In a recent interview, actress Scarlett Johansson spoke out about her reasons for turning down an offer to be the voice of OpenAI’s chatbot, after she was approached by the company’s CEO last year.
The 39-year-old actress previously voiced the character of an artificial intelligence (AI) virtual assistant in the 2013 movie “Her,” but declined the offer to voice the ChatGPT 4.0 system by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, saying it was “not for her.”
“I felt I did not want to be at the forefront of that. I just felt it went against my core values,” she told the New York Times.
The actress, who is also the mother of two young children, said that her children’s reaction had she agreed to the job offer, played a major role in her decision.
“I also felt for my children it would be strange. I try to be mindful of them,” she said during the interview. Moreover, she largely kept Mr. Altman’s job offer under wraps, and only told her husband about it.
Ms. Johansson went on to express concerns about the future implications of AI technology, which she described as “nebulous.”
In the same interview, Ms. Johansson also pointed out the potential dangers of deepfakes and the associated dangers of this technology.
“It’s like this dark wormhole you can never climb your way out of. Once you try to take something down in one area, it pops up somewhere else. There are other countries that have different legislation and rules,” the actress said.
ChatGPT Controversy
In May, OpenAI launched the company’s ChatGPT, which featured a voice called “Sky.”
Sky’s voice, however, bore an uncanny resemblance to that of Ms. Johansson, as was pointed out by many observers. Moreover, it was also followed by a post from Mr. Altman on social media platform X the same day, which simply read “her.”
Ms. Johansson issued a statement in response, calling out what she perceived to be plagiarism by Mr. Altman.
“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,” Ms. Johansson’s stated.
She said her anger was exacerbated by the fact that she inadvertently was pulled into a scenario she had avoided being a part of, after receiving tons of messages from the public.
Ms. Johansson’s statement also included a reference to two letters, which were sent by legal representatives of the actress, asking the company to explain how OpenAI generated the personal assistant’s voice.
NTD has reached out to OpenAI for comment on the matter but did not receive a reply prior to publication.
In a statement issued to FOX Business, Mr. Altman wrote that the voice used for the personal assistant is not that of Ms. Johansson, and apologized for the lack of adequate communication on the matter.
NTD has requested confirmation of the statement in the email sent to OpenAI.
“The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers. 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,” the statement said, as per Fox News.
Reuters contributed to this article.