GPT’s 'Sky' voice: Scarlett Johansson drops a bombshell | Mashable.
Scarlett Johansson was 'shocked' by OpenAI 'Sky' voice
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| Credit: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis / Contributor Collection: Corbis Entertainment |
Actress Scarlett Johansson was "shocked" and "angered" upon hearing ChatGPT's "Sky" voice, which some had likened to her own. Johansson famously voiced a fictional digital assistant in the 2013 film Her.
In a statement released Monday, obtained by NBC News, Johansson felt the comparisons were apt and said the Sky voice was "eerily similar" to hers.
Crucially, she added that she'd received an offer last September from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to voice Sky — and that she declined the offer.
"He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI," Johansson said. "He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people."
Prior to Johansson's statement, Open AI made this claim in a post Sunday: "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."
Nevertheless, OpenAI announced that same day that it would stop using Sky in its ChatGPT product until it resolved lingering issues about its origins.
"We've heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky," the company wrote in a post on X Sunday. OpenAI is "working to pause the use of Sky" while it addresses those questions.
"When I heard the released demo, I 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," Johansson said in her statement.
The Sky voice has been around since OpenAI first released Voice Mode in September of 2023 as one of five options to choose from in addition to "Breeze", "Cove", "Ember", and "Juniper". But OpenAI's announcement of GPT-4o, which brings these voice capabilities directly into the model, exclusively uses Sky, thus casting a spotlight on that particular voice.
During the GPT-4o live demo last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman picked up on the comparisons to Scarlett Johansson. He posted the single word "her" on X.
Johansson said in her statement that Altman had contacted her agent, urging her to reconsider his offer, two days prior to the demo release. She said they never connected before the system debuted, and that she hired legal counsel as a result.
Johansson claimed that OpenAI "reluctantly" agreed to pause the Sky voice, following her counsel's request for detailed information about how Sky was created.
"In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity," Johansson said. "I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected."
Responding to NBC News' request for comment, Altman stated that Sky's voice was not Johansson's, and that "it was never intended to resemble hers."
"We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson," said Altman. "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."
Cecily Mauran contributed to this story.
UPDATE: May. 21, 2024, 2:56 p.m. AEST This article has been updated with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's comment to NBC News.
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Another scary part is when they use AI to forge signatures, imitate voices, etc., to bypass security…
ReplyDeletedid she say no, or did the AI say no ? 😃
ReplyDeletehttps://media1.tenor.co/m/4IkfSV_2jxQAAAAd/sky-sun.gif?c=VjFfZmFjZWJvb2tfd2ViY29tbWVudHM&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2tvf7tOKRvOcTIz7nxJIzp-tbA25MJHIvyXIh8wtHdEA9QhCHCWHtmuLE_aem_AWbY-4gTje3HgZgPFBzUWtManQKTzPCe9D-AlA6z5iV5-QDCgXRBmwex4i_loR7m7acbkE7R4s2Fncj_0xU_2BJ1
ReplyDeleteand this is our future. When tech oligarchs and their AI can take the identity of anyone, even wealthy famous people and we’ll be powerless to stop them. They’ll take all the jobs, up end the economy to monopolize all the wealth - then sell you your own likeness that you’ll have to buy if you want to do anything online. You will be their licensed product you have to subscribed to have a verified identity.
ReplyDeleteIt was utterly predictable that an AI company would want to use her voice, for the same reason they wanted her voice for "Her". She's got a very sexy feminine voice. I suspect that she either had ethical concerns about how her voice was going to be used, or they didn't offer her enough money for the project.
ReplyDeleteOpenAI is going to find out: You either pay now, or pay later.
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She is Zionist 😡
ReplyDeleteAny other relevant comments?
DeleteThat one should be more then enough 🤷
DeleteI said relevant, not self-indulgent.
DeleteDude, I dont gives a fck what you said
DeleteUnderstand now?
That was the voice I chose exactly because of that.😔
ReplyDeleteThe voice came from a voice actor who is not Johansson. Johansson said she would not do the voice, so OpenAI found someone with a similar sounding voice. Sometimes peoples' voices sound similar 🤷♂️
ReplyDeleteI say unless OpenAI did something sketchy when creating the voice (i.e. sampling Johansson's voice without permission), there's no reason to disable it.
