OpenAI announced yesterday that it was removing Sky, a female voice with which it debuted the skills of its new GPT-4o language model in the oral version of ChatGPT last week. At the time of the presentation, everyone could appreciate the great resemblance to that of actress Scarlett Johansson, who voices the AI ??protagonist of her film Her. The company assured that Sky’s voice was that of a professional actress hired for this purpose, whose name was not revealed, although some indications suggest that Johansson’s voice could have been cloned.
It was so evident that the way of expression and the tones of voice were like those of the AI ??in Her starring Scarlett Johansson that most of the media, including La Vanguardia, made reference to the film. After Sky’s withdrawal, it was the actress herself who published a writing in which she explains the repeated attempts by the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to hire her to provide her voice to ChatGPT.
Altman’s first contact with Johansson occurred last September. “He told me that he believed that if I gave voice to the system, I could build a bridge between technology companies and creatives and help consumers feel comfortable with the seismic change related to humans and AI,” said the actress. “She told me,” she said, “that she believed my voice would comfort people.”
But Scarlett Johansson thought about it and “for personal reasons,” rejected the offer. According to her version, two days before the presentation of GPT-4o was released, Altman contacted her agent to ask her to reconsider, but before they spoke again, the voice similar to that of the actress was already accessible to the public. “When I heard the demo, I was shocked, furious and in disbelief that Mr. Altman sought out a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and the media couldn’t tell the difference.”
