Days earlier than OpenAI demonstrated its new, flirty voice assistant final week, the actress Scarlett Johansson mentioned, Sam Altman, the corporate’s chief govt, referred to as her agent and requested that she take into account licensing her voice for a digital assistant.
It was his second request to the actress prior to now 12 months, Ms. Johannson mentioned in an announcement on Monday, including that the reply each occasions was no.
Regardless of these refusals, Ms. Johansson mentioned, OpenAI used a voice that sounded “eerily much like mine.” She has employed a lawyer and requested OpenAI to cease utilizing a voice it referred to as “Sky.”
OpenAI suspended its launch of “Sky” over the weekend. The corporate mentioned in a weblog put up on Sunday that “AI voices shouldn’t intentionally mimic a star’s distinctive voice — Sky’s voice just isn’t an imitation of Scarlett Johansson however belongs to a unique skilled actress utilizing her personal pure talking voice.”
For Ms. Johansson, the episode has been a surreal case of life-imitating artwork. In 2013, she supplied the voice for an A.I. system within the Spike Jonze film “Her.” The movie advised the story of a lonely introvert seduced by a digital assistant named Samantha, a tragic commentary on the potential pitfalls of expertise because it turns into extra lifelike.
Final week, Mr. Altman appeared to nod to the similarity between OpenAI’s digital assistant and the movie in a put up on X with the one phrase “her.”
OpenAI mentioned it couldn’t share the names of its voice professionals for privateness causes. It mentioned it had labored with unidentified administrators and producers to develop 5 voices for its product: Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky. The voices had been recorded final summer season in San Francisco.
OpenAI is at an essential juncture because it prepares to make its voice assistants accessible to prospects with assist from its newest expertise, often called GPT-4o. On Monday night time, Mr. Altman mentioned in an announcement that “the voice of Sky just isn’t Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was by no means meant to resemble hers.”
“We solid the voice actor behind Sky’s voice earlier than any outreach to Ms. Johansson,” he continued. “Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we’ve got paused utilizing Sky’s voice in our merchandise. We’re sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t talk higher.”
Ms. Johansson’s assertion was reported earlier by NPR’s Bobby Allyn.
She is the most recent high-profile particular person to accuse OpenAI of utilizing inventive work with out permission. Over the previous 12 months, OpenAI has been sued for copyright violations by authors, actors and newspapers, together with the Authors Guild of America and The New York Instances, which sued OpenAI and its associate, Microsoft.
It’s the second time lately that Ms. Johannson has taken a public stand in opposition to a outstanding firm. In 2021, she sued the Walt Disney Firm, accusing it of breaching her contract as a result of it launched the movie “Black Widow” concurrently in theaters and on Disney+. Ms. Johannson, who has performed the Marvel character Black Widow in eight blockbuster movies, reached a settlement with the corporate.
Earlier than changing into a Marvel superhero, Ms. Johansson made a reputation for herself within the 2003 movie “Misplaced in Translation” as a younger girl who shaped an unlikely bond in Tokyo with a film star performed by Invoice Murray. She has constantly bounced between extra clever fare from administrators akin to Wes Anderson and Hollywood blockbusters like “The Avengers.” In 2020, she was nominated for 2 Academy Awards for “Marriage Story” and “Jojo Rabbit.”
In September, Ms. Johansson mentioned, Mr. Altman first reached out to her about offering her voice for OpenAI’s future assistant.
“He advised me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I may bridge the hole between tech corporations and creatives and assist shoppers to really feel snug with the seismic shift regarding people and A.I,” she mentioned in her assertion. “He mentioned he felt that my voice could be comforting to individuals.”
Final week, OpenAI unveiled that assistant throughout a cultured product occasion in San Francisco. Mark Chen, an organization analysis lead, advised the assistant that he was nervous to be doing a stay demo. With the peppiness of a cheerleader, the assistant mentioned: “Oh, you’re doing a stay demo proper now? That’s superior!”
Mr. Chen then went by way of a prolonged demonstration, displaying how OpenAI had mixed the conversational expertise of its ChatGPT chatbot with the sound of a voice assistant just like the iPhone’s Siri. OpenAI’s assistant may concurrently juggle audio, pictures and video so it may reply a written math query and reply to questions.
Afterward, Mr. Altman wrote in regards to the occasion on his private weblog, saying: “It appears like A.I. from the flicks; and it’s nonetheless a bit stunning to me that it’s actual.”
Ms. Johansson mentioned she had heard from pals, household and the general public that the voice chatting with Mr. Chen sounded similar to hers. Alissa Wilkinson, a film critic for The Instances, wrote that the assistant’s voice betrayed “a little bit of Johansson’s clear, low tone and a touch of vocal fry.”
In an interview after the occasion, Mira Murati, OpenAI’s chief expertise officer, advised The Verge that the similarities to Ms. Johansson’s voice had been incidental, and that the voice wasn’t designed to sound just like the actress.
