OpenAI Simulate Scarlett Johansson's Voice Without Permission

Uploaded on 2024-05-25 in TECHNOLOGY-Key Areas-Artificial Intelligence, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

OpenAI's apparent homage to the movie "Her" featuring the voice likeness of Scarlett Johansson has provoked loud criticism against Artificial Intelligence (AI) across Hollywood, where a long running dispute about payments to performers portrayed using the technology has been only recently ben settled.

Now, the Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson has said she was "shocked" and "angered" after OpenAI allegedly recreated her voice without her consent for a new ChatGPT system.

The actress personally criticised the company's CEO Sam Altman for insinuating she was the voice named 'Sky' by posting the word "her" on X, a reference to a film where she voiced an AI which a human fell in love with.

Johansson says that OpenAI used an "eerily similar" voice to hers for their new GPT-4o chatbot despite having declined the company's request to provide her voice.

In a statement, Johansson says that she has now been “forced to hire legal counsel” and has sent two letters to OpenAI inquiring how the soundalike ChatGPT voice, known as Sky, was made. Sky is one of several synthetic voices that OpenAI gave ChatGPT last September, but at last week’s event it displayed a lifelike intonation with emotional cues.

The demo saw a version of ChatGPT powered by a new AI model called GPT-4o appear to flirt with an OpenAI engineer in a way that many viewers found reminiscent of Johansson’s performance in Her. “Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system,” Johansson writes. She says that Altman contacted her agent as recently as two days before the company first demoed the ChatGPT voice asking for her to reconsider.

Johansson says she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” over how “eerily similar” the voice of Sky sounded to herself. OpenAI said the voice comes from another actor who they hired who is speaking in their normal speaking voice. The company declined to share the actor’s name, citing privacy concerns.

Joanne Jang, who leads AI model behaviour for OpenAI, said that the company selected actors who were eager to work on an AI product. She played the actors a sample AI version of their voice to demonstrate how the technology sounds. Jang said she also “gave them an out” if they were uncomfortable with the surreal job of being a voice for ChatGPT.

But while many hear an eerie resemblance between “Sky” and Johansson’s “Her” character, an actress was hired in June to create the Sky voice, months before Altman contacted Johansson, according to documents, recordings, casting directors and the actress’s agent. The voice of Sky has been available since OpenAI launched ChatGPT’s voice mode last September. But the connection to Johansson wasn’t as clear until recently when OpenAI demoed an updated AI model that made the voice more expressive or they used a female double.

Voice imitation is a relatively new technology that has progressed quickly in recent years, allowing people to use software to imitate celebrities and personalities including US President Joe Biden. The rapid proliferation of the technology has led to concerns around disinformation, such as when one fake Biden voice was used in a robocall attempt to mislead New Hampshire primary voters.

The New York Times sued OpenAI at the end of last year over allegations that it unlawfully used the newspaper's articles to train and create ChatGPT. The suit alleged that the AI text model now competes with the newspaper as a source of reliable information and threatens the ability of the organisation to provide such a service.

NPR | The Verge | NBC | Washington Post | Wired | Sky | BBC | Reuters |

Image: Ideogram

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