Scarlett Johansson has issued a statement⁸ sharing her shock and anger at the new ChatGPT voice that sounds like her.

Recap: OpenAI demoed a version of their real-time voice assistant on 13th May and the voice (dubbed Sky) sounds too much like Scarlett Johansson’s voice in the movie HER.

On 20th May, OpenAI paused the usage of Sky’s voice² in ChatGPT and explained their process of selecting voice actors for preset voices in ChatGPT.

Now, Scarlett Johansson is not happy with OpenAI, and she's not holding back. NPR released her statement⁴ on this ChatGPT voice that sounds eerily like her.

According to the statement, Sam Altman himself reached out to ScarJo for her voice last September, but she turned him down. She claims OpenAI created a similar-sounding version without her consent and Sam boasted the same by tweeting⁵ HER.

For now, she is demanding explanations and hasn’t yet sued OpenAI. OpenAI denies that the similarity was intentional and the voice actors were hired before reaching out to Scarlett. I’m stealing Dan Shipper’s⁹ words here: “This is a very silly own goal from OpenAI.”