California’s Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday on the constitutionality of Proposition 22, the voter-approved law that classified drivers working in the gig economy as independent contractors rather than full-fledged employees.

The court must decide whether the law, which Uber, Lyft, Doordash and other app-based delivery companies pushed with a $200-million campaign in 2020, unlawfully interferes with the state Legislature’s authority to provide workers’ compensation protections to those who are injured on the job.

How the justices ultimately rule will have enormous implications for the delivery and ride-hail companies that have argued their ability to operate in California depends on the law’s survival, as well as the million-plus people in California who drive for them. A victory for the group of drivers and unions that brought the lawsuit challenging Proposition 22 would leave Uber, Lyft and companies like them to decide whether to continue operating in California, one of their largest markets.

Under the law, drivers are considered to be their own employers, a designation that frees the companies they drive for from having to provide benefits that traditional employees in the state are entitled to, such as overtime, sick leave and a minimum wage.

The Service Employees International Union and a group of drivers first brought the lawsuit challenging Proposition 22 in January 2021, just after the law went into effect. They unsuccessfully sought to take the case directly to the California Supreme Court and were left to pursue the case in a lower court.

In a sweeping decision, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled in August 2021 that Proposition 22 was unconstitutional and unenforceable.

The law failed to pass constitutional muster, Roesch wrote, because it infringed on the power of the Legislature explicitly granted by the state Constitution to regulate compensation for workers’ injuries.

“If the people wish to use their initiative power to restrict or qualify a ‘plenary’ and ‘unlimited’ power granted to the Legislature, they must first do so by initiative constitutional amendment, not by initiative statute,” the judge wrote.

In March 2023, a split three-judge panel from a state appeals court largely reversed that ruling, finding the law did not impede the Legislature’s authority and upholding the legality of the law’s provision classifying drivers as contractors.

Supporters of the law celebrated the ruling as a “historic victory for the nearly 1.4 million drivers who rely on the independence and flexibility of app-based work to earn income, and for the integrity of California’s initiative system.”

Proposition 22 has remained in effect throughout the appeals process.

When they make their case Tuesday, attorneys for the drivers and the union are expected to press ahead with their assertion that the law improperly leaves gig economy drivers who suffer injuries while working without access to compensation enjoyed by traditional employees in the state.

The state Constitution “grants the Legislature unlimited power to protect workers with a complete workers’ compensation system,” said Scott A. Kronland, an attorney representing SEIU and the drivers.

A coalition backed by Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, called the Protect App-Based Drivers & Services coalition, meanwhile counters that courts should respect the will of voters, who voted by a 58% margin to approve the law.

“The court for 100 years has not found a restriction on voters’ initiative power,” said Kurt Oneto, an attorney representing the coalition.

On Monday around 9 a.m., scores of drivers gathered outside the office of SEIU Local 721 in Westlake, preparing to travel as a car caravan up to San Francisco to rally outside the courthouse during oral arguments. They loaded into dozens of honking cars lined up along a nearby intersection, plastered with signs denouncing Proposition 22 as “bad for workers, bad for the economy, bad for California.”

When OpenAI debuted its new voice assistant technology this month, it immediately drew comparisons to the 2013 Spike Jonze sci-fi film “Her.”

As it turns out, the likeness may have been too close for comfort.

Actor Scarlett Johansson, who voiced the computer program in “Her,” said she hired lawyers after discovering OpenAI released a ChatGPT voice that sounded eerily similar to hers without her granting permission.

In a Monday statement, Johansson said she was approached by OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, in September to voice the ChatGPT 4.0 system, but she declined to participate. Altman had pursued Johansson to lend her voice to the app because “he felt that my voice would be comforting to people,” Johansson said in her statement.

But after she declined, she was angered and shocked to hear a voice used in a demo by OpenAI that sounded like hers. Two days before the demo, Johansson said that Altman contacted her agent asking the actor to reconsider.

In the movie “Her,” Johansson plays “Samantha,” the disembodied voice of a computer who provides friendship and, eventually, love to a lonely man played by Joaquin Phoenix.

“In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity,” Johansson said in a statement. “I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”

OpenAI on Monday said it is pausing the use of the voice known as “Sky,” which some people say sounds like Johansson.

“We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky,” OpenAI posted on X on Monday. “We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.”

Altman seemed to invite parallels to the film in his announcement of the interactive voice feature, saying in a blog post that it “feels like AI from the movies.” “Her” was nominated for multiple Oscars, with Jonze winning the Academy Award for original screenplay.

On May 13, Altman posted the word “her” on X, which many observers interpreted as a direct reference to the Oscar-winning movie.

