May 21, 2024, 12:35 PM
May 21, 2024, 12:35 PM
OpenAI head Sam Altman apologized to Scarlett Johansson on Tuesday after the movie star said she was “surprised” by a new synthetic voice released by the maker of ChatGPT, but he insisted it was not based on her. .
This is “Sky”, a voice that OpenAI presented last week at the launch of its more human-like GPT-4o artificial intelligence technology.
In a demonstration, “Sky” was flirtatious and fun, jumping from topic to topic seamlessly, unlike most existing chatbots.
The technology — and the sound of the voice — soon drew similarities to Johansson’s voiced AI character from the 2013 film “Her.”
Altman has already pointed to the Spike Jonze-directed film, a cautionary tale about the future in which a man falls in love with an AI chatbot, as inspiration for where he would like AI interactions to go.
Last week he fueled speculation with a single-word post on X, which read “she.”
“Sky’s voice is not that of Scarlett Johansson and was never intended to look like hers,” Altman said in a statement Tuesday in response to the controversy.
“We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before contacting Ms. Johansson.”
“Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have stopped using Sky’s voice in our products. We apologize to Ms. Johansson for not communicating better.”
The statement came after Johansson expressed outrage on Monday, saying she was “shocked, angry and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would seek out a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and the media would not.” They could tell the difference.”
He said Altman had offered in September to hire her to work with OpenAI to create a synthetic voice, saying it could help people interact with AI, but she refused.
