OpenAI pulls out Scarlett Johansson soundalike Sky voice from ChatGPT

Following an uproar and after users said that it sounded too much like Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson, OpenAI has pulled the Sky voice from ChatGPT’s voice feature. Users who selected Sky on ChatGPT were redirected to another voice, called Juniper.

The voices are also part of OpenAI’s updated GPT-4o, which debuted earlier this month and can reply to verbal questions from users with an audio response.

The company, in its defence said in a blogpost that the voice, one of five available on ChatGPT, was from an actress and was not chosen to be an “imitation” of Johansson.

Johansson, who played a fictional virtual assistant in the film Her (about a man who falls in love with an AI system), has said she was left "shocked" and "angered" after OpenAI launched a chatbot with an "eerily similar" voice to her own. The actress said she had previously turned down an approach by the company to voice its new chatbot, which reads text aloud to users.

Despite OpenAI’s denial, Johansson has accused the company, and its founder Sam Altman, of deliberately copying her voice.

“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," she wrote.

"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."

The actress further claimed that two days before the Sky chatbot was released, Altman contacted her agent, urging Johansson to reconsider her initial refusal to cooperate with the company.