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Well, that statement lays out a damning timeline: - OpenAI approached Scarlett last fall, and she refused. - Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted

Well, that statement lays out a damning timeline: - OpenAI approached Scarlett last fall, and she refused. - Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted her agent and asked that she reconsider. (Two days! This means they already had everything they needed to ship the product with Scarlett’s cloned voice.) - Not receiving a response, OpenAI demos the product anyway, with Sam tweeting “her” in reference to Scarlett’s film. - When Scarlett’s counsel asked for an explanation of how the “Sky” voice was created, OpenAI yanked the voice from their product line. Perhaps Sam’s next tweet should read “red-handed”.

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MrMetlHed 2y ago
Would love to see this get far enough for discovery to see how that all played out behind the scenes.
- hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago
  They’ll settle as soon as they figure that out. Idiot tax.
  - ml-anon 2y ago
    She has no incentive to settle and actually could win big by being the figurehead of the creative industry against AI. It’s understandable why she accepted a settlement from Disney, but there’s no reason why she should settle with a random startup that has no other influence on her employability in Hollywood.
    - MrMetlHed 2y ago
      And plenty of her peers have been fighting against AI content harvesting in their recent contract negotiations[1]. 1. https://apnews.com/article/hollywood-ai-strike-wga-artificial-intelligence-39ab72582c3a15f77510c9c30a45ffc8 https://apnews.com/article/hollywood-ai-strike-wga-artificia...
    - hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago
      OpenAI will settle, not sure how you read that in reverse.
      - eurleif 2y ago
        Settling isn't unilateral. OpenAI can offer to settle, but if she doesn't accept, there will be no settlement.
        hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago
        I also said “they” instead of “her”, I’m confused as to why anybody misinterpreted what I said.
        ml-anon 2y ago
        Everyone knows what you meant. But it’s not up to them to “settle”. If she brings forward a formal complaint they can offer to but she has no obligation or incentive to accept. This may turn out to be something they can’t just buy their way out of with no other consequences.
  - bradchris 2y ago
    She has a net worth of $100-$200m dollars. I doubt she wants $5-10m more. OpenAI cannot hurt her standing in the industry— in fact, “ScarJo takes on Big Tech and wins”, in an era after the Hollywood unions called a strike and won protections from studios using generative AI for exactly this scenario, is ironically probably one of the best thing she can do for her image right now. She is also one of the most litigious actresses in the industry, taking on Disney and winning what’s estimated to be 8 figures. Good luck OpenAI!
nickthegreek 2y ago
This statement from scarlet really changed my perspective. I use and loved the Sky voice and I did feel it sounded a little like her, but moreover it was the best of their voice offerings. I was mad when they removed it. But now I’m mad it was ever there to begin with. This timeline makes it clear that this wasn’t a coincidence and maybe not even a hiring of an impressionist (which is where things get a little more wishy washy for me).
- ekam 2y ago
  Same here and that voice really was the only good one. I don't know why they don't bring the voices from their API over, which are all much better, like Nova or Shimmer (https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text-to-speech https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text-to-speech)
  - sanxiyn 2y ago
    I think because it is not text-to-speech. It probably isn't simple to transfer.
    - zwily 2y ago
      The previous chatgpt voice mode uses text to speech, and has different voices than the OpenAI API. Seemed weird to me too.
- crimsoneer 2y ago
  But it's clearly not her voice right? The version that's been on the app for a year just isn't. Like, it clearly intending to be slightly reminiscent of her, but it's also very clearly not. Are we seriously saying we can't make voices that are similar to celebrities, when not using their actual voice?
  - gedy 2y ago
    Normally I'd agree if this were some vague "artist style", but this was clearly an attempt to duplicate a living person, a media celebrity no less.
npunt 2y ago
When people cheat on (relatively) small things, it's usually an indication they'll cheat on big things too
- iosjunkie 2y ago
  I would love to see the providence of their training data.
  - ojbyrne 2y ago
    I think you want the word “provenance.”
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    We need laws where companies are forced to reveal source of personal data. Like how did XYZ company get my contact info to spam me?
- nwoli 2y ago
  OpenAI only hires and is built on the culture that data and copyright is somehow free for the taking, otherwise they would have zero ways to make a profit or “build agi”
- slg 2y ago
  Which is what makes me wonder if this might grow into a galvanizing event for the pro-creator protests against these AI models and companies. What happened here isn't particularly unique to voices or even Scarlett Johansson, it is just how these companies and their products operate in general.
  - bakuninsbart 2y ago
    I think the only way for these protests to get really tangible results is in case we reach a ceiling in LLM capabilities. The technology in its current trajectory is simply too valuable both in economic and military applications to pull out of, and "overregulation" can be easily swatted citing national security concerns in regards to China. As far as I know, China has significantly stricter data and privacy regulations than the US when it comes to the private sector, but these probably count for little when it comes to the PLA.
famouswaffles 2y ago
- Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted her agent and asked that she reconsider. (Two days! This means they already had everything they needed to ship the product with Scarlett’s cloned voice.) New voice mode is a speech predicting transformer. "Voice Cloning" could be as simple as appending a sample of the voice to the context and instructing it to imitate it.
- jprete 2y ago
  If they really did that then (A) it's not much better (B) they didn't even wait for an answer from Johansson (C) it's extraordinarily reckless to go from zero to big-launch feature in less than two days.
  - famouswaffles 2y ago
    >(A) it's not much better OP seems to be on the "They secretly trained on her voice" train. The only reason "Two Days!" would be damning is if a finetune was in order to replicate ScarJo's voice. In that sense, it's much better. >(C) it's extraordinarily reckless to go from zero to big-launch feature in less than two days. Open AI have launched nothing. There's no date for new voice mode other than, "alpha testing in the coming weeks to plus users". No-one has access to it yet.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      I'm really confused by this claim. How is it that so many people tried this Sky voice if no one has access yet?
      - famouswaffles 2y ago
        There is a voice mode in the GPT app that's been out (even for free users) for nearly a year now. There are a couple voices to chooses from and sky was one of them. This mode works entirely differently from what Open AI demoed a few days ago (the new voice mode) but both seem to utilize the same base sky voice. All this uproar is from the demos of new sky which sounds like old sky but is a lot more emotive, laughs, a bit flirty etc.
