GPT’s 'Sky' voice: Scarlett Johansson drops a bombshell | Mashable.

Scarlett Johansson was 'shocked' by OpenAI 'Sky' voice

The 'Her' actress says OpenAI asked her to voice 'Sky' — and she said no.
By Matthews Martins on 
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.

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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.

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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.

Topics  ChatGPT OpenAI

Comments

  1. Another scary part is when they use AI to forge signatures, imitate voices, etc., to bypass security…

    ReplyDelete
  2. did she say no, or did the AI say no ? 😃

    ReplyDelete
  3. https://media1.tenor.co/m/4IkfSV_2jxQAAAAd/sky-sun.gif?c=VjFfZmFjZWJvb2tfd2ViY29tbWVudHM&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2tvf7tOKRvOcTIz7nxJIzp-tbA25MJHIvyXIh8wtHdEA9QhCHCWHtmuLE_aem_AWbY-4gTje3HgZgPFBzUWtManQKTzPCe9D-AlA6z5iV5-QDCgXRBmwex4i_loR7m7acbkE7R4s2Fncj_0xU_2BJ1

    ReplyDelete
  4. and 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.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It 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.

    OpenAI is going to find out: You either pay now, or pay later.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You deserve to be happy we are all humans , are frustrated because of a Break-up then you can use this to attract that happiness into your life. It brings back your lover, and help solve broken marriages. Life is too short to be unhappy. Think about that . You deserve utmost happiness and love. Note: this is totally harmless and have no side effects.this is the solution Dr udo spell home

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
  8. She is Zionist 😡

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Any other relevant comments?

      Delete
    2. That one should be more then enough 🤷

      Delete
    3. I said relevant, not self-indulgent.

      Delete
    4. Dude, I dont gives a fck what you said
      Understand now?

      Delete
  9. That was the voice I chose exactly because of that.😔

    ReplyDelete
  10. The 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 🤷‍♂️

    I 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.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Just imagine being that actress. I don't know if I'd take it as a complement or not.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Of course you would not. She sells her voice for living. OpenAI is selling it, but she isn't making a dime out of it.

      Delete
    2. Do you know that for a fact? Maybe she has been paid well for it.

      Edit: I assumed the above comment was referring to the actual voice actress they claimed to use.

      Delete
    3. She was paid by them to do the voice.

      Delete
    4. They're referring to Scarlett Johansson, not to the voice actress that OpenAI claims the Sky voice is based on.

      Delete
    5. Hmm, comment is a little ambiguous, but I'll go with it. Statement retracted.

      Delete
    6. But 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

      Delete
  12. Wow, they really should have paid her to use recordings of her voice from sources when she was younger.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Scarlett Johansson proving once again that she can play any role

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I thought it was intentional tbh

      Edit- turns out it was intentional. Maybe Illegal, but definitely intentional.

      Delete
    2. She's truly the Ghost in the shell

      Delete
    3. She’s also HER.

      Not yelling, don’t know how to do italics on mobile.

      Delete
    4. It was. They tried to get her and she declined. It's pretty creepy

      Delete
    5. It was. That’s why she’s suing. Hopefully for a billion or so.

      Delete
    6. Here is Scarlett Johansen’s text response, but read by sky.

      https://x.com/benjamindekr/status/1792693868497871086

      Delete
  14. "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.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Ok, who ruined everyone's fun THIS time? Getting some real "teacher, you forgot to assign homework" vibes.

    ReplyDelete
  16. It’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.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I want a lady with a heavy british accent!

      Delete
    2. Give me an angry Irish mom setting.

      Delete
    3. Russian or Indian voice for cyber security and software development.

      Thick scottish accent for everything else.

      Italian wall street voice for anything financial. Need the threatening undertone to pay attention.

      Delete
    4. Yeah agreed, I was confused when the voice for sky randomly changed lol

      Delete
    5. Juniper is my favorite lmao. I call it June for short lol

      Delete
  17. Honestly it didnt sound like her at all to me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree. I don't hear the similarity at all.

      I 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.

      Delete
    2. 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.

      Delete
  18. Considering how much Altman et al have been referencing “Her”….damn, dudes, do better.

    Also, maybe try finishing the movie sometime.

    ReplyDelete
  19. “Concerns” = a lawyer ruined yet another thing for everyone.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I need my ChatGPT to have that familiar Majel Barrett voice.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She’d probably be cool with it, were she still with us.

      Delete
  21. So this is how OpenAI will make money in the future.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AI voice sex work. There's always money in the porns.

      Delete
  22. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but no matter what it's going to sound like somebody

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly lol, also she doesn’t have a very distinct voice beside that vocal fry which Sky doesn’t have.

      Delete
  23. It should sound like Joe Pesci instead

    ReplyDelete
  24. Scarlett 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.

    What 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.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Reading this thread is kinda wild. Since when is her voice considered sexy?

      Delete
  25. Another actress part going to Scarlett Johansson instead of an actual android.

    ReplyDelete
  26. The worst thing is that OpenAI hired voice actors for each voice, and according to them, that is the voice actress’s natural voice!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Her natural voice is different from how she actually speaks. Women don't speak with forced flirtation.

      Delete
    2. I’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.

      Delete
    3. I'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.

      Delete
  27. I 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.

    ReplyDelete
  28. What’s the issue here?

    ReplyDelete
  29. When 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.

    ReplyDelete
  30. So we're just copyrighting voices now? Some people sound the same. Copyrighting voices seems kind of wild to me.

