ChatGPT: Scarlett Johansson “furious” at chatbot imitation

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Scarlett Johansson 'shocked' by AI chatbot imitation

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption, Scarlett Johansson

  • author, Matt Murphy
  • role, BBC News

Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson said she was “shocked” and “angered” by OpenAI's launch of a chatbot that sounds “eerie” like her.

The actress said she had previously turned down the company's offer to voice its new chatbot, which reads texts to users.

When the new model debuted last week, commentators were quick to compare the voice of the chatbot, “Sky,” to Johansson's in the 2013 film “Her.”

OpenAI said on Monday it was removing the audio, but insisted it was not intended to “mimic” Star.

But in a statement seen by the BBC on Monday evening, Johansson accused the company and its founder Sam Altman of deliberately copying her voice.

“When I heard the released demos, I was shocked, outraged, and in disbelief that Mr. Altman was pursuing a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine,” she wrote.

“Altman hinted that the similarity was intentional, tweeting just the word 'her' – a reference to a film in which I voiced Samantha, a chat system that develops rapport with humans.”

In the 2013 film “Her,” set in the near future, Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with the device's operating system, voiced by Johansson.

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The two-time Oscar-nominated actress said Altman first approached her about voicing the new chatbot in September.

“[Mr Altman] “He told me he felt that my being a voice in the system could help bridge the gap between tech companies and creators and make consumers more comfortable with big changes involving humans and AI,” Johansson wrote.

“He said he felt my voice would bring comfort to people.”

But she ultimately turned down the offer for personal reasons, she said.

Two days before Sky's chatbot was released, Altman contacted Johansson's representatives to urge her to reconsider her initial refusal to cooperate with the company, she added.

The actress added that she was forced to hire a lawyer and said she sent two legal documents to the company seeking clarification on how the voice was created.

“At a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and protecting our own likeness, our own work, and our own identities, I believe these are questions that need to be fully clarified,” she wrote.

In a statement shared with the BBC by OpenAI, Altman denied that the company had attempted to imitate Johansson's voice.

“Sky's voice is not Scarlett Johansson's, nor was I attempting to imitate her,” he wrote.

“We cast the voice actor for Skye before contacting Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused the use of Skye's voice in our products. We apologize to Ms. Johansson for not communicating more appropriately.”

Meanwhile, the company said in a post on its Twitter account that it was “in the process of pausing” the audio while it answers questions about how it was selected.

OpenAI said in a blog post that the five voices its chatbot uses were sampled from voice actors it partners with.

This comes just six months after actors agreed to end a strike that had frozen the entertainment industry amid calls for better pay and safeguards against the use of AI.

Johansson was involved in a labor dispute last year that was partly about how film studios use AI to imitate actors' faces and voices.

“Given the growing distrust of AI and concerns about its potential harms, using someone else's voice without their permission feels particularly invasive,” said Dan Stein, president of AI voice licensing company Voice Swap.

“Whether OpenAI trained the new Sky voice on Scarlett Johansson's voice or used a lookalike, the fact remains that she denied permission and her identity was misused.

“If one of the most prominent companies in the space were to act in this way, it would set a dangerous precedent on copyright and consent.”

OpenAI has been fighting various legal challenges over how it uses copyrighted information available online.

In December, The New York Times announced it planned to file a lawsuit against the company over allegations that it had used “millions” of articles published by the publication to train its ChatGPT AI model.

Also in September, authors George R.R. Martin and John Grisham announced plans to sue over allegations of copyright infringement in the system's training.





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