Despite the striking sonic resemblance, OpenAI said that Johansson did not actually provide the voice of Sky, one of multiple voice options available on the app. Rather, another actor was using her own “natural speaking voice,” OpenAI said in a Monday blog post.

“We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice,” the company said.

Altman in a statement said that the company had cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before it had reached out to Johansson.

“The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers,” Altman said in a statement. “Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”

The controversy comes at a time when concerns have been raised within the entertainment industry about whether copyrighted material is used to train AI models.

OpenAI has said its large language models, including those that power ChatGPT, are developed through information available publicly on the internet; material acquired through licenses with third parties; and data its users and “human trainers” provide.

The company has said it believes training AI models on publicly available materials on the internet is “fair use.”

But some media outlets, including the New York Times, have sued OpenAI, concerned about how its stories are used by the tech company.

Sony Music Group is in the process of sending out hundreds of letters to AI developers and music streaming services, including OpenAI and Google, warning them to not use its artists’ music to train generative AI tools without its permission. Actors and writers also have raised concerns about AI’s impact on their livelihoods.

Talent agencies are being proactive in protecting their clients against unauthorized use of their likeness and voice. Century City-based Creative Artists Agency is helping clients through the Vault, which scans clients’ bodies and records their movements and voices to create a digital version of them to protect against copyright infringement.

Johansson is a client of CAA. CAA declined to comment.

OpenAI said that the voices for ChatGPT — called Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky — are from voice actors who went through an audition process. More than 400 people applied. Some of the characteristics OpenAI was seeking include “a voice that feels timeless” and “an approachable voice that inspires trust.”

The selected actors came to San Francisco to record their voices in June and July of 2023, and their voices were added in September of that year, the company said. The company said the actors were compensated with “above top-of-market rates” and that they were aware of the intentions and scope of the project.

“To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents,” OpenAI said.

Red Lobster, the seafood chain whose cheddar biscuits and bottomless shrimp specials have long captivated the American palate and pocketbook, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday.

The behemoth of casual dining, which abruptly shuttered dozens of locations last week, has floundered in recent years, beset by managerial missteps, the impact of a sale to a private equity firm a decade ago and, most recently, its inability to bounce back after pandemic closures battered the restaurant industry.

In a court filing, the Orlando, Fla.-based company said it has more than 100,000 creditors and between $1 billion and $10 billion in estimated liabilities. The chain said it saw a net loss of $76 million during the last fiscal year alone.

“This restructuring is the best path forward for Red Lobster,” Chief Executive Jonathan Tibus said in a statement.

The chain said its remaining locations — about 580 across the U.S. and Canada, as well franchise locations in a handful of other countries — will operate as usual throughout the bankruptcy process.

Despite its dire situation, the chain painted itself in court papers as a diminished but still powerful company.

“Today, Red Lobster is the largest casual dining seafood chain in the United States,” the filing says — with “the largest” underlined for emphasis. The chain purchases 20% of all North American lobster tails sold, it said, and more than 15% of the world’s supply of rock lobster.

But the company acknowledged that its performance has deteriorated in recent years. In the bankruptcy filing, it says that the number of customers each year has dropped by nearly a third since 2019.

Several factors contributed to losses last year, the company said, including market forces, such as inflation, and above-market rates paid for rent at several locations.

For years, Red Lobster, which was founded in 1968 in Lakeland, Fla., was owned by Darden Restaurants, the company that owns Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse. In 2014, Darden sold the chain to Golden Gate Capital, a San Francisco private equity firm, for more than $2 billion.

As part of that sale, Red Lobster agreed to spin off its real estate assets in a sale-leaseback transaction, requiring the chain to pay rent for locations it once owned. Last year, Red Lobster shelled out more than $190 million in lease obligations, according to the bankruptcy filing.

Another serious misstep: last year’s “Ultimate Endless Shrimp” promotion for $20.

During a presentation last year, Ludovic Garnier, chief financial officer of Thai Union Group, a seafood conglomerate that eventually took over the equity firm’s stake in Red Lobster, blamed the shrimp deal in large part for an operating loss of about $11 million during the third quarter.

Debtors are investigating the circumstances surrounding the promotion, bankruptcy records show.

While a single bungled promotion wouldn’t fell a company unless it was already teetering, the all-you-can-eat deal was a blunder, experts say.

Red Lobster launched the promotion as consumers were on the hunt for a good deal, said Jim Salera, a research analyst at Stephens who tracks the restaurant industry. Instead of accomplishing what the company had hoped for — enticing swaths of people who would buy pricey drinks, desserts and other add-on charges or those who would become brand loyalists — the promotion was viewed by many consumers as a challenge, Salera said.

“People were literally going in to just eat the endless shrimp and maybe a Diet Coke,” he said. “They’re really not engaging with the brand; they’re engaging with the price point.”