OpenAI has decided to discontinue the Sky voice from ChatGPT following feedback from users who felt it resembled Scarlett Johansson. In a Monday announcement, the company revealed this decision, and Johansson herself issued a statement, mentioning that she had engaged legal counsel to investigate the development process of the Sky voice. After its usage in a demo of the new GPT-4o model last week, OpenAI has now put Sky on hold.
“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,” the company stated in its blog post.
Did ChatGPT copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice?
Last week, a video of the demo circulated widely on social media, with many users pointing out the voice’s resemblance to Johansson’s. Some users ridiculed the voice for its flirtatious tone, while others described it as catering to a male fantasy.
Say hello to GPT-4o, our new flagship model which can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time: https://t.co/MYHZB79UqN
Text and image input rolling out today in API and ChatGPT with voice and video in the coming weeks. pic.twitter.com/uuthKZyzYx
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 13, 2024
The seductive voice has been likened to Johansson’s role in the 2013 movie “Her,” where she provides the voice for a sensuous virtual assistant. In the film, Joaquin Phoenix’s character ultimately falls in love with this AI companion.
While OpenAI has not officially compared Sky’s voice to Johansson’s, CEO Sam Altman subtly referenced the similarity by tweeting the word “Her” after the company’s event.
her
— Sam Altman (@sama) May 13, 2024
Sky is removed from the web version of ChatGPT
We can still preview and use the Sky voice on the Android version of ChatGPT. However, the web version currently does not offer this option.
Although not all features of GPT-4o are available to everyone yet, we still have the option to choose from five different ChatGPT voices for interaction on mobile. While these interactions are not in real-time, they do provide a good idea of the capabilities. OpenAI announced the discontinuation of the Sky voice, but as of this writing, I am still able to use it.
All ChatGPT voices
Below, you can listen to the Sky voice, and all other options called Cove, Ember, Juniper, and Breeze. Who knows, maybe the other voices will also remind you of a celebrity!
Sky:
Cove:
Ember:
Juniper:
Breeze:
Scarlett Johansson’s statement
On Monday, Johansson issued a statement indicating that OpenAI had contacted her in September regarding the possibility of providing the voice.
Scarlett Johansson’s statement reads as follows:
“Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and A.I. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people. After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ‘Sky’ sounded like me.
“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference. Mr. Altman even insinuated that the similarity was intentional, tweeting a single word, ‘her’ — a reference to the film in which I voiced a chat system, Samantha, who forms an intimate relationship with a human.
“Two days before the ChatGPT 4.0 demo was released, Mr. Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there. As a result of their actions, I was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAI, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process by which they created the ‘Sky’ voice. Consequently, OpenAI reluctantly agreed to take down the ‘Sky’ voice.
“In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”
Featured image credit: Eray Eliaçık
