Scarlett Johansson left ‘angered’ by chatbot imitation

Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson said she was “shocked” and “angry” after OpenAI launched a chatbot with a voice “eerily similar” to hers.

The actress said she previously turned down an approach from the company to voice its new chatbot, which reads text aloud to users.

When the new model, called Sky, debuted last week, commenters were quick to draw comparisons between the chatbot’s tone and Johansson’s in the 2013 film Her.

OpenAI announced on Monday that it would remove the voice, but insisted it was not an “imitation” of the star.

However, Johansson accused the company and its founder Sam Altman of deliberately copying his voice, in a statement seen by the BBC on Monday evening.

“When I heard the demo released, I was shocked, angry and incredulous that Mr. Altman could pursue a voice that sounded so eerily like mine,” she wrote.

“Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word ‘she’ – a reference to the film in which I voiced a cat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.”

The actress, who has been nominated for two Oscars, said she was initially approached by Mr Altman to voice the new chatbot in September.

“(Mr. Altman) told me he thought that by voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers feel comfortable with the seismic shift regarding humans and AI,” Johansson wrote.

“He said he thought my voice would comfort people.”

But she ultimately turned down the offer for personal reasons, she said.

Two days before the Sky chatbot’s release, she added, Mr. Altman contacted his agent, urging Johansson to reconsider his initial refusal to cooperate with the company.

Adding that she was forced to hire lawyers, the actress said she sent two legal letters to the company, to establish how the voice was done.

“At a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and protecting our own image, our own work, our own identity, I think these are issues that deserve absolute clarity,” she said. writing.

In a statement shared with the BBC by Open AI, Mr Altman denied that the company had sought to imitate Johansson’s voice.

“Sky’s voice is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to sound like hers,” he wrote.

“We chose the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before contacting Ms. Johansson. 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 having something better communicated.”

Separately, the company said it was “working to pause the voice” while it addressed questions about how she was singled out in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

In its blog post, OpenAI said the five voices used by its chatbot were sampled from voice actors it had collaborated with.

Johansson’s legal threats come as the company faces several impending lawsuits.

In December, The New York Times announced plans to launch a lawsuit against the company over allegations that it used “millions” of articles published by the media organization to train its ChatGPT AI model.

And in September, authors George RR Martin and John Grisham also announced their intention to file a lawsuit, following allegations that their copyrights had been infringed to form the system.