Scarlett Johansson’s voice doppelganger axed from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but it wasn’t her
OpenAI has stopped using one of five voices for its ChatGPT AI chatbot because it supposedly sounded too similar to actress Scarlett Johansson’s voice, the company said.
The voice, called “Sky,” was one of the “carefully selected” voices ChatGPT uses to give itself a human touch in the smartphone app.
OpenAI said the goal in selecting the voices was to find a timeless and “warm, engaging, trustworthy, charismatic voice” that would give ChatGPT warmth.
According to OpenAI, the aim in selecting the voices was to find a “timeless, confidence-inspiring and natural voice with a rich sound” that would give ChatGPT warmth and charisma.
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The company emphasized that it doesn’t intend to imitate the voices of celebrities. “Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice,” OpenAI explained.
In the science fiction film Her, Scarlett Johansson voiced the AI character “Samantha,” with whom the main character falls in love. According to OpenAI, Her is a role model for the advanced AI assistance the company aims to create. While introducing the new AI voice synthesis last Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote “her” on X.
For privacy reasons, OpenAI will not disclose the name of the actress who provided Sky’s voice. It is unclear why OpenAI removed the voice, even though it is demonstrably not Scarlett Johansson’s, is legally licensed, and at best bears a resemblance to Johansson.
To select the voices, OpenAI says it worked with renowned casting agencies and directors for five months. From more than 400 submissions, 14 actors were selected, and OpenAI met with them in person to explain its vision for human-AI interaction.
The actors whose voices were ultimately selected flew to San Francisco for recording sessions in June and July 2023. Their voices were then integrated into ChatGPT in September 2023, the company said.
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The new voice feature, which was unveiled last week, will be rolled out to paying ChatGPT Plus users in the coming weeks. The chatbot will then be able to smoothly handle interruptions, respond faster, effectively manage group conversations, filter out background noise, and adapt to the tone of voice, according to OpenAI.
The current version of the voice is still the old version from the fall of 2023, although it is already running with GPT-4o in the background.
