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Johansson made the comments in a statement released hours after
the artificial intelligence company said it was taking down the
voice, called 'Sky.'
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement emailed to Reuters on
Monday that Sky's voice was not an imitation of Johansson, but
belonged to a different professional actress.
"The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson's, and it was never
intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s
voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson," Altman said.
"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."
The fight over rights to actors' voices and images has become a
focus in Hollywood as studios consider how to use AI to create
new entertainment and as the computer-produced images and sounds
become difficult to distinguish from those of humans.
Johansson in the statement said Altman had approached her last
September and offered to hire her to voice a ChatGPT voice -- an
offer she declined.
"Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public
all noted how much the newest system named 'Sky' sounded like
me," she said.
"When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in
disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so
eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets
could not tell the difference."
Johansson added that Altman had "insinuated that the similarity
was intentional" by tweeting a reference to "her," the 2013
movie about a man who develops a relationship with an AI
assistant voiced by the actress.
Johansson's note was published by journalists from NPR and other
news outlets. Her publicist also shared it with Reuters.
She said that she had hired legal counsel to ask about the
process of creating the voice.
OpenAI showed off its newest AI model, called GPT-4o, last week,
with audio capabilities that let users speak to the chatbot and
obtain real-time responses, marking a significant advancement in
more realistic sounding AI conversations.
(Additional reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal and Kanjyik Ghosh in
Bengaluru; writing by Peter Henderson; editing by Noel Randewich
and Sam Holmes)
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