Scarlett Johansson lashes out at OpenAI after the company used a voice strikingly similar to hers for new AI model ChatGPT-4o.
The actress explained in a statement that she had been contacted nine months ago by Sam Altman’s company to give voice to the new artificial intelligence system, but that she refused for “personal reasons”. “When I heard the demo released,” said Scarlett Johannson, “I was shocked, angry and in disbelief that Mr. Altman had chosen a voice so similar to mine that my close friends and media outlets were not able to distinguish it.”
The company used the voice, called ‘Sky,’ during last week’s widely publicized event to debut the capabilities of its new ChatGPT-4o AI model. The researchers spoke to the AI assistant to show Sky’s warm and responsive attitudes, which users and media immediately compared to Johansson’s AI character in Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her.
Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemed to suggest that the voice design intentionally mimicked Johansson’s character, posting a one-word tweet after the presentation that simply said, “Her.” Less than a week later, OpenAI felt compelled to explicitly clarify that Sky was not based on Johansson. The company published a blog post about the creation of Sky and said it appreciates the dubbing industry. “Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson’s, but belongs to a different professional actress using her natural voice,” the blog reads.
Johansson said that when Altman approached her about the project, he told her that he “felt that by giving my voice to the system, I could help consumers feel comfortable interacting with AI.” But she he refused. Two days before the Gpt-4o demo was released, Altman contacted his agent again, asking him to reconsider the voice and a detailed account of how Sky was made.
Reiterating that “Sky’s voice is not Scarlett Johansson’s and was never intended to resemble hers”, Altman announced that “out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have suspended the use of Sky’s voice in our products” and he said he was “sorry for not being able to communicate the matter better”.
