Scarlett Johansson asks OpenAI not to use her voice on ChatGPT

Actress Scarlett Johansson legally claimed: OpenAI stop using the voice of the sky ChatGPT. Since last week, she had been warned by friends and relatives that her voice was the same as hers and that she had a similar personality to Samantha, the artificial intelligence (AI) character voiced by Johansson in the movie “Her”.

Director Spike Jonze’s 2013 film tells the story of a man who falls in love with the artificial intelligence voice named Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. The media has been portraying this relationship long before productive AI tools became a market trend.

In a statement to National Public Radio (NPR), Johansson said that OpenAI tried to hire her as a voice actor for one of the ChatGPT 4.0 voices in September last year. The actor rejected the offer due to personal reasons.

Then OpenAI CEO Sam Altman contacted him two days before the first public demonstration, asking him to “reconsider.” However, the tool was launched before the player could respond to the request.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT 4.0 voice on five different profiles last year, including Sky. But Sky’s voice hit the headlines just last week due to its similarity to Scarlett Johansson’s. On May 13, OpenAI released GPT-4o, which has much more natural sounds.

Johansson told NPR that she was enraged when she realized how similar Sky’s voice was to her own. Faced with the situation, the actor contacted his lawyers, who alerted Altman and OpenAI to what was happening and asked the company to detail the process of creating the “Sky” voice.

OpenAI took Sky’s voice offline

Following notice from Johansson’s lawyers, OpenAI decided to take down Sky’s audio. The announcement was made on Monday (20).

The company even publicly stated that it does not use the actor’s voice in its AI, and that people only found similarities between Sky and Johansson, as there are very few virtual assistants on the market with convincing female voices.