Scarlett Johansson Calls Out OpenAI Over Voice Clone Resembling Her
Scarlett Johansson reveals she hired lawyers to force OpenAI to remove a ChatGPT voice that she says sounded exactly like her, despite rejecting an explicit offer to voice the system.
Scarlett Johansson speaks out against OpenAI after the company pauses its "Sky" voice option for ChatGPT, stating that she hired lawyers to contact CEO Sam Altman before the tech firm removed the feature. Johansson reveals that Altman personally asks her last September to voice the ChatGPT 4.0 system to help consumers feel comfortable with artificial intelligence, but she declines the offer.
The actress expresses shock and anger upon hearing the released demo, noting that her closest friends and news outlets cannot tell the difference between the AI and her actual voice. She points to Altman's one-word tweet "her" as evidence that the company intentionally mimicked her famous voice-only performance from the romantic drama about a man falling in love with an AI.
This public dispute highlights growing concerns about deepfakes and the protection of digital likeness in the era of advanced AI. The controversy emerges just days after Jan Leike, OpenAI's head of alignment, resigns and publicly claims that safety culture takes a backseat to shiny products at the company.