Scarlett Johansson is speaking out. In a statement to ET, Johansson, 39, through her rep, accused Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, of recreating her voice for his company's ChatGPT after she turned down the opportunity to voice the chatbot.
"Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system," Johansson's statement read. "He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people."
"After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer," the statement continued. "Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named 'Sky' sounded like me."
Upon hearing the demo, Johansson said she "was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference."
"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 statement continued, alluding to the 2013 film, Her.
Days before the demo's release, Johansson claimed in her statement, "Mr. Altman contacted my agent, asking me to reconsider. Before we could connect, the system was out there."
"As a result of their actions, I was forced to hire legal counsel, who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAI, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process by which they created the 'Sky' voice," the statement read. "Consequently, OpenAI reluctantly agreed to take down the 'Sky' voice."
Johansson's statement concluded with a general statement about the emergence of AI.
"In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity," the statement read. "I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected."
After Johansson's statement, which was first obtained by NPR, Altman addressed the situation in a statement to The Verge.
"The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson's, and it was never intended to resemble hers," he said. "We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky's voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn't communicate better."
Prior to Johansson's statement, her husband, Colin Jost, joked about the situation. The moment came during his joke swap with Michael Che on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, in which each man reads jokes that the other wrote without reading them beforehand.
"ChatGPT has released a new voice assistant feature inspired by Scarlett Johansson's AI character in Her," a nervous Jost said during the show's "Weekend Update" segment. "Which I've never bothered to watch, because without that body what's the point of listening?"
Watch the video below for more on Johansson and Jost.
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