at OpenAI that “regardless of whether you executed the Agreement, we write to notify you that OpenAI has not canceled, and will not cancel, any Vested Units.”

“We’re incredibly sorry that we’re only changing this language now; it doesn’t reflect our values or the company we want to be,” OpenAI’s spokesperson said.

OpenAI backpedals on scandalous tactic to silence former employees Read More »

sky-voice-actor-says-nobody-ever-compared-her-to-scarjo-before-openai-drama

Sky voice actor says nobody ever compared her to ScarJo before OpenAI drama

AI, Artificial Intelligence, bette Midler, chatbot, chatgpt, generative ai, her movie, openai, Policy, right to publicity, scarlett johansson, sky voice, tom waits, voice misappropriation / /
Scarlett Johansson attends the Golden Heart Awards in 2023.

Enlarge / Scarlett Johansson attends the Golden Heart Awards in 2023.

OpenAI is sticking to its story that it never intended to copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice when seeking an actor for ChatGPT’s “Sky” voice mode.

The company provided The Washington Post with documents and recordings clearly meant to support OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s defense against Johansson’s claims that Sky was made to sound “eerily similar” to her critically acclaimed voice acting performance in the sci-fi film Her.

Johansson has alleged that OpenAI hired a soundalike to steal her likeness and confirmed that she declined to provide the Sky voice. Experts have said that Johansson has a strong case should she decide to sue OpenAI for violating her right to publicity, which gives the actress exclusive rights to the commercial use of her likeness.

In OpenAI’s defense, The Post reported that the company’s voice casting call flier did not seek a “clone of actress Scarlett Johansson,” and initial voice test recordings of the unnamed actress hired to voice Sky showed that her “natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice.” Because of this, OpenAI has argued that “Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson.”

What’s more, an agent for the unnamed Sky actress who was cast—both granted anonymity to protect her client’s safety—confirmed to The Post that her client said she was never directed to imitate either Johansson or her character in Her. She simply used her own voice and got the gig.

The agent also provided a statement from her client that claimed that she had never been compared to Johansson before the backlash started.

This all “feels personal,” the voice actress said, “being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”

However, OpenAI apparently reached out to Johansson after casting the Sky voice actress. During outreach last September and again this month, OpenAI seemed to want to substitute the Sky voice actress’s voice with Johansson’s voice—which is ironically what happened when Johansson got cast to replace the original actress hired to voice her character in Her.

Altman has clarified that timeline in a statement provided to Ars that emphasized that the company “never intended” Sky to sound like Johansson. Instead, OpenAI tried to snag Johansson to voice the part after realizing—seemingly just as Her director Spike Jonze did—that the voice could potentially resonate with more people if Johansson did it.

“We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better,” Altman’s statement said.

Johansson has not yet made any public indications that she intends to sue OpenAI over this supposed miscommunication. But if she did, legal experts told The Post and Reuters that her case would be strong because of legal precedent set in high-profile lawsuits raised by singers Bette Midler and Tom Waits blocking companies from misappropriating their voices.

Why Johansson could win if she sued OpenAI

In 1988, Bette Midler sued Ford Motor Company for hiring a soundalike to perform Midler’s song “Do You Want to Dance?” in a commercial intended to appeal to “young yuppies” by referencing popular songs from their college days. Midler had declined to do the commercial and accused Ford of exploiting her voice to endorse its product without her consent.

This groundbreaking case proved that a distinctive voice like Midler’s cannot be deliberately imitated to sell a product. It did not matter that the singer used in the commercial had used her natural singing voice, because “a number of people” told Midler that the performance “sounded exactly” like her.

Midler’s case set a powerful precedent preventing companies from appropriating parts of performers’ identities—essentially stopping anyone from stealing a well-known voice that otherwise could not be bought.

“A voice is as distinctive and personal as a face,” the court ruled, concluding that “when a distinctive voice of a professional singer is widely known and is deliberately imitated in order to sell a product, the sellers have appropriated what is not theirs.”

Like in Midler’s case, Johansson could argue that plenty of people think that the Sky voice sounds like her and that OpenAI’s product might be more popular if it had a Her-like voice mode. Comics on popular late-night shows joked about the similarity, including Johansson’s husband, Saturday Night Live comedian Colin Jost. And other people close to Johansson agreed that Sky sounded like her, Johansson has said.

Johansson’s case differs from Midler’s case seemingly primarily because of the casting timeline that OpenAI is working hard to defend.

OpenAI seems to think that because Johansson was offered the gig after the Sky voice actor was cast that she has no case to claim that they hired the other actor after she declined.

The timeline may not matter as much as OpenAI may think, though. In the 1990s, Tom Waits cited Midler’s case when he won a $2.6 million lawsuit after Frito-Lay hired a Waits impersonator to perform a song that “echoed the rhyming word play” of a Waits song in a Doritos commercial. Waits won his suit even though Frito-Lay never attempted to hire the singer before casting the soundalike.

Sky voice actor says nobody ever compared her to ScarJo before OpenAI drama Read More »