Havoc 2y ago
> OpenAI yanked the voice from their product line. Still live for me? Unless the Sky I’m getting is a different one?
- cjbillington 2y ago
  It is. They didn't remove the UI option, they just swapped it out under the hood for the "juniper" voice.
__loam 2y ago
The tweet is so fucking brazen lol
- RCitronsBroker 2y ago
  yeah, that was just poking the hornets nest. Even if i wasn’t mad enough to make a stink over my voice before, plausible deniability and all, that would’ve sealed the deal for me.
sangupta 2y ago
With the recent departures at OpenAI it seems that all ethics and morals are going down the drain and OpenAI becoming the big-bully.
- hyperhopper 2y ago
  There were never any. None of the models or code are actually open. It claims to be a nonprofit but is effectively a for profit company pulling the strings of a nonprofit just to avoid taxes.
  - sangupta 2y ago
    I guess you are right. The era of "don't be evil" if there ever was one, is now long gone and forgotten.
  - lambdaxyzw 2y ago
    >There were never any. This is a bit unfair. Some people left OpenAI on the ground of ethics, because they were unsatisfied with how this supposed nonprofit operates. The ethics was there, but OpenAI got rid of it.
rvz 2y ago
Almost as if they knew that they cloned her voice without her permission. Don't hear any arguments on how this is fair-use. (It isn't) Why? Because everyone (including OpenAI) knows it clearly isn't fair-use even after pulling the voice.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Don't here any arguments on how this is fair-use. > Why? Because it's a right of personality issue, not copyright, and there is no fair use exception (the definition of the tort is already limited to a subset of commercial use which makes the Constitutional limitation that fair use addresses in copyright not relevant, and there is no statutory fair use exception to liability under the right of personality.)
  - kragen 2y ago
    you're doing god's work; ignorance is never-ending
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
fakedang 2y ago
Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
I wouldn't necessarily call that damning. "Soundalikes" are very common in the ad industry. For example, a car company approached the band sigur ros to include some of their music in a car commercial. Sigur ros declined. A few months later the commercial airs with a song that sounds like an unreleased sigur ros song, but really they just paid a composer to make something that sounds like sigur ros, but isn't. So maybe openai just had a random lady with a voice similar to Scarlett so the recording. Taking down the voice could just be concern for bad press, or trying to avoid lawsuits regardless of whether you think you are in the right or not. Per this* CNN article: > Johansson said she hired legal counsel, and said OpenAI “reluctantly agreed” to take down the “Sky” voice after her counsel sent Altman two letters. So, Johansson's lawyers probably said something like "I'll sue your pants off if you don't take it down". And then they took it down. You can't use that as evidence that they are guilty. It could just as easily be the case that they didn't want to go to court over this even if they thought they were legally above board. * https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/tech/openai-pausing-flirty-chatgpt-voice/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/tech/openai-pausing-flirty-ch...
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > I wouldn't necessarily call that damning. "Soundalikes" are very common in the ad industry. As are disclaimers that celebrity voices are impersonated when there is additional context which makes it likely that the voice would be considered something other than a mere soundalike, like direct reference to a work in which the impersonated celebrity was involved as part of the same publicity campaign. And liability for commercial voice appropriation, even by impersonation, is established law in some jurisdictions, including California.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    The most famous case of voice appropriation was Midler vs Ford, which involved Ford paying a Midler impersonator to perform a well known Midler song, creating the impression that it was actually Bette. Where are the signs or symbols tying Scarlett to the openAI voice? I don't think a single word, contextless message on a separate platform that 99% of openAI users will not see is significant enough to form that connection in users heads.
minimaxir 2y ago
Given the timeline, I’m still baffled Sam Altman tweeted “her.” That just makes plausible deniability go away for a random shitpost.
- grumple 2y ago
  Many people are addicted to attention.
- prepend 2y ago
  I thought it was about functionality more than the specific voice.
  - minimaxir 2y ago
    I suspect that'll be OpenAI's defense.
    - krisoft 2y ago
      That is what discovery is for. If this would ever get to that phase. Someone from OpenAi hired the agency who hired the voice talent (or talents) for the voice data. They sent them a brief explaining what they are looking for, followed by a metric ton of correspondence over samples and contracts and such. If anywhere during those written communications anyone wrote “we are looking for a ScarlettJ imitator”, or words to that effect, that is not good for OpenAI. Similarly if they were selecting between options and someone wrote that one sample is more Johansson than an other. Or if anyone at any point asked if they should clear the rights to the voice with Johansson. Those are the discovery findings which can sink such a defense.
      - prepend 2y ago
        I recall the basics from my contracts law class that it’s not against the law to hire an impersonator as long as you don’t claim it’s the celebrity. So it’s legal to hire someone who sounds like SJ. And likely legal to create a model that sounds like her. But there will likely need to be some disclaimer saying it’s not her voice. I expect that OpenAI’s defense will be something like “We wanted SJ. She said no, so we made a voice that sounded like her but wasn’t her.” It will be interesting to see what happens.
spuz 2y ago
It's also worth noting that Sam Altman admitted that he had only used GPT4o for one week before it was released. It's possible that in the rush to release before Google's IO event, they made the realisation of the likeness of the voice to Scarlett Johansen way too late hence the last minute contact with her agent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMtbrKhXMWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMtbrKhXMWc
- emsign 2y ago
  Then asking Johansson for permission months before was pure coincidence?
- mrbungie 2y ago
  The "Sky" voice and it's likeness to SJo's have been there in the ChatGPT app for months.
LewisVerstappen 2y ago
They approached Johansson and she said no. They found another voice actor who sounds slightly similar and paid her instead. The movie industry does this all the time. Johansson is probably suing them so they're forced to remove the Sky voice while the lawsuit is happening. I'm not a fan of Sam Altman or OpenAI but they didn't do anything wrong here.
- falloutx 2y ago
  Then they should credit that actress and we can see if its legit, otherwise we believe they used copyrighted audio from S. Johansson's movies.
  - r2_pilot 2y ago
