What in the article is underhanded? Worst case, he has undisclosed conflicts of interest.
> this is a person I would avoid
Does Altman have a Trump-like wake of ruined careers and lost riches among former allies? Everyone he's been close to seems to have done well from it.
He very clearly isn't being honest there, and it's so obvious that many people are starting to question everything he says.
Ricardo Montalban had a great quote about the life stages of an actor, enumerating them as follows:
1. Who is Ricardo Montalban?
2. Get me Ricardo Montalban.
3. Get me a Ricardo Montalban type.
4. Get me a young Ricardo Montalban.
5. Who is Ricardo Montalban?
As far as I can tell, Johansson’s complaint is that when OpenAI reached out to her for voice acting and she turned them down, that they instead got a Scarlett Johansson type, and that OpenAI should be categorically prohibited from hiring any voice actor who sounds like her at all. Which is not how acting has ever worked, but for some reason the topic of artificial intelligence gets a lot of people worked up to the point of artificial stupidity.
OpenAI's public claims about how they produced the Sky voice followed Johansson's public statement. They could be true or false. We don't know what claims or evidence they gave Johansson's counsel.
Agreed, and according to Midler v. Ford that is not permitted:
"We hold only 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 and have committed a tort in California."
But all of that is quite separate from these conflicts, which are entirely a matter for Altman and his investors, investors who have no reason to complain about him.
But when you see him being duplicitous in some situations, it's hard not to suspect it bleeds into other situations.
Given the size of these deals, that's kind of a big deal. It isn't an "oops, it slipped my mind" small little conflict of interest kind of thing, imo.
For investors, sure. (And the investors are more than fine with Altman, warts and all.) For the public, eh.
undisclosed = underhanded
> Does Altman have a Trump-like wake of ruined careers and lost riches among former allies? Everyone he's been close to seems to have done well from it.
I'm not talking about Trump, and I don't think Trump should be a reference for what is or isn't acceptable.
