In mid-May Open AI announced its new Voice Engine that would convert text to audio. Open AI stated that this would assist in creating the ‘responsible deployment of synthetic voices.’ It wasn’t known then but this announcement would trigger the latest Hollywood battle against AI and companies using the likeness of actors which SAG had campaigned against in high profile strikes last year. However – one of the female voices was called ‘Sky’ and sounded remarkably like the very unsynthetic voice of actress Scarlett Johnasson.
There are a few threads to the fabric of this story. The first is that back 2013, Johansson starred in the Spike Jonze futuristic film Her in which she played the voice of Joaquin Phoenix’s virtual assistant – who he ends up falling in artificial love with. The second is that last September, Open AI had actually approached Scarlett Johansson and asked her if she would supply one of the voices for Chat GPT – the voice of Sky. Presumably, Open AI had been inspired by her voice in the film Her and saw her as the right fit for an AI bot – as she had experience with this. Johansson declined. But 2 days before the voice was released, she was approached again. Before she could reconsider, the voice uncannily similar to her own was now live.
The actress has now taken legal action. She said in a statement: “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.” In response, Sam Altman of Open AI responded, “We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. 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.”
Open AI has yet to name the ‘actor’ who they had cast in Johansson’s place.
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