Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson has expressed her shock and anger after discovering that OpenAI's latest chatbot, Sky, features a voice strikingly similar to her own. Johansson, who previously declined an offer to voice the chatbot, has accused the company and its founder, Sam Altman, of intentionally mimicking her voice.

The controversy erupted when Sky debuted last week, and many noted the resemblance to Johansson's tone in the 2013 film "Her". Johansson voiced Samantha, an AI chat system in the film that forms an intimate relationship with a human, which further fueled the comparisons.

OpenAI announced on Monday that it would remove the contentious voice, though it maintained that any similarity to Johansson's voice was unintended. Nevertheless, Johansson accused Altman and his company of deliberately copying her voice, a claim detailed in a statement she provided to the BBC on Monday evening.

"When I heard the demo, I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that Mr Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine," Johansson wrote. She highlighted a tweet from Altman that simply said "her," which she interpreted as an intentional reference to her role in the film "Her".

Johansson revealed that Altman initially approached her in September to voice the new chatbot. "[Mr Altman] told me that he felt that by voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI," she recounted. However, Johansson declined the offer for personal reasons.

Two days before Sky's release, Altman contacted Johansson's agent, urging her to reconsider her refusal. Johansson said she had to hire lawyers and sent two legal letters to OpenAI to ascertain how the voice was created.

"In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our likeness, our work, our identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity," she wrote.

In response, Altman denied any intentional imitation of Johansson's voice. "The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson's, and it was never intended to resemble hers," he stated. "We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms Johansson. 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."

OpenAI also posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, stating that they were "working to pause" the voice while addressing questions about its selection. The company explained that the voices used by Sky were sampled from voice actors they had partnered with.

This dispute comes at a tumultuous time for OpenAI, facing several legal challenges. In December, the New York Times announced plans to sue the company over allegations that it had used millions of articles to train its ChatGPT AI model without permission. 

Read more

Cannes 2024: Studio Ghibli makes history with honourary Palme d’Or

Similarly, in September, authors George R R Martin and John Grisham declared their intent to pursue legal action, claiming their copyrights had been infringed upon to train the system.