OpenAI pauses ChatGPT voice resembling Scarlett Johansson

OpenAI on Monday said that it is pulling one of its latest ChatGPT 4o voices over its resemblance to the voice of actor Scarlett Johansson.

The new artificial intelligence model’s demo was released last week, capable of realistic voice conversation and able to interact across text and image.

Several voices are available in the latest ChatGPT mode, however, one of them title Sky, caught the attention of the users over its suspicious similarity to the voice of actor Scarlett Johansson, who portrayed the voice of an emotive AI in the 2013 film titled Her, The Verge reported.

After several reported the resemblance of the voice to the actor’s voice, OpenAI announced “pausing” the use of the Sky voice.

“We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky,” the company said in a statement. “We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.”

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While acknowledging people’s concerns, the company said that it ran an extensive casting process for the voices used in the model.

“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 said in a blog post.

However, the company refused to disclose the identity of the actor to protect their privacy.

It is pertinent to mention that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X after the demo, “her,” in what appeared to be a reference to the so named 2013 film by Spike Jonze about a man falling in love with his AI assistant, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.