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OpenAI’s launch of its newest AI model GPT-4o — which powers ChatGPT and third-party apps — seemed to be off to a pretty good start, but how quickly things change.
Prior to the launch of GPT-4o and the debut of a new, more conversational mode for ChatGPT, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman stoked rumors that the company was launching a new virtual assistant similar to the AI operating system depicted in the 2013 romantic drama film Her, a character voiced by actor Scarlett Johansson.
Altman liked a post on X of a user saying they were watching the film to prepare for the OpenAI Spring Update event, and even tweeted the word “her” during the event:
One of the AI generated voices used during the event was called “Sky,” and some users thought it bore a resemblance to Johansson’s voice from the film Her, as well.
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As of this morning, May 20, 2024, at 2:33 am ET, all hell broke loose: OpenAI posted a statement on X revealing that it was “working to pause the use of Sky” while it addressed “questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT.”
Then, later this evening Eastern time, Johansson’s representative issued a statement to various press outlets including NPR blasting OpenAI and Altman in particular for approaching her to use her voice nine months ago.
Johansson declined, and 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,” according to the statement issued to NPR and other outlets.
Johansson’s statement said she was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote to Altman and OpenAI, and that this communication precipitated the pause/takedown of the Sky voice.
Following the publication of this article, a spokesperson representing OpenAI emailed VentureBeat with the following statement attributed to 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.”
And in a blog entry posted earlier, prior to Johansson’s statement being made public, OpenAI denies any imitation of Johansson’s voice.
In it, OpenAI states that “Each of the voices—Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky—are sampled from voice actors we partnered with to create them,” and that “During June and July [2023], we flew the actors to San Francisco for recording sessions and in-person meetings with the OpenAI product and research teams. On September 25, 2023, we launched their voices into ChatGPT.”
In addition, OpenAI goes on to state:
“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. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.“
This gels with other reporting such as that from The Verge’s Kylie Robison:
However, that hasn’t stopped many commentators from X, including many persistent critics of OpenAI and the generative AI industry writ large, from weighing in slamming the company. Even some self-described fans of OpenAI have taken Johansson’s side against the company:
Coming just days after OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and superalignment team co-leader Jan Leike both resigned within hours, and Leike went on X to blast OpenAI and its leadership for prioritizing “shiny products” over safety, the statements from Johansson and resulting pile-on seem like a new low for the company.
Some have even used the occasion to bring up the “not consistently candid” line that was used by the prior OpenAI board of directors as an explanation for why they fired Altman as CEO last year — that he wasn’t consistently candid. They did fire him before a push by employees and backers such as Microsoft to have Altman reinstated (and the board replaced).
Now once again, some on X are calling for Altman’s ouster.
We’ll see — what, if any – impact it has on their bottom-line business and how regulators and allies such as Microsoft treat OpenAI going forward.
