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In 2013, Johansson lent her voice to an artificial intelligence in the film “Her”. Now ChatGPT also sounds like her – without her consent.
That happened: Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson demands that ChatGPT inventor OpenAI explain why the company’s AI voice is very similar to her own. Their lawyers have already written two letters to OpenAI and company boss Sam Altman. ChatGPT-4o’s voice, which was recently heard at a screening, was so “uncannily similar” to hers that even her closest friends and journalists could not tell the difference, the actress emphasized in a statement published by the US broadcaster NPR.
This is how OpenAI reacted: The tech company countered that the basis for the AI voice were sentences spoken by another actress – and that they were never intended to sound like Johansson. Nevertheless, OpenAI announced on Monday night that it would temporarily discontinue the voice called “Sky”. The reason is the dispute that has now become public. Last week, the new version of ChatGPT caused a stir when its voice modules enabled surprisingly fluid conversation during a presentation.
This is what makes the case so piquant: A decade ago, Johansson took on the voice role of an AI software in the film “Her,” with which the protagonist played by Joaquin Phoenix falls in love. After the presentation of OpenAI’s voices, Altman himself sought a comparison: He wrote on the online platform X that the software was like AI from movies – and accompanied his message with the word “her.” Scarlett Johansson even claims that Altman approached her in September last year with the offer to use her characteristic voice as the basis for ChatGPT’s AI voice. After careful consideration, however, she declined for personal reasons.
Johansson as a mouthpiece for the industry: The actress wrote on Monday that she was “shocked and angry” when she heard the AI voice from the OpenAI demonstration. Clarification of the circumstances is important. Especially in times when society is confronted with deceptively real deepfakes, transparency and effective laws are needed to protect the personal rights of individuals. It’s “about protecting our image, our own work, our own identities.”
This is how the AI voices were created: “Sky” was introduced to ChatGPT in September 2023 along with four other voices – “Breeze”, “Cove”, “Ember” and “Juniper”. According to the company, the five votes are based on sentences that people have spoken for OpenAI. They were chosen from more than 400 applications from film and stage actors, the company said in a blog post. OpenAI does not mention their names – “to protect their privacy,” as it explains.