Last week, OpenAI unveiled its new ChatGPT 4o, leaving audiences impressed by the AI’s friendly and conversational tone. However, many noted a striking similarity to Samantha, the AI character voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the movie “Her.” Despite OpenAI’s denial, Johansson herself found the voice “eerily similar” to her own, even though she had declined OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s request to lend her voice to the project.
The voice, named “Sky,” was featured in OpenAI’s big reveal of ChatGPT 4o. OpenAI asserted that Sky’s voice was provided by a different professional actress and was not intended to mimic Johansson. Nonetheless, upon hearing it, Johansson was stunned. “It sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” she remarked. The actor expressed her shock, anger, and disbelief.
Johansson revealed that Sam Altman had approached her last September to voice ChatGPT. “He felt that by having me voice the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives, helping consumers feel more comfortable with the human-AI interaction,” she stated. After much deliberation, she declined for personal reasons.
Despite this, OpenAI proceeded to include a voice assistant called “Sky” in their GPT-4o model demo last week. Johansson claimed that friends, family, and the public immediately noted the similarity to her voice. “Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word ‘her’ – a nod to the film in which I voiced a chat system named Samantha,” she noted. Altman contacted her agent two days before the demo, asking her to reconsider, but launched the system before she could respond.
her
— Sam Altman (@sama) May 13, 2024
OpenAI has since agreed to remove the ‘Sky’ voice from their products. Johansson has hired legal counsel to request an explanation of how the “Sky” voice was created. Altman apologized for the poor communication, emphasizing that the voice was never meant to resemble Johansson’s.
“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 Ms. Johansson,” Altman stated. “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.”
This incident has highlighted concerns about AI technology misuse and the need to protect individuals’ rights amidst rapid AI advancements. Johansson stressed the importance of transparency and appropriate legislation to safeguard people’s likenesses, work, and identities in the era of deepfakes and AI-generated content.
“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. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected,” Johansson said.