    >otherwise we believe they used copyrighted audio from S. Johansson's movies. I will slightly rewrite the quoted bit to reflect reality as is currently known by the public: "otherwise we assert without evidence they used copyrighted audio". I'm fully of the opinion that everyone on both sides is wrong here, and I'm only right because I hold the most minimal opinion; that everyone needs to go outside and touch grass because this whole thing is bizarre and pointless.
zombiwoof 2y ago
Smug Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Sam is a trash human
cjbgkagh 2y ago
AFAIK they yanked it pretty quickly and the subsequent scandal has widely informed people that it was not authorized by Scarlett Johansson. So while it was clearly a violation resulting from a sequence of very stupid decisions by OpenAI, I am not sure if there would be much in the way of damages.
- BeefWellington 2y ago
  In cases like this, don't damages essentially equate to the profit a company makes from the false association with the celebrity? Otherwise, it'd be impossible to show damages if you weren't personally being denied business because of the association.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    That is one way to measure damages but it's difficult. It would be easier to measure what she would have been paid if she had agreed to do it, Mrs. Johansson is in the business of selling rights to use her likeness for large amounts of money - it would be easy to demonstrate that she would have been paid at least as much as the use of her voice in the movie Her. Since she did decline the offer it would be easy to suggest that the amount she would have agreed to would have been much more than the movie Her. The other aspect is that OpenAIs infringement is open ended, in that it is not equivalent to the single use within a single movie, it is substantially more. People who want Mrs. Johansson to voice their projects could now instead use OpenAI to obtain the same likeness - so the damages are for the deprivation all the future earnings Mrs. Johansson could have made. Then there is reputational damage, if someone using OpenAI generated and disseminated a voice message before committing a heinous crime then the public would associate the voice with the crime and Mrs. Johansson would be intrinsically linked to the same crime. People hearing her voice would be reminded of the crime. This would again prevent Mrs. Johansson from making money from her likeness but would also negatively impact all aspects of her life and all future earnings, business dealings, and personal life. Unusually the initial remedy is an injunction to prevent further infringement but OpenAI yanked it immediately so no injunction was needed. One way to repair reputational damage is to pay for news media to widely and publicly correct the reputationally damaging falsehood. As this has been a substantial scandal that media coverage has been already given for free and it is unlikely that there is anyone left who still believes that OpenAI is using Mrs. Johansson's likeness with either tacit or explicit permission. As stated by your peer comment there are still reasons for Mrs. Johansson to bring a lawsuit for damages even where there are no significant damages - the lawsuit itself would be damaging to OpenAI so it would be in OpenAIs interest to pay to avoid it. At the same time it would be in other large companies interests for it to continue, so there may be a bidding war on whether or not Mrs. Johansson continues with the lawsuit. In addition it would benefit Mrs. Johansson personally and professionally to be seen as a champion of the rights of artists - especially at a time when AI companies like OpenAI are trampling all over those rights.
spullara 2y ago
The voice was shipped last september.
- burntalmonds 2y ago
  Do you know if the voice was the same back in september?
  - tnias23 2y ago
    Scarlet says she was shocked to hear the voice in the 4o demo, and they had requested her consent (for the 2nd time) 2 days prior to the demo. If that demo voice was the same as the existing Sky voice, this wouldn’t be happening.
  - exitb 2y ago
    The voices were available for some time for the ChatGPT TTS model, but it seems that they reused them for the 4o audio output, which sounds significantly more human-like. I’ve heard the Sky voice before and never made the connection. I did think of Johansson though during the live demo, as the voice + enhanced expressiveness made it sound much like the movie Her.
  - spullara 2y ago
    It was essentially the same, the new one is definitely more human like. I have been calling it Scarjo since then. Sam Pullara @sampullara If you have the ChatGPT app, set it to the Sky voice and talk to it. It is definitely a clone of ScarJo from Her. 6:21 PM · Dec 13, 2023 https://x.com/sampullara/status/1735122897663094853 https://x.com/sampullara/status/1735122897663094853
arvinsim 2y ago
Does it really cost a to train one voice? Seems pretty reckless to not have alternatives just in case Scarlett refused.
- numpad0 2y ago
  Probably 5-10 minutes worth of dataset and GPU time for finetuning on an existing base model. Could be done on a Blu-ray rip or an in-person audition recording, legality and ethics aside.
ProjectArcturis 2y ago
I'm beginning to think this Sam Altman guy isn't so trustworthy.
- disqard 2y ago
  You beat me to it. Bon mots apart, he really appears to have an innate capacity for betrayal.
  - owlninja 2y ago
    And he must be a helluva pitchman, given the weird fired/hired debacle. Mixed with some of the resignations that made the HN front page recently, apparently anyone leaving OpenAI signed away the right to speak. I even find it odd that their statement says they hired a voice actress, but they want to protect her privacy? Seems like a helpful alibi if true, or likely, said actress has signed an agreement to never reveal she worked with OpenAI.
  - throwaway635383 2y ago
    Was there something in the water? Lots of rumbles around the early OpenAI members and questionable behavior.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  And perhaps not consistently candid either.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  that took a while ;)
nvy 2y ago
It's not possible for me to express the full measure of my disdain for Sam Altman without violating the HN guidelines.
toss1 2y ago
ChatGPT is way better than to need stupid ripoffs than this Sam should be ashamed to have ever thought of ripping off anyone's voice, let alone done it and rolled it out. They are building some potentially world-changing technology, but cannot rise above being basically creepy rip-off artists. Einstein was right about requiring improved ethics to meet new challenges, and also that we are not meeting that requirement. sad to see
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  It's part and parcel of the LLM field's usual disdain for any property rights that might belong to other people. What they did here is not categorically different than scraping every author and visual artist on the internet - but in this instance they've gone and brazenly "copied" (read: stolen) from one of the few folks with more media clout than they themselves have.
- latexr 2y ago
  > ChatGPT is way better than to need stupid ripoffs than this Of course it’s not. All of ChatGPT is a ripoff. That’s what training data (which they did not license) is.
cm2012 2y ago
People hire celebrity voice impersonators all the time. You've heard a few impersonators this month probably from ads. This is such a non-issue that's only blowing up because Johannsen wrote a letter complaining about it and because people love "big tech is evil" stories.
benreesman 2y ago
