After a tumultuous weekend following the departure of key safety executives and engineers, OpenAI faced another controversy: it reportedly paused the voice that sounded like Scarlett-Johansson’s AI voice in the movie Her, a reference that even Sam Altman tweeted about upon the release of GPT-4o. (Her is Altman’s favorite movie.)
For comparison, here’s what the AI generated voice Sky sounds like:
In a blog post, OpenAI stated: “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. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.” Variety reported a pause in the voice that sounds like Scar-Jo’s voice in Her, which OpenAI mentioned in its tweet above.