Turns out OpenAI’s voice assistant sounding like Scarlett Johannsson wasn’t much of a coincidence

We at Android Police don’t really talk about celebrity drama, but when the stars align, and a tech angle presents itself while paired with celebrity drama, we just can’t help ourselves. Such is the case with the current dispute between American actress Scarlett Johansson and artificiaI intelligence giant OpenAI.

The actress, best known for her roles in films like “Lost In Translation,” “Marriage Story,” and playing the role of Black Widow in Marvel movies, is accusing OpenAI of using her voice in an AI voice assistant tool.

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Last week, OpenAI revealed its latest model, GPT-4o, which lets users talk to ChatGPT’s voice assistant in a true-to-life and authentic manner. According to the company’s demo, the new assistant has advanced capabilities, like facial expression recognition, the ability to detect emotions in spoken dialogue, singing, and completing tasks as requested. It also has several voices, including Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.

For example, in a demo, the assistant was asked to sing a lullaby about “majestic potatoes,” and was later asked to do the same, but while whispering. Similarly, its visual detection was also put to the test, when a user asked the tool to tell him if he looks presentable for an interview. Check out the video below for reference.

One of the voices the tool uses, named Sky, sounds eerily familiar to that of Scarlett Johansson. Consequently, the actress has hired legal counsel, who are demanding OpenAI to reveal how it developed the voice. The Sky voice, which is largely being compared to Johansson’s voice in the sci-fi film “Her,” has now been pulled from the tool, announced OpenAI in a blog post on Sunday, May 19. According to the AI giant, “Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.”

Is this a prime example of OpenAI waffling?

Interestingly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, back in September 2023, claimed that “Her” was his favorite film. “I like Her. The things Her got right—like the whole interaction models of how people use AI—that was incredibly prophetic,” he said at Dreamforce 2023, via The San Francisco Standard. To add to that, the day GPT-4o was shown off, Altman tweeted “her” on X, suggesting a similarity between the movie, where Johansson voices an operating system. This doesn’t explicitly mean that the voice is indeed supposed to replicate Johansson, but somewhat alludes to that.

If that weren’t enough, new information via Johansson herself suggests that Altman had been trying to persuade her to license her voice for the new AI assistant. In a statement given to The Verge by Johansson’s representative, the actress said that her voicing the AI assistant could “bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives,” and that her voice would be “comforting to people.” According to the actress, she declined Altman’s request for personal reasons. Then, two days prior to the GPT-4o reveal, Johansson reportedly got a request from Altman to reconsider her decision, but before action could be taken, the Sky assistant’s voice was all over, and it was so similar to the actress’ voice that her “closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.”

At the moment, it looks like Johansson is only seeking transparency regarding how the voice was created, alongside “legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”