Well, now we all know why OpenAI abruptly eliminated the “Sky” voice choice for ChatGPT, the one which sounded suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson.
According to a press release launched this afternoon from the actress, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman himself had really supplied her the chance to present her voice for the chatbot. “He instructed me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I might bridge the hole between tech corporations and creatives and assist shoppers to really feel snug with the seismic shift regarding people and AI,” Johansson’s assertion reads. “He said he felt that my voice could be comforting to individuals.”
The actress goes on to say that she declined the provide — although, as anybody who’s been following the rollout of ChatGPT-4o already is aware of, the chatbot’s ScarJo-like voice was front-and-center within the firm’s advertising and marketing.
Johansson, after all, voiced the AI in Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her, which Altman himself obliquely referenced in a tweet as soon as everybody began saying the identical factor about ChatGPT’s “Sky” voice choice:
Let’s not neglect, Altman was additionally abruptly fired by the OpenAI board final fall for not being “persistently candid” in his communications with board members. Keep that in thoughts as you learn the remainder of ScarJo’s full assertion beneath:
“When I heard the launched demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily related to mine that my closest associates and information retailers couldn’t inform the distinction,” Johansson says. “Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single phrase ‘her’ — a reference to the movie through which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who kinds an intimate relationship with a human.”
“Two days earlier than the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was launched, Mr. Altman contacted my agent, asking me to rethink. Before we might join, the system was on the market. As a results of their actions, I was pressured to rent authorized counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAI, setting out what they’d accomplished and asking them to element the precise course of by which they created the ‘Sky’ voice. Consequently, OpenAI reluctantly agreed to take down the ‘Sky’ voice.
“In a time after we are all grappling with deepfakes and the safety of our personal likeness, our personal work, our personal identities, I consider these are questions that deserve absolute readability. I look ahead to decision within the type of transparency and the passage of applicable laws to assist be sure that particular person rights are protected.”
