- Hollywood star shocked that OpenAI chatbot had similar voice to her
- OpenAI has suspended the use of the voice
- Johannson has complained in open letter
OpenAI has suspended the use of a chatbot with a voice said to be like that of Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson after the star complained.
One of the voices on OpenAI’s new chatbot GPT-4o, called Sky, was highlighted by many people as sounding like Scarlett Johansson – who famously voiced an AI assistance in 2013 film ‘Her’.
Shock and anger
The voice reached Johansson herself, who was not happy about the likeness. In a statement Johansson said that she had received an offer last September from Altman to be the voice of the ChatGPT 4.0 system.
She added that after “much consideration and for personal reasons” she declined the offer. “Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named “Sky” sounded like me.”
Johansson added that after hearing the released demo, she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.”
She added that two days before the demo was released, Altman contacted her agent, asking her to reconsider. “Before we could connect, the system was out there.”
Rights concerns
Following this, Johansson hired legal counsel and wrote to OpenAI to ask them to explain themselves.
“In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likenesses, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”
In response, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman issued a statement saying that the voice of Sky was not Johansson’s. “And it was never intended to resemble hers,” he said. “We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms Johansson. Our 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 use of AI in the arts is contentious – recently Camila Cabello, Billie Eilish among 200 artists in open letter calling on AI developers to respect artists’ rights.
