🎙️ Her Voice: Scarlett Johansson's Accusations Against OpenAI
Last week, OpenAI introduced a new voice assistant, GPT-4o, with an expressive synthetic voice remarkably similar to the AI assistant voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the sci-fi film "Her."
Scarlett Johansson claims that in September 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked for permission to use her voice, but "after much consideration and for personal reasons," she declined. Two days before the presentation, Altman contacted her agent again and received another refusal.
😠 The actress was shocked to discover that a voice AI sounding almost identical to hers was already available to the public without her consent:
"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 used the incident to draw attention to the lack of legal safeguards around using creative work to power leading AI tools. Through her lawyers, she demanded a detailed explanation from OpenAI on how Sky's voice was created. The actress believes that Sam Altman, inspired by Spike Jonze's film "Her," deliberately imitated her voice.
Sky is one of the synthetic voices added to ChatGPT last September. The Sky voice showcased a wide range of intonations and emotional nuances at the recent presentation, even flirting with an OpenAI engineer.
🤝 OpenAI's Altman denied there is any connection between Johansson and its Sky voice:
"We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. 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."
Sources
#news @hiaimedia
