OpenAI Removing Voice From ChatGPT That Sounds Too Much Like Scarlett Johansson
OpenAI is apparently not feeling too flattered about those comparisons to the movie "Her" anymore. On Sunday, the Microsoft-backed startup announced that it was pausing the use of Sky, a voice available for the latest version of ChatGPT that can have spoken conversations in realtime, after users pointed out that it sounded a lot like the actress Scarlett Johansson.
In "Her," Johansson voices an AI chatbot named Samantha that the film's melancholic protagonist, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with after talking to her through his phone and computer.
Those parallels didn't go unnoticed by users of GPT-4o's flagship "Voice Mode," who have joked that the Sky voice should be called Samantha. But OpenAI, in its latest blog post, insisted that the similarities are merely a coincidence.
"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," the blog post read. "To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents."
