Scarlett Johansson accuses ‘OpenAI’

Scarlett Johansson recently accused ‘OpenAI’ of creating a voice for the ‘ChatGPT’ system that sounded ‘eerily similar’ to the actor after she declined to voice the chatbot herself. Johansson made the comments in a statement released hours after the artificial intelligence company said that it was taking down the voice, called ‘Sky’.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman said in a statement emailed to ‘Reuters’ on Monday that Sky’s voice was not an imitation of Johansson but belonged to a different professional actor. “The voice of ‘Sky’ is not Scarlett Johansson’s and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Scarlett Johansson,” Altman said. “Out of respect for Scarlett Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Scarlett Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”
The fight over rights to actors’ voices and images has become a focus in Hollywood as studios consider how to use AI to create new entertainment and as the computer-produced images and sounds become difficult to distinguish from those of humans.
Johansson, in the statement, said that Altman had approached her last September and offered to hire her to voice a ‘ChatGPT’ voice - an offer she declined. “Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ‘Sky’ sounded like me,” she said. “When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Sam 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 Altman had ‘insinuated that the similarity was intentional’ by tweeting a reference to her, the 2013 movie about a man who develops a relationship with an AI assistant voiced by the actor.
Johansson’s note was published by journalists from NPR and other news outlets. Her publicist also shared it with ‘Reuters’. She said that she had hired legal counsel to ask about the process of creating the voice.