I know I have a reputation as an OpenAI hater and I understand why: it’s maybe 5-10% of the time that the news gives me the opportunity to express balance on this. But I’ve defended them from unfair criticism on more than a few occasions and I feel that of all the things to land on them about this one is a fairly mundane screwup that could be a scrappy PM pushing their mandate that got corrected quickly. The leadership for the most part scares the shit out of me, and clearly a house-cleaning is in order. But of all the things to take them to task over? There’s legitimately damning shit this week, this feels like someone exceeded their mandate from the mid-level and legal walked it back.
- crznp 2y ago
  It really doesn't sound like a "mid-level exceeding their mandate". It sounds like Altman was personally involved in recruiting her. She said no and they took what they wanted anyway.
  - benreesman 2y ago
    It feels weird to be defending Altman, but those of us who go hard on the legitimately serious shit are held to a high standard on being fair and while multiple sources have independently corroborated e.g. the plainly unethical and dubiously legal NDA shit Vox just reported on, his links to this incident seem thinly substantiated. I’m not writing the guy a pass, he’s already been fired for what amount to ethics breaches in the last 12 months alone. Bad actor any way you look at it. But I spent enough time in BigCo land to know stuff like this happens without the CEO’s signature. I’d say focus on the stuff with clear documentary evidence and or credible first-hand evidence, there’s no shortage of that. I get the sense this is part of an ambient backlash now that the damn is clearly breaking. Of all the people who stand to be harmed by that leadership team, I think Ms. Johansson (of who I am a fan) is more than capable of seeing her rights and privileges defended without any help from this community.
    - gunsle 2y ago
      You’re allegedly “not writing the guy a pass” but then you go on to do so anyways. If Johansson isn't lying and Altman did personally reach out to her, I really don’t see how you can even attempt to argue this is some middle manager gunning for a promotion. In the same way you’re complaining that she needs no help from the community in defending herself, Altman needs no help from you reaching this hard. Like how can you not see that hypocrisy?
azinman2 2y ago
I still have the sky voice in my app.
m_mueller 2y ago
I still have Sky voice. Is it because of my region?
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Aeolun 2y ago
What I don’t understand is what they expected to happen? Apparently they had no confidence in defending themselves, so why even release with the voice in the first place?
- unraveller 2y ago
  They underestimated how quickly people would take off the headphones and jump on the bandwagon to claim affinity with an injured celebrity. Are you suggesting they should have engineered the voice actress' voice to be more distinct from another actress they were considering for the part? Or just not gone near it with a 10ft pole? because if the latter the studios can just release a new Her and Him movie with different voices in different geo regions and prevent anyone from having any kind of familiar engaging voice bot.
rlt 2y ago
I don’t think that’s quite right. OpenAI first demoed and launched the “Sky” voice in November last year. The new demo doesn’t appear to have a new voice. I doubt it would take them long to prepare a new voice, and who’s to say they wouldn’t delay the announcements for a ScarJo voice? A charitable interpretation of the “her” tweet would be a comparison to the conversational and AI capabilities of the product, not the voice specifically, but it’s certainly not a good look.
- GaggiX 2y ago
  I believe that "Sky" voice was first released in September last year and according to the blog post released by OpenAI they were working with "Sky" voice actress months before even contacting Scarlett Johansson for the first time.
nox101 2y ago
To each their own. I personally didn't get Scarlett Johansson vibes from the voice on the GPT-4o demo (https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/ https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/) even though I'm a huge fan of hers (loved Her, loved Jojo Rabbit, even loved Lucy, and many many others) and have watched those and others multiple times. I'd even say I have a bit of a celebrity crush. To me it's about as close to her voice as saying "It's a woman's voice". Not to say all women sound alike but the sound I heard from that video above could maybe best be described and "generic peppy female American spokesperson voice" Even listening to it now with the suggestion that it might sound like her I don't personally hear Scarlett Johansson's voice from the demo. There may be some damming proof where they find they sampled her specifically but saying they negotiated and didn't come to an agreement is not proof that it's supposed to be her voice. Again, to me it just sounds like a generic voice. I've used the the version before GPT-4o and I never got the vibe it was Scarlett Johansson. I did get the "Her" vibe but only because I was talking to a computer with a female voice and it was easy to imagine that something like "Her" was in the near future. I also imagined or wished that it was Majel Barrett from ST:TNG, if only because the computer on ST:TNG gave short and useful answers where as ChatGPT always gives long-winded repetitive annoying answers
- hipjiveguy 2y ago
  200%. I listened to both, and don't think it was "her" enough.
- GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
  OpenAI confirmed it by removing the voice immediately after Johansson's lawyers reached out
  - nox101 2y ago
    That's not confirmation. That's called prudence.
    - wasteduniverse 2y ago
      Ask to use Alice's likeness in my product, get declined. Ask again. Debut product, users say "this sounds a lot like Alice". The day my product releases, I make a public statement referencing a movie Alice starred in. When Alice asks how I made my product, I delete all access to the product. How else am I supposed to interpret this?
dontupvoteme 2y ago
Could they have made it look less like Midler vs Ford? "Midler was asked to sing a famous song of hers for the commercial and refused. Subsequently, the company hired a voice-impersonator of Midler and carried on with using the song for the commercial, since it had been approved by the copyright-holder. Midler's image and likeness were not used in the commercial but many claimed the voice used sounded impeccably like Midler's." As a casual mostly observer of AI, even I was aware of this precedent
- OkGoDoIt 2y ago
  What was the result of that? Did Ford or Midler end up winning?
  - bradchris 2y ago
    Midler won, it’s a cornerstone case in protecting image/likeness. In tech we’re used to IP law. In entertainment, there is unsurprisingly a whole area of case law on image and likeness. Tech will need to understand this—and the areas of domain specific case law in many, many other fields—if AI is really to be adopted by the entire world.
gdilla 2y ago
Well, if any one had doubts Altman is the classic mold of fuck-it-we-know-better-than-anyone tech bro, this is your proof.
krick 2y ago
The funniest thing to me is the very fact that they wanted this voice so much that they though it was worth the hassle (so obvious in hindsight). I mean, I get it, the movie reference was welcome by their auditory (which is kinda cringey on it's own, to be honest, but ok, that's just reality). But it's not even a very pleasant voice, I remember people chuckling at the choice of Johansson's voice for the role back then. It was clearly a choice dictated by the fact that she is famous. It was marketing, the movie producers needed her name, not the voice. And OpenAI couldn't even use the name. It all just seems so silly now. …Unless, of course, all this scandal isn't also a part of marketing campaign.

