OpenAI has been in the news with the launch of its latest GPT-4o variant. People were pretty impressed with the capabilities that have been rolled out with ChatGPT’s latest version, to an extent that many called it revolutionary. But amidst all the cheer, it is also being called out. A premium feature of ChatGPT allows users to interact with it. It has five voices to choose from and one such voice is called ‘Sky’. Users and media have claimed that the voice has an uncanny resemblance to that of actor Scarlett Johansson, and she is not happy about it.
People have been pointing out how ChatGPT’s voice is quite similar to Scarlett Johansson’s and it is difficult to think of it otherwise. People were also drawing conclusions about this occurrence by stating that prior to the announcement of GPT4o, Sam Altman’s tweet read, “Her”. For those uninitiated, Johansson lent her voice to a fictional AI assistant in the film “Her” in 2013. And people feel that Atlman’s tweet was an indication too.
Also read: This Indian guy made GPT-4o a reality, even Sam Altman praised him
But the actor herself is pretty disappointed by OpenAI’s choice of voice. She says that Altman had reached out to her to lend her voice to the system but she had declined the offer. She issued a statement where she said, “When I heard the released demo, 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 further said that OpenAI had reluctantly agreed to take the voice down. Fighting the claims, the company said, “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice – Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.” It further said that it plans to halt the use of the said voice.
