SAG-AFTRA, the labor union that represents thousands of Hollywood actors, commended Scarlett Johansson for publicly calling out OpenAI for using a voice that sounded “eerily similar” to hers in its new GPT-4o model.
“We thank Ms. Johansson for speaking out on this issue of crucial importance to all SAG-AFTRA members,” a spokesperson for the guild said in a statement Tuesday. “We share in her concerns and fully support her right to have clarity and transparency regarding the voice used in developing the Chat GPT-4o appliance ‘Sky.'”
“SAG-AFTRA members are among the most talented and often most recognizable people on the planet,” the union spokesperson added. “That is why we’re strongly championing federal legislation that would protect their voices and likenesses — and everyone else’s as well — from unauthorized digital replication.”
Johansson, who voiced an advanced artificial intelligence chatbot in the 2013 movie “Her,” said in a statement Monday that she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman “would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.”
She said Altman contacted her in September and said he wanted to hire her to voice the GPT-4o system. She said she ultimately declined his offer.
“Two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released, Mr. Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there,” she said.
“I was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAI, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process by which they created the ‘Sky’ voice. Consequently, OpenAI reluctantly agreed to take down the ‘Sky’ voice,” she said.
In response to a request for comment Monday, Altman said in a statement sent by a spokesperson that the voice of “Sky” was not meant to sound like Johansson and was selected before he reached out to her last fall.
“The voice…
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