    ReplyDelete
  31. This is such a missed opportunity…

    ReplyDelete
  32. But that was my favorite voice :(

    ReplyDelete
  33. Sky was the BEST voice, I hate the new one.

    ReplyDelete
  34. You mean Makoto Kusanagi.

    ReplyDelete
  35. Somebody is going to say the AI speaks like them no matter what. Stupid

    ReplyDelete
  36. Disappointing that social media outrage is just one of the standard marketing avenues for a start up company.

    ReplyDelete
  37. I just wanted to say Her has probably the closest future prediction I think I’ve ever seen in a movie.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So you are saying that even our ai waifus will dump us?

      Delete
  38. wtf this is why I chose Sky. Just pay Scarlett a bunch of money and move on. I want to talk to her everyday .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She 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.

      Delete
  39. Scarlett 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.

    ReplyDelete
  40. People 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.

    ReplyDelete
  41. I don't get it. The voice of Sky was trained on a real person that wasn't Scarlett Johansson.

    ReplyDelete
  42. I thought it sounded more like Brené Brown than Scarlett. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yea because that's a famous voice.

      Delete
  43. That's interesting because I asked ChatGPT if voice actors were used to create the voice and it said no. lol

    ReplyDelete
  44. I 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.

    ReplyDelete
  45. I think most of us assumed that was the point

    ReplyDelete
  46. Imagin trying to read that headline in 1999.

    ReplyDelete
  47. That's literally exactly what a company who secretly trained their AI voice off of Scarlet Johansson's would do

    ReplyDelete
  48. Cuz her voice is so...iconic? Lots of legit concerns about AI, but wtf.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She is more concerned about not being paid for using her voice and not some moral ethical dilemma about ai.

      Delete
  49. are you saying it wasn't intentional!!?!

    ReplyDelete
  50. Shoulda gone with Gilbert Godfrey

    ReplyDelete
  51. Goddam, that’s a good voice!! Why??!!!

    ReplyDelete
  52. Is her voice copyrighted?

    ReplyDelete
  53. Ive only been using SKY. I want a refund. My time with her.

    ReplyDelete
  54. You aren't allowed sexy AI voices says twitter.

    All the male nerds who built the AI, and twitter . . I . . . . I . .

    ReplyDelete
  55. Contact her agent, develop a contract and pay her sufficiently. Problem solved!

    ReplyDelete
  56. This reeks of a marketing strategy to get OpenAI in the news before they release a feature that allows people make and share custom voices.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Don’t want random boners throughout the day.

    ReplyDelete
  58. This 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.

    It’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.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Damn, I liked that one. The others don’t sound appealing to me at all.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Initially, 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.

    ReplyDelete
  61. what? my strings are already attached to her.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Love this. They faked the demo and now cancelling the voice. Classic Silicon Valley bullshit. Imagine actually believing their bullshit a lot of idiots did

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I 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.

      Delete
  63. I liked the Sky voice. I don’t really like the new one it switched to; it sounds strangely pretty cold.

    ReplyDelete
  64. I don't hear it.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Booooooo!!! That’s the point!! (Rage quits OpenAI.) 😎

    ReplyDelete
  66. If they’re not making it sound even more like Scar-Jo then they’re going in the completely wrong direction

    ReplyDelete
  67. Good for Her (2013)

    ReplyDelete
  68. Scarlett 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

    ReplyDelete
  69. Don’t think it sounds like her.

    ReplyDelete
  70. There is a whole tiktok series by a guy who believes this

    ReplyDelete
  71. we flew to close to the sun, and got burned by our desires

    ReplyDelete
  72. Make it Tim Curry and I'm in.

    ReplyDelete
  73. I get more of a Rashida Jones vibe from it

    ReplyDelete
  74. Soooooooo. We are getting close to the movie “Her”

    ReplyDelete
  75. Of course the one I use is the one they are getting rid of.

    ReplyDelete
  76. OpenAI IP lawyers being a bunch of pansies at the moment.

    ReplyDelete
  77. Seriously? Sky was my favorite voice.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Voices 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.

    ReplyDelete
  79. Can I make mine sound like

    Gilbert Gottfried

    ReplyDelete
  80. Our ap is just too good so we had to turn it off.

    But trust me its really good, keep investing.

    ReplyDelete
  81. What crap. They don't sound that similar at all.

    ReplyDelete
  82. Of course that's the voice I chose.

    ReplyDelete
  83. Dammit... I was hoping to get Her.

    ReplyDelete
  84. The only socially acceptable voice copy is one of Gilbert Gottfried.

    ReplyDelete
  85. I'm going to have to break up with Sky now. I'm so depressed 😔

    ReplyDelete
  86. "concerns"

    Concerns by whom? Her lawyers?

    OpenAI weirdos made it like that as a nerdy joke... just own it already.

    ReplyDelete
  87. I want a Tony Soprano voice

    ReplyDelete
  88. It wouldn't be a problem if the other voices weren't lame

    ReplyDelete
  89. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  90. It’s always gonna sound like someone, they just gotta make sure it isn’t anyone rich enough to sue

    ReplyDelete
  91. How long until we have a store to buy custom gpt voice skins?

    ReplyDelete
  92. I want it to sound like Willem Dafoe

    ReplyDelete
  93. Oh look, more BS distractionist "controversies"... Jesus fucking christ...

    ReplyDelete
  94. “Gottfried, what’s the weather like today?”

    “AGAIN WITH THE WEATHER??!! LOOK OUTSIDE!”

    ReplyDelete
  95. Can it sound like Matt Barry?

    ReplyDelete

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