Scarlett Johansson asked OpenAI not to use her voice, and she did it anyway

Scarlett Johansson says OpenAI asked her to be a voice behind ChatGPT, but when she declined, the company went ahead and created a voice that looked just like her. in Statement to NPRJohansson says she has now been “forced to hire legal counsel” and has sent two messages to OpenAI inquiring about how to create the ChatGPT-like voice, known as Sky.

“Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the existing ChatGPT 4.0 system,” Johansson writes. She says Altman recently called her agent two days before the company debuted ChatGPT audio and asked her to reconsider.

Altman has made it clear that he admires Johansson’s work. He said that HaIt is his favorite movie, in which Johansson appears as an artificial intelligence voice assistant. After last week’s ChatGPT event, He spread the word The “she” appears to be a reference to the company’s audio presentation, which featured an assistant who looks just like Johansson.

OpenAI said this morning that it was pulling Sky’s audio in order to answer questions about “how we selected the voices in ChatGPT.” the edge I have reached out to both OpenAI and Johansson for comment.

Johansson said she was “shocked, angry and in disbelief” about how “eerily similar” Skye’s voice was to herself. The audio comes from a hired actor who speaks in his natural voice, OpenAI said. The company declined to share the actor’s name, citing privacy concerns.

Sky audio has been available since OpenAI launched ChatGPT’s voice mode last September. But the connection to Johansson wasn’t clear until last week, when OpenAI demonstrated an updated AI model that made the voice more expressive. The demo had an uncanny resemblance to Johansson’s assistant V.I Haleading to headlines and even a Saturday Night Live Joke about comparison.