Actor Scarlett Johansson said she turned down OpenAI‘s request for her to lend her voice to a conversational ChatGPT system — and that she was “shocked” and “angered” that the company went ahead and used a voice that sounded very similar to hers anyway.
Johansson, in a statement provided to Variety, said her lawyers contacted OpenAI to have the voice of Sky, one of the new voices in the GPT-4o chatbot, pulled down.
OpenAI last week introduced the Sky voice, which sounded very like that of Johansson’s disembodied AI companion in Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie “Her,” in a demo of GPT-4o. The company earlier Monday said it would “pause” the use of the Sky voice. “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,” OpenAI said.
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Johansson said she had been contacted by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in September 2023 about the company hiring her to provide the voice for ChatGPT 4.0. She said she declined for “personal reasons.”
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“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 said. “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.”
According to Johansson, two days before OpenAI staged the ChatGPT 4.0 demo, Altman contacted her agent, “asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there.”
Johansson called for legislation that would protect individuals from having their name, image or likeness misappropriated. “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,” she said. “I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”
Asked for comment, OpenAI sent this statement from Altman: “The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers. 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.”
SAG-AFTRA issued a statement in support of Johansson and seconded her call for legislation in this area.
“We thank Ms. Johansson for speaking out on this issue of crucial importance to all SAG-AFTRA members. We share in her concerns and fully support her right to have clarity and transparency regarding the voice used in developing the Chat GPT-4o appliance ‘Sky,’” a union spokesperson said in a statement to Variety. “SAG-AFTRA members are among the most talented and often most recognizable people on the planet. That is why we’re strongly championing federal legislation that would protect their voices and likenesses – and everyone else’s as well – from unauthorized digital replication.”
The rep for the actors union added, “We are pleased that Open AI has responded to these concerns and paused their use of ‘Sky,’ and we look forward to working with them and other industry stakeholders to enshrine transparent and resilient protections for all of us.”
The Johansson-soundalike ChatGPT voice was the basis of a joke on the season finale of “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend, aimed at her husband, Colin Jost, co-host of Weekend Update. Reading a joke (written by Michael Che) off a cue card, Jost said, “ChatGPT has released a new voice assistant feature inspired by Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in ‘Her,’ which I’ve never bothered to watch because without that body, what’s the point of listening?”
Read Johansson’s full statement:
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 consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and Al. 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.
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.
Two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released, Mr. Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there.
As a result of their actions, I was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAl, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process by which they created the ‘Sky’ voice. Consequently, OpenAl reluctantly agreed to take down the ‘Sky’ voice.
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.