Just imagine being that actress. I don't know if I'd take it as a complement or not.
ReplyDeleteOf course you would not. She sells her voice for living. OpenAI is selling it, but she isn't making a dime out of it.
DeleteDo you know that for a fact? Maybe she has been paid well for it.
DeleteEdit: I assumed the above comment was referring to the actual voice actress they claimed to use.
She was paid by them to do the voice.
DeleteThey're referring to Scarlett Johansson, not to the voice actress that OpenAI claims the Sky voice is based on.
DeleteHmm, comment is a little ambiguous, but I'll go with it. Statement retracted.
DeleteBut this is like coping..... Coca Cola - EVERYONE can say it is tiny bit DIFFERENT - same as this voice - they gonna WIN because of it - it is only SUSPENDED because legal action been opened
DeleteWow, they really should have paid her to use recordings of her voice from sources when she was younger.
ReplyDeleteScarlett Johansson proving once again that she can play any role
ReplyDeleteI thought it was intentional tbh
DeleteEdit- turns out it was intentional. Maybe Illegal, but definitely intentional.
She's truly the Ghost in the shell
DeleteShe’s also HER.
DeleteNot yelling, don’t know how to do italics on mobile.
*her*
Deleteher
It was. They tried to get her and she declined. It's pretty creepy
DeleteIt was. That’s why she’s suing. Hopefully for a billion or so.
DeleteHere is Scarlett Johansen’s text response, but read by sky.
Deletehttps://x.com/benjamindekr/status/1792693868497871086
"Sounds like" is not enough to copyright a voice... What if someone else has a voice similar to Scarlett Johansson? This doesn't make sense.
ReplyDeleteIt's a marketing bit lol
DeleteOk, who ruined everyone's fun THIS time? Getting some real "teacher, you forgot to assign homework" vibes.
ReplyDeleteIt’s the only voice option I like on 4o, so hopefully it gets replaced with another calm female voice. Juniper sounds raven symone-esque, kind of throaty in the speech. Ember and Breeze sound like male cartoon characters. Cove sounds like some pretentious middle manager and I don’t want to hear that.
ReplyDeleteI want a lady with a heavy british accent!
DeleteGive me an angry Irish mom setting.
DeleteRussian or Indian voice for cyber security and software development.
DeleteThick scottish accent for everything else.
Italian wall street voice for anything financial. Need the threatening undertone to pay attention.
Yeah agreed, I was confused when the voice for sky randomly changed lol
DeleteJuniper is my favorite lmao. I call it June for short lol
DeleteHonestly it didnt sound like her at all to me.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I don't hear the similarity at all.
DeleteI even thought maybe I couldn't remember what Scarlett Johansson sounded like, so I went and found that trailer for Her. Nope, it's the same as I remember. Sounds nothing like the Sky voice.
Scarlet Johansson has a very slight raspiness (not in a bad way - i find it pleasant i just dont know another word for it) that i dont hear here at all.
DeleteConsidering how much Altman et al have been referencing “Her”….damn, dudes, do better.
ReplyDeleteAlso, maybe try finishing the movie sometime.
“Concerns” = a lawyer ruined yet another thing for everyone.
ReplyDeleteI need my ChatGPT to have that familiar Majel Barrett voice.
ReplyDeleteShe’d probably be cool with it, were she still with us.
DeleteSo this is how OpenAI will make money in the future.
ReplyDeleteAI voice sex work. There's always money in the porns.
DeleteI hate to be the bearer of bad news but no matter what it's going to sound like somebody
ReplyDeleteExactly lol, also she doesn’t have a very distinct voice beside that vocal fry which Sky doesn’t have.
DeleteIt should sound like Joe Pesci instead
ReplyDeleteYutes?
DeleteScarlett Johansson has a regular voice. It's not exceptional. Most voices are not. Earth has roughly 40-60 million Caucasian women aged 35-40. Let's use the conservative number, 40 million. About 20% will speak English. About 12.5% of these will have had a cigarette habit but have since quit. That leaves us with 1 million women just like her vocally, and that's conservative. I could have used a 35-45 age range for her.
