OpenAI: All You Really Need for a Contract Is an Offer

Contracts are all about efficiency. I make a promise to you; you make a promise to me.  If we both perform, we both will be made better off.  But how can I trust you to perform and how can you trust me?  Contracts law makes it so that neither of us will profit from breaking our promises, and due to litigation costs, we may be made worse off for failure to perform.  Thus contracts law contributes to the prevention of the economic waste associated with broken promises.

But traditional contracts require offer, acceptance, an exchange of consideration, and mutual assent. That's so many steps! Wouldn't things be more efficient if you could just make an offer and then have a contract? I mean, sure there could be problems with such a model, but what if the offeror is really, really confident that the offeree should accept their offer because it will be . . . like . . . really cool? 

Thus OpenAI proposes to make contracting still more efficient.  According to Nitasha Tiku, Pranshu Verma, and Gerrit De Vynck, all writing in The Washington Post, Sam Altman (right) of OpenAI approached Scarlett Johansson last September to be the voice of the company's AI voice system.  Ms. Johansson was an inspired choice because of her role in voicing the AI virtual assistant with whom Joaquin Phoenix falls in love in the movie her. I have not seen the film, but let's just say that, based on the plot summary I read, Mr. Altman's desire to embrace the AI voice of that film for his company's SI voice system seems problematic.  It's a typical story of boy meets AI virtual assistant, boy falls in love with AI virtual assistant, AI virtual assistant arranges for boy and her to be intimate through the use of a sex surrogate (it doesn't go well), AI virtual assistant falls in love with boy but also with hundreds of others, boy loses AI virtual assistant, because AI virtual assistant is much more into other AIs than she is into humans. This is the reality to which Mr. Altman seems to think we all aspire. Ms. Johansson turned down the offer.

Two days before the release of OpenAI's new "Sky" audio system, Mr. Altman reached out to Ms. Johansson again.  Before she could respond, OpenAI released a demo of Sky that people thought sounded very much like Johansson's voice in her.  Here's a demo of what it sounds like:

I don't know about you, but I did not think the AI sounded remotely human.  I mean that "Rocky" character just didn't seem real to me.  So robotic. At best, he was like what we might imagine coders imagine people to be like.  Oh, wait, he was supposed to be the real human?  Well, compared to him, yeah, I guess the AI voice sounded more human.

Ms. Johansson threatened legal action against OpenAI, presumably to enjoin the company from using her voice.  While Mr. Altman introduced "Sky" with a single word Tweet, "Her," the company now insists that Sky's voice is not based on the Samantha character voiced by Ms. Johansson in the movie her.  Rather, the company insists that it reviewed submissions from over 400 actors and chose five voices for its voice AI and paid the actors who voluntarily participated "above top-of-the-market" rates for the use of their voices.  The company also suspended Sky.

You know, you can't spell "suspend" without "sus".