OpenAI is really, really trying to show it didn't copy Scarlett Johansson's voice

Scarlett Johansson was not pleased by OpenAI's voice chat.

NBC

• OpenAI's "Sky" voice was not created to sound like Scarlett Johansson, The Washington Post reported.
• The agent for the actor who voiced "Sky" told the outlet Johansson was never mentioned by OpenAI.
• Johansson said the bot's voice was "eerily similar" to her own, despite declining to be involved.

ChatGPT's "Sky" voice was never explicitly intended to sound like Scarlett Johansson, according to documents that OpenAI shared with The Washington Post.

The company issued a casting call for voices last year and hired an actor to create the voice six months before OpenAI CEO first contacted Johansson, the report said.

The Post reviewed documents and recordings provided by OpenAI and spoke to casting directors and the actor's agent.

Johansson's agent told the outlet that the actor was never mentioned by OpenAI or CEO Sam Altman during the process.

OpenAI has been under fire from Johansson since the launch of its new GPT-4o model, a demonstration of which heavily featured the "Sky" voice.

Many were quick to draw a connection between the tone of the human-like voice and Johansson's character in the 2013 Spike Jonze film "Her."

Sam Altman added fuel to the fire by appearing to reference the similarity, posting "her" during the demo.

A week after the launch, Johansson released a statement saying she was "shocked" and "angered" by the voice that sounded "eerily similar" to her own. She said she'd declined a previous offer from Altman to voice the chatbot.

Johansson hired legal counsel, who asked OpenAI to explain how the voice of Sky was made. The actor said the company then "reluctantly" agreed to take down the voice.

"Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents," the company said in the post.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

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