In March, OpenAI , ChatGPT-4, and a week ago, , nicknamed “Sky,” which many commenters observed sounded almost flirty — and very similar to Samantha, the virtual assistant in Spike Jonze’s 2013 romance film . Unfortunately for OpenAI, it sounded a little too much like Johansson, who said in a statement that she was “shocked” and “angered” that the voice so closely resembled her own — especially after she had previously declined an invitation to voice Sky during its development. In the statement, which was shared by NPR’s Bobby Allyn on X (formerly known as Twitter), Johansson revealed that recently ousted and reinstated OpenAI CEO contacted her with a request to voice ChatGPT-4.
“After much consideration and for personal reasons,” she wrote, “I declined the offer.” However, she was alerted to the new Sky system by friends and relatives noting the similarities to her voice in , and reached out to Altman — who’d hyped the release of the product by — asking for details about the product’s creation. Sky has since been disabled, with OpenAI posting on X, “We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky.
We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.” In an attached blog post, the company says the voice “belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice,” and was designed to be “approachable” and “natural and easy to listen to.” Statement from Scarlett .
