Artificial Intelligence | The head of Open AI wanted the real Scarlett Johansson as the AI ​​voice, had to settle for an imitation

Actor Scarlett Johansson says that the CEO of the Open AI artificial intelligence company Sam Altman asked him to be the voice of the new Chat GPT version in September 2023. However, Johansson says that he refused this due to personal reasons. As of Monday, May 20 was reportedone of the five voices of the GPT-4o version introduced last week, closely resembles Johansson’s voice.

GPT-4o is not yet available to users, and on Monday Open AI removed a voice called Sky that resembled Johansson’s voice. According to the blog post published by the company, an anonymous voice actor has been used as the basis for Sky’s voice, which is therefore not Johansson.

“When I heard released demo audio, I was shocked and angry. I couldn’t believe that Altman had used a voice so similar to mine that even my closest friends and members of the media couldn’t tell them apart,” Johansson says. in his statement.

According to Johansson’s statement, Open AI removed Sky’s voice after Johansson’s lawyer contacted Altman and Open AI and asked them to clarify the course of events.

Johansson says that even a couple of days before the presentation of GPT-4o, Altman had been in contact with Johansson’s agent and asked Johansson to consider becoming an artificial intelligence voice. However, Johansson did not have time to answer Altman before the presentation of the program version.

Altman’s desire to have Johansson as the voice of the voice-controlled artificial intelligence program may be related to the one completed in 2013 Mr-film, where Johansson had a voice role as an artificial intelligence named Samantha, to which Joaquin Phoenix the man she plays becomes attached and who also learns to respond to her feelings. In connection with the presentation of GPT-4o, Altman posted on the X message service the messagewhich had only one word: “her”.

At the end of her statement, Scarlett Johansson also draws attention to the fact that the rights of individuals in relation to personal characteristics, work and identity should be protected by strong legislation.