Scarlett Johansson reacts to ChatGPT voice ‘eerily similar’ to hers

Hollywood actor Scarlett Johansson has expressed shock and disbelief over the use of a voice similar to hers in OpenAI‘s latest ChatGPT 4o.

In a statement on Tuesday, Johansson revealed that OpenAI had asked her lend voice for ChatGPT, however, she declined to give her voice for the artificial intelligence model’s demo released last week, The Verge reported.

According to the Her actor, the company created a voice that sounded just like her despite her refusal to do so.

Scarlett Johansson said that she has hired legal counsel and sent two letters to OpenAI to know how Sky voice, that sounded like her, was made.

“Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system,” said the actor.

Later, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asserted that the voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers.

“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,” he said in a statement.

Johansson expressed shock, angered, saying that she was in disbelief over how “eerily similar” the voice of Sky sounded to herself.

A day earlier, OpenAI said that it was pulling Sky voice owing to complaints of its resemblance to the voice of the actor.

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.

“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.