On May 20, OpenAI announced that they were “hearing questions” about the “Sky” voice, one of five voices available for its chatbot on the X platform, and were trying to resolve them. However, questions were raised after well-known actress Scarlett Johansson made a statement about OpenAI and her interaction with CEO and co-founder Sam Altman.

The actor said that he was offered the opportunity by Altman to do voice-over work for the ChatGPT 4.0 voice model. Johansson stated that she rejected the offer and then after Sky’s launch, friends and family told her that the voice sounded too much like hers.

“When I heard the demo, I was shocked, outraged, and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would try to use a voice so eerily similar to mine that even my closest friends and news organizations could not distinguish it.”

Johansson said Altman contacted her agent two days before the release and asked for reconsideration. Due to the current situation, Johansson said she has hired a legal team and underlined the need to “preserve our own likeness” at a time when “deepfakes” are becoming increasingly common.

In its response, OpenAI provided a detailed explanation of how they select and assign voice actors for ChatGPT voices. The company emphasized that Johansson was not impersonated.

“We believe that AI voices should not deliberately imitate the distinctive voices of celebrities – Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson, but rather that of a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.”

OpenAI claims to offer each player a vision for “human-AI voice interactions and OpenAI,” but also discuss the technology’s capabilities, limitations, and risks involved.

In his statement regarding the incident, Altman said that Sky’s resemblance to Johansson was not intentional.

However, there is also a situation that is not in Altman’s favor. The fact that he shared the word “ona” on X on May 13.

Internet sleuths link it to the 2013 romantic sci-fi film “Her,” which tells the story of a man who falls in love with an artificial intelligence system voiced by Johansson. This also isn’t the first time the player has encountered unwanted use of AI.

Seven months ago, she filed a lawsuit against another AI company for using her likeness without permission. Johansson is not alone in the fight against “deepfakes”. This issue was one of the key issues discussed during the SAG-AFTRA union strikes in Hollywood last year.

Hollywood actors are suing studios over the studios’ use of artificial intelligence to clone and repurpose their likenesses for use in new content in the future as they wish.

Apart from this, YouTube phenomenon Mr. Public figures from Beast to actor Tom Hanks and entrepreneur Elon Musk have become targets of AI-generated impersonation scams over the past year.

However, Johansson is not the only person who has been treated unfairly by the use of their voices in artificial intelligence. For example, the voice behind Apple’s iconic Siri assistant belonged to a woman who didn’t realize she was involved.

Susan Bennett said she recorded her voice for the company ScanSoft in 2005. Apple later purchased these recordings and used them for Siri.

Bennett said in an interview that he received no payment or recognition from Apple. Initially, she was concerned that the widespread use of her voice would negatively impact her ability to find other work.