Over the weekend, Colin Jost was pressured to inform a joke about his spouse, Scarlett Johansson, throughout Saturday Night Live’s season finale. As a part of his annual joke swap with Weekend Update coanchor Michael Che, through which they learn punch traces neither has seen earlier than airtime, Jost reluctantly learn from a cue card: “ChatGPT has released a new voice assistant feature inspired by Scarlett Johansson’s AI character in [the 2013 movie] Her, which I’ve never bothered to watch because without that body, what’s the point of listening?”
On Monday, Johansson made it clear that the subject was no laughing matter by releasing an open assertion claiming that an OpenAI chatbot’s voice sounded “eerily similar to mine” regardless of her prior refusals to work with the corporate. She alleged that again in September, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman approached her about voicing the corporate’s private assistant, arguing that “my voice would be comforting to people” because the world grappled with the function of AI in society.
“After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer,” Johansson mentioned. “Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ‘Sky’ sounded like me.” The Oscar nominee mentioned the launched demo left her “shocked, angered and in disbelief.”
Hours earlier than Johansson’s assertion was launched, OpenAI disabled use of the chatbot, citing “questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT” on X (previously Twitter). Altman has since denied that there’s any connection between Johansson and the Sky voice. “We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson,” he mentioned in an announcement shared with a number of shops. “Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”
Johansson mentioned in her assertion that “two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released,” Altman contacted her agent, “asking me to reconsider,” a request she had not addressed by the point of the chatbot’s public debut. In a weblog put up on Sunday, OpenAI mentioned that “voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice” and that Sky “is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.” The firm declined to share the performer’s identification out of respect for her privateness.
As the tumultuous relationship between AI and Hollywood continues to unfold, Johansson mentioned she has now employed authorized counsel, requesting that Altman and OpenAI “detail the exact process by which they created the ‘Sky’ voice.” She continued, “In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”
Altman’s love for Spike Jonze’s romantic sci-fi movie Her—through which a person falls in love with Johansson’s Samantha, the feminine voice of his laptop’s working system—is well-documented. After beforehand calling it his favourite film, Altman seemingly nodded to his inspiration by posting the phrase “her” on X hours after unveiling Sky. Vanity Fair has reached out to Jonze’s reps for remark.