Scarlett Johansson says she declined an offer from OpenAI to voice the artificial intelligence research organization’s new ChatGPT 4.0 system, “Sky,” which she feels sounds exactly like her.
The actress told Page Six in a statement Monday that she received the offer in September 2023 from CEO Sam Altman.
“He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and Al. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people,” she claimed.
“After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer.”
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After OpenAI held a live demonstration of the voice last week, Johansson, 39, said her “friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ‘Sky’ sounded like” her.
In fact, she pointed out that many compared “Sky” to her voice in the the 2013 film “Her,” which is about a man who falls in love with “Samantha,” the female voice of his computer’s operating system.
“When I heard the released demo, I 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,” Johansson told us, going on to mention that Altman “even insinuated that the similarity was intentional” when he tweeted the word “her” after the company announced the new ChatGPT version.
Two days prior, Johansson claimed Altman asked her to “reconsider” the offer, but before they could “connect,” the “Sky” demo was released.
Therefore, she said she was “forced to hire legal counsel,” who sent Altman and OpenAl two letters “asking to detail the exact process by which they created the ‘Sky’ voice.”
According to the movie star, that’s when “OpenAl reluctantly agreed to take down the ‘Sky’ voice.”
She explained, “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.”
NPR was first to report the news.
Late Sunday night — just one day after Johansson’s husband, Colin Jost, joked about the ordeal on “Saturday Night Live” — OpenAI announced via X, “We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky. We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.”
The company also dropped a link to one of their blog posts, which claimed, “Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.”
OpenAI said they would not reveal the woman’s name “to protect [her] privacy.”