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MrMetlHed 2y ago

Would love to see this get far enough for discovery to see how that all played out behind the scenes.

hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago
They’ll settle as soon as they figure that out. Idiot tax.
- ml-anon 2y ago
  She has no incentive to settle and actually could win big by being the figurehead of the creative industry against AI. It’s understandable why she accepted a settlement from Disney, but there’s no reason why she should settle with a random startup that has no other influence on her employability in Hollywood.
  - MrMetlHed 2y ago
    And plenty of her peers have been fighting against AI content harvesting in their recent contract negotiations[1]. 1. https://apnews.com/article/hollywood-ai-strike-wga-artificial-intelligence-39ab72582c3a15f77510c9c30a45ffc8 https://apnews.com/article/hollywood-ai-strike-wga-artificia...
  - hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago
    OpenAI will settle, not sure how you read that in reverse.
    - eurleif 2y ago
      Settling isn't unilateral. OpenAI can offer to settle, but if she doesn't accept, there will be no settlement.
      - hehdhdjehehegwv 2y ago
        I also said “they” instead of “her”, I’m confused as to why anybody misinterpreted what I said.
        ml-anon 2y ago
        Everyone knows what you meant. But it’s not up to them to “settle”. If she brings forward a formal complaint they can offer to but she has no obligation or incentive to accept. This may turn out to be something they can’t just buy their way out of with no other consequences.
- bradchris 2y ago
  She has a net worth of $100-$200m dollars. I doubt she wants $5-10m more. OpenAI cannot hurt her standing in the industry— in fact, “ScarJo takes on Big Tech and wins”, in an era after the Hollywood unions called a strike and won protections from studios using generative AI for exactly this scenario, is ironically probably one of the best thing she can do for her image right now. She is also one of the most litigious actresses in the industry, taking on Disney and winning what’s estimated to be 8 figures. Good luck OpenAI!

nickthegreek 2y ago

This statement from scarlet really changed my perspective. I use and loved the Sky voice and I did feel it sounded a little like her, but moreover it was the best of their voice offerings. I was mad when they removed it. But now I’m mad it was ever there to begin with. This timeline makes it clear that this wasn’t a coincidence and maybe not even a hiring of an impressionist (which is where things get a little more wishy washy for me).

ekam 2y ago
Same here and that voice really was the only good one. I don't know why they don't bring the voices from their API over, which are all much better, like Nova or Shimmer (https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text-to-speech https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/text-to-speech)
- sanxiyn 2y ago
  I think because it is not text-to-speech. It probably isn't simple to transfer.
  - zwily 2y ago
    The previous chatgpt voice mode uses text to speech, and has different voices than the OpenAI API. Seemed weird to me too.
crimsoneer 2y ago
But it's clearly not her voice right? The version that's been on the app for a year just isn't. Like, it clearly intending to be slightly reminiscent of her, but it's also very clearly not. Are we seriously saying we can't make voices that are similar to celebrities, when not using their actual voice?
- gedy 2y ago
  Normally I'd agree if this were some vague "artist style", but this was clearly an attempt to duplicate a living person, a media celebrity no less.

