There are two types of people in the world when it comes to technology. The ones who watch a dystopian movie such as Her, the 2013 release about the relationship between a lonely man (Joaquin Phoenix) and the voice in his phone (Scarlett Johannson), and see it as a stark warning of where we’re headed. And then there are the ones who watch the same movie and see it as aspirational.
You and I are the former, but the tech lords such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are the latter. At least according to Johansson, anyway.
Earlier this week, the actress released a statement alleging that Altman and his company OpenAI copied her voice for ChatGPT without her permission. Johansson said that nine months ago Altman approached her, proposing that she allow her voice to be licensed for the new ChatGPT voice assistant. He added that he believed it would be “comforting to people” who are uneasy with AI technology, as she played the role once before in Her.
“After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer,” Johansson said.
Nine months on, and just two days before the new ChatGPT product was released, Altman contacted her team and urged her to reconsider, Johansson claimed. But before she even had time to respond, the product was put out, and “Sky,” the creepy phone voice that sounds staggeringly similar to Johansson, was born.
“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 said in her statement.
She goes on to say that “Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word ‘her’ — a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.” She seems to believe that after explicitly saying no to OpenAI using her likeness, Altman went ahead and did it anyway and then bragged about it.
So, where does Johansson stand? Do we own our own voices? After her statement and her legal team demanding that OpenAI “detail the exact process by which they created the ‘Sky’ voice,” the company put the feature “on pause,” but denied that the voice is that of Johansson.
“We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice — Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice,” OpenAI stated, before adding that it couldn’t release the identity attached to the voice for privacy reasons.
Simple enough, right? Maybe the professional actress OpenAI used just sounds kind of similar to that of ScarJo. But Johansson herself seems to think that there was intent, after Altman’s tweet, and so does everybody else. The Washington Post wrote, “At the very least, this was boneheaded. OpenAI ticked off a famous person who has already had artificial intelligence used against her. And Altman seemed to say that he wanted ‘Her’ while his company insists it didn’t copy the her behind ‘Her.’”
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Johansson’s fight against Big Tech may not be the most consequential case when it comes to AI technology, but having a Hollywood celebrity will certainly bring some attention to it. If she does decide to sue, her complaint will be added to a long list of lawsuits the company is currently embroiled in, including one with Elon Musk, in which the billionaire claims that OpenAI has “abandoned its mission by pursuing profit over its stated mission of delivering artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity.”
Whatever happens, maybe we should use this whole thing as a warning sign and stop mimicking the dystopia of science fiction movies.
Kara Kennedy is a freelance writer living in Washington, D.C.