ReplyDeleteWhat is my recourse if Scarlett Johansson sounds too much like me? What voice will NOT be a dead ringer for a living person on Earth today? There are billions of us.
Reading this thread is kinda wild. Since when is her voice considered sexy?
DeleteAnother actress part going to Scarlett Johansson instead of an actual android.
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing is that OpenAI hired voice actors for each voice, and according to them, that is the voice actress’s natural voice!
ReplyDeleteHer natural voice is different from how she actually speaks. Women don't speak with forced flirtation.
DeleteI’ve been hearing this a lot and as a woman who speaks to women all the time, I didn’t think her voice sounded flirty at all. Friendly sure but I know women who talk like that all the time in California and they definitely are not flirting with me lmao. I guess it will depend on where you are from and how people talk there.
DeleteI've lived in California for close to 30 years and not once have I heard a woman talk like this. Even in the presence of an attractive man or a man one was in the beginnings of dating. But you do have to ask yourself why a company whose user base is heavily skewed male would even include a voice like sky's in the first place. Let alone focus most on it during their presentation. You would also have to ask yourself if those who designed sky's voice designed it based on actual interactions with human women or on fictional characters or the idea of what a woman should sound like.
DeleteI really don't see it. I believe the comparisons where because it sounds like Scarlett Johansson's character behaviour in the movie "Her" and not actually like Scarlett Johansson herself.
ReplyDeleteWhat’s the issue here?
ReplyDeleteWhen Scarlett Johanson signed up to do “Her” I wonder if she realized her voice would eventually become the last voice we all hear during the global apocalypse.
ReplyDeleteSo we're just copyrighting voices now? Some people sound the same. Copyrighting voices seems kind of wild to me.
ReplyDeleteUm.. yeah?
DeleteThis is such a missed opportunity…
ReplyDeleteBut that was my favorite voice :(
ReplyDeleteSky was the BEST voice, I hate the new one.
ReplyDeleteYou mean Makoto Kusanagi.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Motoko, even.
DeleteSomebody is going to say the AI speaks like them no matter what. Stupid
ReplyDeleteHer?
ReplyDeleteHer! :)
DeleteDisappointing that social media outrage is just one of the standard marketing avenues for a start up company.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to say Her has probably the closest future prediction I think I’ve ever seen in a movie.
ReplyDeleteSo you are saying that even our ai waifus will dump us?
Deletewtf this is why I chose Sky. Just pay Scarlett a bunch of money and move on. I want to talk to her everyday .
ReplyDeleteShe told OpenAI “No.” She has no intention of allowing her image or voice to be woven into an AI system - particularly when there are no clear boundaries on how these representations are to be used or paid for.
DeleteScarlett Johansson Bot, I love you as much as a man can love a computerized voice of a gorgeous celebrity. Which it turns out is a lot.
ReplyDeletePeople are idiots. It doesn’t sound like her at all to me. It’s the only voice that has a chill attitude. The others sound like tightwads, really grating to listen to and interact with. I’m already using chatGPT less now and I assume others are doing the same.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it. The voice of Sky was trained on a real person that wasn't Scarlett Johansson.
ReplyDeleteI thought it sounded more like Brené Brown than Scarlett. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
ReplyDeleteYea because that's a famous voice.
DeleteThat's interesting because I asked ChatGPT if voice actors were used to create the voice and it said no. lol
ReplyDeleteI would love to have my alexa to be voiced by Scarlett Johansson it would be sexually beautiful to listen to and talk to as well.
ReplyDeleteI think most of us assumed that was the point
ReplyDeleteImagin trying to read that headline in 1999.
ReplyDeleteThat's literally exactly what a company who secretly trained their AI voice off of Scarlet Johansson's would do
ReplyDeleteCuz her voice is so...iconic? Lots of legit concerns about AI, but wtf.
ReplyDeleteShe is more concerned about not being paid for using her voice and not some moral ethical dilemma about ai.
Deleteare you saying it wasn't intentional!!?!
ReplyDeleteShoulda gone with Gilbert Godfrey
ReplyDeleteGoddam, that’s a good voice!! Why??!!!
