(Cupventi.com) – In a surprising turn of events, new information has come to light from the agent of the actress who voiced “Sky” for ChatGPT, adding a twist to the ongoing dispute between Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI.
Scarlett Johansson, famous for her roles in “Avengers” and “Her,” has accused OpenAI of using a voice for ChatGPT that sounds very similar to hers. This happened after Johansson declined an offer from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, to be the voice for their AI chatbot’s Voice Mode. However, according to The Washington Post, the agent for another actress who got the role says that her client was never asked to mimic Johansson’s voice.
The agent explained that neither Johansson nor her 2013 movie “Her” was mentioned during the audition process for ChatGPT. Instead, the actress was hired to create the voice for “Sky” months before Altman reached out to Johansson.
The agent told the Post that the name “Sky” was chosen to “signal a cool, airy, and pleasant sound.” Audio recordings of the actress’s voice test sounded exactly like the AI-generated Sky voice, the newspaper reported.
On Monday, Johansson released a statement saying that Altman contacted her in September about possibly being the voice for ChatGPT. She claimed that Altman suggested her “comforting” voice could “bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives” and help with the “seismic shift concerning humans and AI.”
Although she ultimately turned down the offer for personal reasons, Johansson was very upset when people said that the “Sky” voice system sounded a lot like her performance in “Her.”
“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. Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word ‘her’ – a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human,” Johansson said in her statement. She also revealed that she had hired a lawyer for a possible lawsuit against OpenAI and suggested that her lawyer’s demands led to OpenAI removing the “Sky” voice on Sunday.
In response, Altman told Fox News Digital that “Sky” was not meant to sound like Johansson’s voice. “We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better,” Altman said.
Joanne Jang, a product lead at OpenAI, mentioned to The Washington Post that Altman was on a world tour during the casting process for ChatGPT’s Voice Mode and was not closely involved.
The “Sky” actress, speaking through her agent to The Washington Post, said that the backlash “feels personal being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”
The unidentified voice actress also shared that she knew what being a voice for ChatGPT would involve. “[W]hile that was unknown and honestly kinda scary territory for me as a conventional voice-over actor, it is an inevitable step toward the wave of the future,” she said, according to the Post.