npunt 2y ago

When people cheat on (relatively) small things, it's usually an indication they'll cheat on big things too

iosjunkie 2y ago
I would love to see the providence of their training data.
- ojbyrne 2y ago
  I think you want the word “provenance.”
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  We need laws where companies are forced to reveal source of personal data. Like how did XYZ company get my contact info to spam me?
nwoli 2y ago
OpenAI only hires and is built on the culture that data and copyright is somehow free for the taking, otherwise they would have zero ways to make a profit or “build agi”
slg 2y ago
Which is what makes me wonder if this might grow into a galvanizing event for the pro-creator protests against these AI models and companies. What happened here isn't particularly unique to voices or even Scarlett Johansson, it is just how these companies and their products operate in general.
- bakuninsbart 2y ago
  I think the only way for these protests to get really tangible results is in case we reach a ceiling in LLM capabilities. The technology in its current trajectory is simply too valuable both in economic and military applications to pull out of, and "overregulation" can be easily swatted citing national security concerns in regards to China. As far as I know, China has significantly stricter data and privacy regulations than the US when it comes to the private sector, but these probably count for little when it comes to the PLA.

famouswaffles 2y ago

- Two days before the GPT-4o launch, they contacted her agent and asked that she reconsider. (Two days! This means they already had everything they needed to ship the product with Scarlett’s cloned voice.) New voice mode is a speech predicting transformer. "Voice Cloning" could be as simple as appending a sample of the voice to the context and instructing it to imitate it.

jprete 2y ago
If they really did that then (A) it's not much better (B) they didn't even wait for an answer from Johansson (C) it's extraordinarily reckless to go from zero to big-launch feature in less than two days.
- famouswaffles 2y ago
  >(A) it's not much better OP seems to be on the "They secretly trained on her voice" train. The only reason "Two Days!" would be damning is if a finetune was in order to replicate ScarJo's voice. In that sense, it's much better. >(C) it's extraordinarily reckless to go from zero to big-launch feature in less than two days. Open AI have launched nothing. There's no date for new voice mode other than, "alpha testing in the coming weeks to plus users". No-one has access to it yet.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    I'm really confused by this claim. How is it that so many people tried this Sky voice if no one has access yet?
    - famouswaffles 2y ago
      There is a voice mode in the GPT app that's been out (even for free users) for nearly a year now. There are a couple voices to chooses from and sky was one of them. This mode works entirely differently from what Open AI demoed a few days ago (the new voice mode) but both seem to utilize the same base sky voice. All this uproar is from the demos of new sky which sounds like old sky but is a lot more emotive, laughs, a bit flirty etc.

Havoc 2y ago

> OpenAI yanked the voice from their product line. Still live for me? Unless the Sky I’m getting is a different one?

cjbillington 2y ago
It is. They didn't remove the UI option, they just swapped it out under the hood for the "juniper" voice.

__loam 2y ago

The tweet is so fucking brazen lol

RCitronsBroker 2y ago
yeah, that was just poking the hornets nest. Even if i wasn’t mad enough to make a stink over my voice before, plausible deniability and all, that would’ve sealed the deal for me.

sangupta 2y ago

With the recent departures at OpenAI it seems that all ethics and morals are going down the drain and OpenAI becoming the big-bully.

hyperhopper 2y ago
There were never any. None of the models or code are actually open. It claims to be a nonprofit but is effectively a for profit company pulling the strings of a nonprofit just to avoid taxes.
- sangupta 2y ago
  I guess you are right. The era of "don't be evil" if there ever was one, is now long gone and forgotten.
- lambdaxyzw 2y ago
  >There were never any. This is a bit unfair. Some people left OpenAI on the ground of ethics, because they were unsatisfied with how this supposed nonprofit operates. The ethics was there, but OpenAI got rid of it.

rvz 2y ago

Almost as if they knew that they cloned her voice without her permission. Don't hear any arguments on how this is fair-use. (It isn't) Why? Because everyone (including OpenAI) knows it clearly isn't fair-use even after pulling the voice.

dragonwriter 2y ago
> Don't here any arguments on how this is fair-use. > Why? Because it's a right of personality issue, not copyright, and there is no fair use exception (the definition of the tort is already limited to a subset of commercial use which makes the Constitutional limitation that fair use addresses in copyright not relevant, and there is no statutory fair use exception to liability under the right of personality.)
- kragen 2y ago
  you're doing god's work; ignorance is never-ending
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

fakedang 2y ago

Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.

IncreasePosts 2y ago

I wouldn't necessarily call that damning. "Soundalikes" are very common in the ad industry. For example, a car company approached the band sigur ros to include some of their music in a car commercial. Sigur ros declined. A few months later the commercial airs with a song that sounds like an unreleased sigur ros song, but really they just paid a composer to make something that sounds like sigur ros, but isn't. So maybe openai just had a random lady with a voice similar to Scarlett so the recording. Taking down the voice could just be concern for bad press, or trying to avoid lawsuits regardless of whether you think you are in the right or not. Per this* CNN article: > Johansson said she hired legal counsel, and said OpenAI “reluctantly agreed” to take down the “Sky” voice after her counsel sent Altman two letters. So, Johansson's lawyers probably said something like "I'll sue your pants off if you don't take it down". And then they took it down. You can't use that as evidence that they are guilty. It could just as easily be the case that they didn't want to go to court over this even if they thought they were legally above board. * https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/tech/openai-pausing-flirty-chatgpt-voice/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/tech/openai-pausing-flirty-ch...

dragonwriter 2y ago
> I wouldn't necessarily call that damning. "Soundalikes" are very common in the ad industry. As are disclaimers that celebrity voices are impersonated when there is additional context which makes it likely that the voice would be considered something other than a mere soundalike, like direct reference to a work in which the impersonated celebrity was involved as part of the same publicity campaign. And liability for commercial voice appropriation, even by impersonation, is established law in some jurisdictions, including California.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  The most famous case of voice appropriation was Midler vs Ford, which involved Ford paying a Midler impersonator to perform a well known Midler song, creating the impression that it was actually Bette. Where are the signs or symbols tying Scarlett to the openAI voice? I don't think a single word, contextless message on a separate platform that 99% of openAI users will not see is significant enough to form that connection in users heads.

