OpenAI is defending itself against accusations that it cloned Scarlett Johansson’s voice for the voice of its AI-powered chatbot, Sky. A new report by the Washington Post has revealed that the AI firm held a casting last year and hired an actress for the part. The documents shared by the company state that the actress had been hired months before OpenAI chief Sam Altman contacted Johansson.
The report also stated that the casting call wasn’t looking for “clone of actress Scarlett Johansson” and initial voice test recordings of the unnamed actress showed that her own “natural voice sounds identical to the AI-generated Sky voice.” Further, the agent for the actress who has been granted anonymity to protect her privacy confirmed to The Post that she wasn’t asked to imitate either Johansson or her character in the sci-fi film Her, which Johansson alleges Sky sounds like.
But the company did admit to reaching out to Johansson after the casting was done to replace the voice actress. Altman spoke to Ars Technica saying they “never intended” Sky to sound like Johansson but instead did want her to eventually do it so the chatbot could resonate with a wider audience.
“We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better,” Altman’s statement said.
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While Johansson hasn’t clarified whether she wants to sue OpenAI yet, she did claim that the “similarity was intentional” despite her not licensing her voice to Altman who tweeted the word ‘her’ while announcing the release.
Johansson has been backed by SAG-AFTRA, an influential body that represents television and radio artists, that has said it will be removing ‘Sky’ from its products.
Like all AI companies, OpenAI too is already under scrutiny for using copyright content without permission for training their AI models.
