Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 21
Entertainment Desk: 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.
“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,” Johansson’s 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.”