minimaxir 2y ago

Given the timeline, I’m still baffled Sam Altman tweeted “her.” That just makes plausible deniability go away for a random shitpost.

grumple 2y ago
Many people are addicted to attention.
prepend 2y ago
I thought it was about functionality more than the specific voice.
- minimaxir 2y ago
  I suspect that'll be OpenAI's defense.
  - krisoft 2y ago
    That is what discovery is for. If this would ever get to that phase. Someone from OpenAi hired the agency who hired the voice talent (or talents) for the voice data. They sent them a brief explaining what they are looking for, followed by a metric ton of correspondence over samples and contracts and such. If anywhere during those written communications anyone wrote “we are looking for a ScarlettJ imitator”, or words to that effect, that is not good for OpenAI. Similarly if they were selecting between options and someone wrote that one sample is more Johansson than an other. Or if anyone at any point asked if they should clear the rights to the voice with Johansson. Those are the discovery findings which can sink such a defense.
    - prepend 2y ago
      I recall the basics from my contracts law class that it’s not against the law to hire an impersonator as long as you don’t claim it’s the celebrity. So it’s legal to hire someone who sounds like SJ. And likely legal to create a model that sounds like her. But there will likely need to be some disclaimer saying it’s not her voice. I expect that OpenAI’s defense will be something like “We wanted SJ. She said no, so we made a voice that sounded like her but wasn’t her.” It will be interesting to see what happens.

spuz 2y ago

It's also worth noting that Sam Altman admitted that he had only used GPT4o for one week before it was released. It's possible that in the rush to release before Google's IO event, they made the realisation of the likeness of the voice to Scarlett Johansen way too late hence the last minute contact with her agent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMtbrKhXMWc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMtbrKhXMWc

emsign 2y ago
Then asking Johansson for permission months before was pure coincidence?
mrbungie 2y ago
The "Sky" voice and it's likeness to SJo's have been there in the ChatGPT app for months.

LewisVerstappen 2y ago

They approached Johansson and she said no. They found another voice actor who sounds slightly similar and paid her instead. The movie industry does this all the time. Johansson is probably suing them so they're forced to remove the Sky voice while the lawsuit is happening. I'm not a fan of Sam Altman or OpenAI but they didn't do anything wrong here.

falloutx 2y ago
Then they should credit that actress and we can see if its legit, otherwise we believe they used copyrighted audio from S. Johansson's movies.
- r2_pilot 2y ago
  >otherwise we believe they used copyrighted audio from S. Johansson's movies. I will slightly rewrite the quoted bit to reflect reality as is currently known by the public: "otherwise we assert without evidence they used copyrighted audio". I'm fully of the opinion that everyone on both sides is wrong here, and I'm only right because I hold the most minimal opinion; that everyone needs to go outside and touch grass because this whole thing is bizarre and pointless.

zombiwoof 2y ago

Smug Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Sam is a trash human

cjbgkagh 2y ago

AFAIK they yanked it pretty quickly and the subsequent scandal has widely informed people that it was not authorized by Scarlett Johansson. So while it was clearly a violation resulting from a sequence of very stupid decisions by OpenAI, I am not sure if there would be much in the way of damages.

BeefWellington 2y ago
In cases like this, don't damages essentially equate to the profit a company makes from the false association with the celebrity? Otherwise, it'd be impossible to show damages if you weren't personally being denied business because of the association.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  That is one way to measure damages but it's difficult. It would be easier to measure what she would have been paid if she had agreed to do it, Mrs. Johansson is in the business of selling rights to use her likeness for large amounts of money - it would be easy to demonstrate that she would have been paid at least as much as the use of her voice in the movie Her. Since she did decline the offer it would be easy to suggest that the amount she would have agreed to would have been much more than the movie Her. The other aspect is that OpenAIs infringement is open ended, in that it is not equivalent to the single use within a single movie, it is substantially more. People who want Mrs. Johansson to voice their projects could now instead use OpenAI to obtain the same likeness - so the damages are for the deprivation all the future earnings Mrs. Johansson could have made. Then there is reputational damage, if someone using OpenAI generated and disseminated a voice message before committing a heinous crime then the public would associate the voice with the crime and Mrs. Johansson would be intrinsically linked to the same crime. People hearing her voice would be reminded of the crime. This would again prevent Mrs. Johansson from making money from her likeness but would also negatively impact all aspects of her life and all future earnings, business dealings, and personal life. Unusually the initial remedy is an injunction to prevent further infringement but OpenAI yanked it immediately so no injunction was needed. One way to repair reputational damage is to pay for news media to widely and publicly correct the reputationally damaging falsehood. As this has been a substantial scandal that media coverage has been already given for free and it is unlikely that there is anyone left who still believes that OpenAI is using Mrs. Johansson's likeness with either tacit or explicit permission. As stated by your peer comment there are still reasons for Mrs. Johansson to bring a lawsuit for damages even where there are no significant damages - the lawsuit itself would be damaging to OpenAI so it would be in OpenAIs interest to pay to avoid it. At the same time it would be in other large companies interests for it to continue, so there may be a bidding war on whether or not Mrs. Johansson continues with the lawsuit. In addition it would benefit Mrs. Johansson personally and professionally to be seen as a champion of the rights of artists - especially at a time when AI companies like OpenAI are trampling all over those rights.

spullara 2y ago

The voice was shipped last september.

