Incident 688: Scarlett Johansson Alleges OpenAI's Sky Imitates Her Voice Without Licensing

Description: OpenAI unveiled a voice assistant with a voice resembling Scarlett Johansson's, despite her refusal to license her voice. Johansson claimed the assistant, "Sky," sounded "eerily similar" to her voice, leading her to seek legal action. OpenAI suspended Sky, asserting the voice was from a different actress.

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Alleged: Sam Altman and OpenAI developed an AI system deployed by Sky voice assistant , Sam Altman and OpenAI, which harmed Scarlett Johansson.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
688
Report Count
14
Incident Date
2024-05-20
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Scarlett Johansson Said No, but OpenAI’s Virtual Assistant Sounds Just Like Her
nytimes.com · 2024

Days before OpenAI demonstrated its new, flirty voice assistant last week, the actress Scarlett Johansson said, Sam Altman, the company's chief executive, called her agent and asked that she consider licensing her voice for a virtual assist…

Scarlett Johansson’s Statement About Her Interactions With Sam Altman
nytimes.com · 2024

Here is Scarlett Johansson's statement on Monday:

"Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the…

Scarlett Johansson says OpenAI copied ‘Her’ voice after she said no
washingtonpost.com · 2024

Actress Scarlett Johansson is threatening legal action against OpenAI, alleging the artificial intelligence start-up copied her voice after she refused to license it to the company.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked Johansson in September to be t…

Scarlett Johansson Rebukes OpenAI Over ‘Eerily Similar’ ChatGPT Voice
wsj.com · 2024

Actress Scarlett Johansson criticized OpenAI over a ChatGPT voice she says is "eerily similar" to her own. 

The tech company said Monday it was pausing use of the voice, known as Sky, so it could address questions about how it chose the Cha…

Scarlett Johansson lawyers up over ChatGPT voice that ‘shocked and angered’ her
cnn.com · 2024

Actor Scarlett Johansson said in a statement shared with CNN on Monday that she was "shocked, angered and in disbelief" that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman would use a synthetic voice released with an update to ChatGPT "so eerily similar" to hers.

T…

Scarlett Johansson says she is 'shocked, angered' over new ChatGPT voice
npr.org · 2024

Lawyers for Scarlett Johansson are demanding that OpenAI disclose how it developed an AI personal assistant voice that the actress says sounds uncannily similar to her own.

Johansson's legal team has sent OpenAI two letters asking the compa…

Scarlett Johansson Says She Was ‘Shocked, Angered and in Disbelief’ After Hearing ChatGPT Voice That Sounds Like Her — Read Statement
tvline.com · 2024

OpenAI is pausing the use of a voice named Sky that is part of a new demo of ChatGPT 4.0's Voice Mode. The emotive voice has been called out for sounding a little too similar to Scarlett Johansson's A.I. character from the 2013 Spike Jonze …

Exactly how stupid was what OpenAI did to Scarlett Johansson?
washingtonpost.com · 2024

In September, OpenAI said a new talking version of its ChatGPT assistant that sounded like Scarlett Johansson wasn't meant to resemble the actress.

The company said so again last week when it unveiled a chattier ChatGPT that featured the Jo…

The Scarlett Johansson-OpenAI dispute is straight out of ‘Her’
washingtonpost.com · 2024

Scarlett Johansson never once appears in "Her," but her performance might be the most resonant of the 2013 film. She voices Samantha, the virtual assistant who brightens the days of dejected protagonist Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) as…

OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show
washingtonpost.com · 2024

When OpenAI issued a casting call last May for a secret project to endow OpenAI's popular ChatGPT with a human voice, the flier had several requests: The actors should be nonunion. They should sound between 25 and 45 years old. And their vo…

ScarJo-OpenAI fight focuses the AI safety debate
semafor.com · 2024

THE NEWS

It's the most interesting tech scandal in recent memory: Actress Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of deliberately --- and creepily --- copying her voice to make ChatGPT sound like her AI character in the movie Her.

OpenAI denied t…

Behind the Scenes of Scarlett Johansson’s Battle With OpenAI
wsj.com · 2024

Scarlett Johansson's powerful Hollywood agent, Bryan Lourd, wanted answers when he made an urgent call to Sam Altman last week: What do you think you're doing? 

Altman's artificial intelligence powerhouse, OpenAI, had for months unsuccessfu…

Sky voice actor says nobody ever compared her to ScarJo before OpenAI drama
arstechnica.com · 2024

OpenAI is sticking to its story that it never intended to copy Scarlett Johansson's voice when seeking an actor for ChatGPT's "Sky" voice mode.

The company provided The Washington Post with documents and recordings clearly meant to support …

Scarlett Johansson’s OpenAI clash is just the start of legal wrangles over artificial intelligence
theguardian.com · 2024

When OpenAI's new voice assistant said it was "doing fantastic" in a launch demo this month, Scarlett Johansson was not.

The Hollywood star said she was "shocked, angered and in disbelief" that the updated version of ChatGPT, which can list…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.