Scarlett Johansson attends the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 9, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California.
Karwaï Tang | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
OpenAI announced that it would remove one of ChatGPT’s voices named “Sky” after creating controversy for its resemblance to actress Scarlett Johansson’s voice in “Her”, a film about artificial intelligence.
“We’ve heard questions about how we chose voices in ChatGPT, particularly Sky,” said the Microsoft-supported business posted on X. “We are working to suspend the use of Sky while we respond.”
The 2013 science fiction film “Her” tells the story of a man who falls in love with an artificial intelligence system named Samantha, voiced by Johansson.
The news comes a week after OpenAI launched a range of audio voices for ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, a new AI model called GPT-4o, and a desktop version of ChatGPT.
Users watching the live demonstration of ChatGPT’s audio capabilities immediately began posting on social media that “Sky’s” voice sounded like Johansson’s in the film. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apparently referred to the film in an article on X, simply writing “she.”
In a blog post published Sunday, OpenAI wrote that the chatbot’s five voices – Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky – were selected during a casting and recording process that lasted five months. Casting professionals received about 400 applications from voice and screen actors and narrowed that number to 14, according to the company. Then, an internal team selected the final five.
“Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to another professional actress using her own natural voice,” the company wrote. “To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voices.”
OpenAI plans to test voice mode in the coming weeks, with early access for paid ChatGPT Plus subscribers, according to recent blog posts, and also plans to add new voices. OpenAI also said the new model can respond to users’ audio prompts “in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which is similar to human response time in a conversation.”
The company, founded in 2015, is valued at more than $80 billion by investors. The company is under pressure to dominate the generative AI market while finding ways to make money by spending massive sums on processors and infrastructure to build and train its models.
OpenAI, Microsoft and Google are leading a generative AI gold rush as companies across industries rush to add AI-based chatbots and agents to avoid be left behind by their competitors. Earlier this month, OpenAI rival Anthropic announced its first enterprise offering and a free iPhone app.
A record $29.1 billion was invested in nearly 700 generative AI deals in 2023, an increase of more than 260% from the previous year, according to PitchBook. The market is expected to generate more than $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.
During last week’s live presentation, members of the OpenAI team demonstrated ChatGPT’s audio capabilities. For example, the chatbot was asked to help calm someone down before a public speech.
OpenAI researcher Mark Chen demonstrated the model’s ability to tell a bedtime story and asked it to change the tone of its voice to be more dramatic or robotic. He even asked her to sing the story. The team also asked him to analyze a user’s facial expression to comment on the emotions that person may be feeling.
“Hey, what’s up? How can I brighten your day today?” ChatGPT’s audio mode indicates when a user greets them.
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