Days before OpenAI demonstrated its captivating new voice assistant last week, actress Scarlett Johansson said Sam Altman, the company’s chief executive, called her representative and asked her to take a look. Consider licensing your voice to a virtual assistant.
It was his second request to the actress in the past year, Ms. Johannson said in a statement on Monday, adding that the answer was no both times.
Despite those denials, Ms. Johansson said, OpenAI used a voice that sounded “strangely similar to me.” She hired a lawyer and asked OpenAI to stop using the voice named “Sky.”
OpenAI Suspension of issuance of “Sky” on the weekend. The company said in a blog posts on Sunday that “AI voices should not intentionally imitate the distinctive voice of a celebrity – Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to another professional actress using a natural voice her own.”
For Ms. Johansson, this episode is a surreal case of art imitating life. In 2013, she voiced an AI system in Spike Jonze’s film “Her”. The film follows a lonely introvert who is seduced by a virtual assistant named Samantha, a tragic commentary on the potential pitfalls of technology as it becomes more real.
Last week, Mr. Altman appeared to agree with the similarities between OpenAI’s virtual assistant and the movie in one way post on X with a single word “she”.
OpenAI said it cannot share the names of the voice experts for privacy reasons. They said they worked with unidentified directors and producers to develop five voices for their production: Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky. The voices were recorded last summer in San Francisco.
OpenAI is at a pivotal moment as it prepares to offer voice assistants to customers with support from its latest technology, called GPT-4o. On Monday night, Mr. Altman said in a statement that “Sky’s voice is not Scarlett Johansson’s and it was never intended to sound like hers.”
“We chose the voice actor to voice Sky before approaching Ms. Johansson,” he continued. “Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have temporarily stopped using Sky’s voice in our productions. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we did not communicate better.”
Ms. Johansson’s statement was previously reported by the press NPR’s Bobby Allyn.
She is the latest celebrity to accuse OpenAI of using creative work without permission. Over the past year, OpenAI has been sued by authors, actors, and the press for copyright infringement. Authors Guild of America and The New York Times, among them sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft.
This is the second time in recent years that Ms. Johannson has come out publicly against a prominent company. In 2021, she sued the Walt Disney Company, accusing her of violating her contract for releasing the movie “Black Widow” simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+. Ms. Johannson, who played Marvel’s Black Widow in eight blockbuster films, reach an agreement with the company.
Before becoming a Marvel superhero, Johansson made a name for herself in the 2003 film Lost in Translation as a young woman who has an unlikely relationship in Tokyo with a movie star played by Bill Murray. . She has consistently switched between more artistic work from directors like Wes Anderson and Hollywood blockbusters like “The Avengers.” In 2020, she was nominated for two Oscars for “Marriage Story” and “Jojo Rabbit”.
In September, Ms. Johansson said, Mr. Altman first contacted her about providing her voice for OpenAI’s future assistant.
“He told me that he felt that by speaking up for the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creators, and help people,” she said in her statement. consumers feel comfortable with seismic shifts involving humans and AI.” “He said he felt my voice would comfort everyone.”
Last week, OpenAI revealed that assistant during a polished product event in San Francisco. Mark Chen, head of the company’s research team, told the assistant that he was nervous about doing a live demo. With the cheerful air of a cheerleader, the assistant said, “Oh, you’re doing a live demo right now, right? That was amazing!”
Mr. Chen then went through a lengthy demonstration, showing how OpenAI combined the conversational skills of the ChatGPT chatbot with the sounds of voice assistants like the iPhone’s Siri. OpenAI’s assistant can process audio, images, and video simultaneously to be able to answer a written math question and answer questions.
Afterwards, Mr. Altman wrote about this event on his personal page. personal blog, said: “It feels like AI in movies; And I’m still a little surprised that it’s true.”
Ms. Johansson said she had heard from friends, family and the public that the voice speaking to Mr. Chen sounded like hers. Alissa Wilkinson, film critic for The Times, wrote that assistant’s voice betrays “a little of Johansson’s clear bass and a little of Johansson’s bubbly vocals.”
In an interview after the event, Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief technology officer, told The Verge that the similarities to Ms. Johansson’s voice were coincidental and that the voice was not designed to resemble the actress.
