Scarlett Johansson told OpenAI not to use her voice — and it did anyway

Scarlett Johansson says that OpenAI asked her to be the voice behind ChatGPT — but that when she declined, the company went ahead and created a voice that sounded just like her. In a statement to NPR, 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.

“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.

Altman has made it clear that he admires Johansson’s work. He’s said that Her, which features Johansson as an AI voice assistant, is his favorite film; after the ChatGPT event last week, he posted the word “her,” seemingly in reference to the voice demo the company presented, which featured an assistant that sounded just like Johansson.

OpenAI said this morning that it was pulling the voice of Sky in order to address questions around “how we chose the voices in ChatGPT.” The Verge has reached out to both OpenAI and Johansson for comment.

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

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 last week, when OpenAI demoed an updated AI model that made the voice more expressive. The demo had an uncanny similarity to Johansson’s assistant in Her, leading to headlines and even a Saturday Night Live joke about the comparison.