A voice that is uncannily like hers Scarlett Johansson: In the face of accusations that he copied the voice of the famous actress through ChatGPT, the general manager of OpenAI, Sam Altman, apologized on Monday, announcing the withdrawal of Sky, the voice created through artificial intelligence.

“Out of respect for Ms Johansson, we have suspended the use of Sky’s voice in our products. We apologize to Ms. Johansson for not communicating better,” Sam Altman said in a statement emailed to AFP by OpenAI.

Johansson accuses the company, as well as her boss, that deliberately and without her knowledge they copied her voice. “I was shocked, outraged and in disbelief that Altman developed a voice that was so eerily similar to mine, to the extent that my closest friends and the media not being able to tell the difference”he pointed out in a press release, which was published last night.

“Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who expressed a desire to hire me to be the voice of the ChatGPT 4.0 system,” she described. “She said she thought my voice would comfort people,” she added, noting that she “he then refused the proposal.”

Additionally, Scarlett Johansson said that Altman “hinted that the resemblance was intentional by tweeting a single word ‘Her.’ A word meaning “she” in English, but also the title of the film where the actress was the voice of an artificial intelligence system from which the creators of ChatGPT did not hide that they were inspired.

“Sky’s voice is in no way a copy of Scarlett Johansson’s,” however, OpenAI assured in an article posted on its blog, claiming it was created with the voice of another professional actress.

Deepfakes

Sam Altman reiterated in his statement that “Skye’s voice is not Scarlett Johansson’s and was not intended to sound like her. We chose the voice of the actress behind Sky before any contact with Ms Johansson.”

For her part, the actress made it known that she was “forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Altman and OpenAI, (…). Therefore, OpenAI has reluctantly agreed to remove the +Sky+ voice.”

“At a time when we are all fighting against deepfakes and in favor of protecting our own image, our own work, our own identity, I believe that these issues deserve absolute clarity,” she stressed, adding that she expects “eagerly” na “appropriate legislation to help ensure the protection of individual rights” is adopted.

In contrast, OpenAI detailed how it worked with professional actors to create digital voices, which it called Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.

New voices

The case comes to light a few days after OpenAI announced that she is disbanding her team, which was tasked with mitigating the potential long-term risks of a very “smart” Artificial Intelligence. The announcement was marked by the departure of one of the company’s co-founders, Ilya Satskever, as well as team manager Jan Lake.

“OpenAI needs to become a company that puts the safety of general AI above all other considerations,” Lake wrote Friday in X. Sam Altman expressed regret at his departure, adding that “he’s right, we have to we do more, that’s our goal.”

The company yesterday introduced the new version of its main product with the GPT-4.O, with improved performance and behavior that is closer to people, making it free for all users.

“In the future, you should expect to have more options available to you as we plan to add voices to ChatGPT to better meet the various interests and preferences of users,” OpenAI adds on its blog.