OpenAI Accused Of Faking Scarlett Johansson's Voice, But There's Not Much She Can Do

OpenAI, one of the world's leading names in artificial intelligence, is no stranger to copyright tussles — remember that time it was sued by Sarah Silverman? The latest high-profile name to challenge the company is Hollywood superstar Scarlett Johansson. Earlier this month, OpenAI demoed the enhancements it has made to ChatGPT's voice mode. Driven by the new multimodal GPT-4o AI model, one of the improved voices named Sky instantly set the internet abuzz due to its perceived similarity with Johansson's natural voice.

Notably, Johansson portrayed the role of Samantha, an AI agent at the center of the plot in Spike Jonze's critically acclaimed movie "Her," in which Joaquin Phoenix's character falls in love with the voice-only AI companion. Soon after OpenAI's event wrapped up, Altman published a tweet with just the word "her," fuelling further speculation that ChatGPT's "Sky" voice was indeed inspired by the "Her" actress. Johansson's husband, Colin Jost, even joked about it on "Saturday Night Live."

her

— Sam Altman (@sama) May 13, 2024

Well, it seems the actress is not happy with the similarity. Earlier today, OpenAI pulled Sky from the list of voice options and posted a clarification. "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 in a blog post. But it seems Johansson was indeed approached by OpenAI prior to the voice's launch, if the actress is to be believed.

In a statement shared with NPR, Johansson says she was "shocked [and] angered" at OpenAI's Sky voice. "Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system," the actress is quoted as saying. "He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people." Johansson claims that after giving it some thought, she ultimately declined OpenAI's offer. She adds that after coming across the chatter about Sky's likeness to her own voice, her legal team wrote two separate letters to OpenAI. In response to the letters, OpenAI is said to have "reluctantly" removed Sky as one of ChatGPT's voice options. 

Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI situation. Wow: pic.twitter.com/8ibMeLfqP8

— Bobby Allyn (@BobbyAllyn) May 20, 2024

Notably, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman allegedly reached out to the actress' representative in hopes of changing her mind regarding a voice licensing deal — then OpenAI went ahead and released "Sky" without receiving a response from her two days later, according to the actress. OpenAI argues that each ChatGPT voice was trained on a real human actor's voice after auditing hundreds of candidates and ultimately narrowing things down to just a few. The company further notes that each actor was handsomely compensated, hinting that any similarities could be coincidental.