Scarlett Johansson, the Hollywood star taking on OpenAI

In the 2013 film Her, a lonely, soon-to-be divorced Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) downloads a new AI-powered operating system that its creator, Elements Software, advertises as “an intuitive entity that listens to you, understands you and knows you”. 

It is exactly what the despondent Twombly is craving. Settling in front of his home computer, he selects a female voice for his digital assistant and is immediately greeted by a bubbly alto tinged with an irresistible rasp. “Hello, I’m here,” says Samantha, voiced by the actor Scarlett Johansson. He is smitten, and the two soon begin a romantic relationship.  

Samantha’s voice appears to have also left a deep impression on Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, an $86bn artificial intelligence start-up whose ambitions seem to be every bit as lofty as those of the fictional Elements Software.  

This week, Johansson claimed that after declining Altman’s offer to provide the voice for his company’s ChatGPT chatbot last September, OpenAI pushed ahead with a new version called Sky that featured a voice so similar to hers, even her closest friends could not tell the difference.

“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,” Johansson wrote in a statement released on Monday. 

After receiving legal notices from Johansson’s team, Altman removed the voice from Sky and apologised to the actor, saying the voice was not intended to resemble hers. The shockwaves are still reverberating in Hollywood and beyond. 

Despite winning protections from AI in last year’s strikes, actors remain fearful that digital copies of their voices and likenesses will be used without their permission — depriving them of control over their careers and their income. If anything, the episode will deepen their convictions that the mantra of many tech companies — “move fast and break things” — is coming to disrupt the entertainment industry.  

Johansson, the star of critically acclaimed films such as Lost in Translation and billion-dollar grossing Marvel blockbusters, did not relish the idea of confronting OpenAI. But she knew that her status could draw attention to an issue that also affects others in the industry who have less leverage, say people who have worked with her. 

It is a role she has played before. In 2021, the actor made headlines when she took on Disney over another issue tied to a disruptive technology: streaming. She accused the most powerful company in Hollywood of breaching its contract by releasing Black Widow on its streaming service at the same time as the film debuted in cinemas — a move that would juice Disney’s stock price and streaming subscriber numbers but depress her bonus.

Disney fired back at Johansson, accusing the actor of “callous disregard” for the pandemic. After a bitter and public fight, she was awarded a multimillion dollar payout. 

Johansson was born and raised in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, in what she described as “a middle-income housing development” filled with children whose parents were artists. Her father is a Danish architect while her mother is a producer. 

Growing up, she loved old Hollywood movies and admired actors from Judy Garland to Winona Ryder. She started acting early on, appearing in off-Broadway plays before landing her first film role at age 8 in Rob Reiner’s North. 

Her voice, which would later become an asset, was a liability when it came to booking commercials as a child actor. “I sounded like a whiskey-drinking, chain-smoking fool. Wasn’t going to sell Jell-O with that voice, you know?”

Johansson’s big break came at 19 when Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, which she starred in, was released. It was the start of a long and successful arc that has made the now-39-year-old one of the highest-grossing actors ever.

Johansson is married to Saturday Night Live comedian Colin Jost, whom she met while hosting the late-night show. She has two children — a son with Jost, and a daughter from a previous marriage. 

The star has expressed frustration with being typecast for her looks. “I was kind of being groomed, in a way, to be this what you call a bombshell-type actor. I was playing the other woman and the object of desire and I suddenly found myself cornered in this place”. 

If she felt cornered by the OpenAI situation, she now has the clout to push back. Flanked by her powerful agent, CAA chief Bryan Lourd, and attorney John Berlinski, she has shone a light on a vexing issue in Hollywood and across the creative industries. It is unclear whether her team will pursue legal action. The OpenAI team, meanwhile, say they had more than 400 submissions from actors and chose five voices, including the one for the role of Sky, before Altman approached Johansson in September 2023 “to discuss her potential involvement as a sixth voice actor for ChatGPT”.

There have been similar disputes in the pre-digital era, legal scholars say, most notably the case brought by Bette Midler against the Ford Motor Company. In that instance, a Midler impersonator was hired for an advertisement after the singer turned down the job. A court ruled for Midler on the grounds that her distinctive voice was protected from unauthorised use.

This cannot be the result Altman was hoping for. The AI entrepreneur made no secret of his love of the film that gave Johansson’s voice a starring role. After the new version of ChatGPT debuted, he took to X to post a one-word message to his followers: Her.  

christopher.grimes@ft.com, anna.nicolaou@ft.com