ReplyDeleteIs her voice copyrighted?
ReplyDeleteIve only been using SKY. I want a refund. My time with her.
ReplyDeleteYou aren't allowed sexy AI voices says twitter.
ReplyDeleteAll the male nerds who built the AI, and twitter . . I . . . . I . .
Contact her agent, develop a contract and pay her sufficiently. Problem solved!
ReplyDeleteThis reeks of a marketing strategy to get OpenAI in the news before they release a feature that allows people make and share custom voices.
ReplyDeleteDon’t want random boners throughout the day.
ReplyDeleteThis threw me for a loop last night. Sky is my default voice, never thought it sounded like scarlet, but I guess it kind of does.
ReplyDeleteIt’s a bummer because I was just getting used to taking to a robot, and they switch the voice up on me, and it’s weird all over again.
Edit: went back to listen to the example for sky and it’s definitely Scarlets exact voice haha, I have no clue how I didn’t notice that.
Damn, I liked that one. The others don’t sound appealing to me at all.
ReplyDeleteInitially, I never thought it sounded like her. I can see the resemblance now when they add emotion to it, but it’s still not her voice. I didn’t even think of it until this news came out.
ReplyDeletewhat? my strings are already attached to her.
ReplyDeleteLove this. They faked the demo and now cancelling the voice. Classic Silicon Valley bullshit. Imagine actually believing their bullshit a lot of idiots did
ReplyDeleteI don't see why they'd fake the demo, because the demo was off-putting and bad. What they actually did was a demo so bad that it inexplicably destroyed their existing offering.
DeleteI liked the Sky voice. I don’t really like the new one it switched to; it sounds strangely pretty cold.
ReplyDeleteI don't hear it.
ReplyDeleteBooooooo!!! That’s the point!! (Rage quits OpenAI.) 😎
ReplyDeleteIf they’re not making it sound even more like Scar-Jo then they’re going in the completely wrong direction
ReplyDeleteGood for Her (2013)
ReplyDeleteScarlett Johansson already took Disney to court and won, they don't want to be taken to the school yard flipped over and be shaken off all their money like Nelson does in the Simpsons
ReplyDeleteDon’t think it sounds like her.
ReplyDeleteThere is a whole tiktok series by a guy who believes this
ReplyDeletewe flew to close to the sun, and got burned by our desires
ReplyDeleteMake it Tim Curry and I'm in.
ReplyDeleteI get more of a Rashida Jones vibe from it
ReplyDeleteSoooooooo. We are getting close to the movie “Her”
ReplyDeleteOf course the one I use is the one they are getting rid of.
ReplyDeleteOpenAI IP lawyers being a bunch of pansies at the moment.
ReplyDeleteSeriously? Sky was my favorite voice.
ReplyDeleteVoices can be very similar. Why not go with a very intentional celebrity voice like Robin Williams or Paul Bettany? That would be great! Or even better make it completely customizable.
ReplyDeleteCan I make mine sound like
ReplyDeleteGilbert Gottfried
Our ap is just too good so we had to turn it off.
ReplyDeleteBut trust me its really good, keep investing.
What crap. They don't sound that similar at all.
ReplyDeleteOf course that's the voice I chose.
ReplyDeleteDammit... I was hoping to get Her.
ReplyDeleteThe only socially acceptable voice copy is one of Gilbert Gottfried.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to break up with Sky now. I'm so depressed 😔
ReplyDelete"concerns"
ReplyDeleteConcerns by whom? Her lawyers?
OpenAI weirdos made it like that as a nerdy joke... just own it already.
I want a Tony Soprano voice
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't be a problem if the other voices weren't lame
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteIt’s always gonna sound like someone, they just gotta make sure it isn’t anyone rich enough to sue
ReplyDeleteHow long until we have a store to buy custom gpt voice skins?
ReplyDeleteI want it to sound like Willem Dafoe
ReplyDeleteOh look, more BS distractionist "controversies"... Jesus fucking christ...
ReplyDelete“Gottfried, what’s the weather like today?”
ReplyDelete“AGAIN WITH THE WEATHER??!! LOOK OUTSIDE!”
Can it sound like Matt Barry?
ReplyDelete