OpenAI is now going to remove Sky's voice from their ChatGPT-4 system as upsets Scarlett Johannson hires legal counsel for sounding just like her.
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Listening to Sky's voice and comparing it with the virtual assistant in the 2013 film Her, you may notice a striking resemblance. Samantha, the virtual assistant, was voiced by Scarlett Johannson in the film.
Not only do the voices sound alike, Sky by Open AI and Samantha in Her, but they share similar qualities. And some people mocked the voice of Sky in the demo for being overly flirtatious and effusive; that "it sounds so pleased to please them"βthe two engineers interacting with it at the demo.
βWe believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrityβs distinctive voiceβSkyβs voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice,β OpenAI says in their blog post. βTo protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.β
However, Scarlett Johannson says something rather different. "Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumeres to feel comfortable with theiseismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people."
"After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends, family, and the general public all noted how much the newest system named "Sky" sounded like me." She continued in a public statement she made.
Now, even though OpenAI hasn't directly compared Sky's voice to the celebrity, Sam Altman, CEO OpenAI, made a tweeet with the word "Her" after GPT-4o's announcement.
Scarlett says that Sam Altman contacted her agent two days before the release of GPT-4o, asking her to reconsider. However, before she could connect, OpenAI had already gone ahead to release their model regardless, forcing her to "hire legal counsel," who wrote two letter to Sam Altman requesting that they detail the exact process on how they created Sky's voice. That eventually resulted in OpenAI agreeing to take down the voice.
It is really uncanny what AI can do these days and what people can make of its capabilities. Since the dawn of the rise of AI, this sort of problem had always been insight, where people would use the works, personalities, and identities of other people by recreating them with AIβcalled deepfakes. And Scarlett's cause with this fight is to see that individual rights are protected.
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"In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected."
OpenAI's intentions are to provide models that sound "approachable" and "inspire trust," and that they'd want them to have "warm, engaging, confidence-inspiring, and charismatic voices." And they have plans to introduce more voices in the future.
βThe voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johanssonβs, and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Skyβs voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Skyβs voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didnβt communicate better.β Sam Altman says to Scarlett Johannson.
Scarlett Johannson's full statement