burntalmonds 2y ago
Do you know if the voice was the same back in september?
- tnias23 2y ago
  Scarlet says she was shocked to hear the voice in the 4o demo, and they had requested her consent (for the 2nd time) 2 days prior to the demo. If that demo voice was the same as the existing Sky voice, this wouldn’t be happening.
- exitb 2y ago
  The voices were available for some time for the ChatGPT TTS model, but it seems that they reused them for the 4o audio output, which sounds significantly more human-like. I’ve heard the Sky voice before and never made the connection. I did think of Johansson though during the live demo, as the voice + enhanced expressiveness made it sound much like the movie Her.
- spullara 2y ago
  It was essentially the same, the new one is definitely more human like. I have been calling it Scarjo since then. Sam Pullara @sampullara If you have the ChatGPT app, set it to the Sky voice and talk to it. It is definitely a clone of ScarJo from Her. 6:21 PM · Dec 13, 2023 https://x.com/sampullara/status/1735122897663094853 https://x.com/sampullara/status/1735122897663094853

arvinsim 2y ago

Does it really cost a to train one voice? Seems pretty reckless to not have alternatives just in case Scarlett refused.

numpad0 2y ago
Probably 5-10 minutes worth of dataset and GPU time for finetuning on an existing base model. Could be done on a Blu-ray rip or an in-person audition recording, legality and ethics aside.

ProjectArcturis 2y ago

I'm beginning to think this Sam Altman guy isn't so trustworthy.

disqard 2y ago
You beat me to it. Bon mots apart, he really appears to have an innate capacity for betrayal.
- owlninja 2y ago
  And he must be a helluva pitchman, given the weird fired/hired debacle. Mixed with some of the resignations that made the HN front page recently, apparently anyone leaving OpenAI signed away the right to speak. I even find it odd that their statement says they hired a voice actress, but they want to protect her privacy? Seems like a helpful alibi if true, or likely, said actress has signed an agreement to never reveal she worked with OpenAI.
- throwaway635383 2y ago
  Was there something in the water? Lots of rumbles around the early OpenAI members and questionable behavior.
0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
And perhaps not consistently candid either.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
that took a while ;)

nvy 2y ago

It's not possible for me to express the full measure of my disdain for Sam Altman without violating the HN guidelines.

toss1 2y ago

ChatGPT is way better than to need stupid ripoffs than this Sam should be ashamed to have ever thought of ripping off anyone's voice, let alone done it and rolled it out. They are building some potentially world-changing technology, but cannot rise above being basically creepy rip-off artists. Einstein was right about requiring improved ethics to meet new challenges, and also that we are not meeting that requirement. sad to see

swiftcoder 2y ago
It's part and parcel of the LLM field's usual disdain for any property rights that might belong to other people. What they did here is not categorically different than scraping every author and visual artist on the internet - but in this instance they've gone and brazenly "copied" (read: stolen) from one of the few folks with more media clout than they themselves have.
latexr 2y ago
> ChatGPT is way better than to need stupid ripoffs than this Of course it’s not. All of ChatGPT is a ripoff. That’s what training data (which they did not license) is.

cm2012 2y ago

People hire celebrity voice impersonators all the time. You've heard a few impersonators this month probably from ads. This is such a non-issue that's only blowing up because Johannsen wrote a letter complaining about it and because people love "big tech is evil" stories.

benreesman 2y ago

I know I have a reputation as an OpenAI hater and I understand why: it’s maybe 5-10% of the time that the news gives me the opportunity to express balance on this. But I’ve defended them from unfair criticism on more than a few occasions and I feel that of all the things to land on them about this one is a fairly mundane screwup that could be a scrappy PM pushing their mandate that got corrected quickly. The leadership for the most part scares the shit out of me, and clearly a house-cleaning is in order. But of all the things to take them to task over? There’s legitimately damning shit this week, this feels like someone exceeded their mandate from the mid-level and legal walked it back.

crznp 2y ago
It really doesn't sound like a "mid-level exceeding their mandate". It sounds like Altman was personally involved in recruiting her. She said no and they took what they wanted anyway.
- benreesman 2y ago
  It feels weird to be defending Altman, but those of us who go hard on the legitimately serious shit are held to a high standard on being fair and while multiple sources have independently corroborated e.g. the plainly unethical and dubiously legal NDA shit Vox just reported on, his links to this incident seem thinly substantiated. I’m not writing the guy a pass, he’s already been fired for what amount to ethics breaches in the last 12 months alone. Bad actor any way you look at it. But I spent enough time in BigCo land to know stuff like this happens without the CEO’s signature. I’d say focus on the stuff with clear documentary evidence and or credible first-hand evidence, there’s no shortage of that. I get the sense this is part of an ambient backlash now that the damn is clearly breaking. Of all the people who stand to be harmed by that leadership team, I think Ms. Johansson (of who I am a fan) is more than capable of seeing her rights and privileges defended without any help from this community.
  - gunsle 2y ago
    You’re allegedly “not writing the guy a pass” but then you go on to do so anyways. If Johansson isn't lying and Altman did personally reach out to her, I really don’t see how you can even attempt to argue this is some middle manager gunning for a promotion. In the same way you’re complaining that she needs no help from the community in defending herself, Altman needs no help from you reaching this hard. Like how can you not see that hypocrisy?

azinman2 2y ago

I still have the sky voice in my app.

m_mueller 2y ago

I still have Sky voice. Is it because of my region?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Aeolun 2y ago

What I don’t understand is what they expected to happen? Apparently they had no confidence in defending themselves, so why even release with the voice in the first place?

unraveller 2y ago
They underestimated how quickly people would take off the headphones and jump on the bandwagon to claim affinity with an injured celebrity. Are you suggesting they should have engineered the voice actress' voice to be more distinct from another actress they were considering for the part? Or just not gone near it with a 10ft pole? because if the latter the studios can just release a new Her and Him movie with different voices in different geo regions and prevent anyone from having any kind of familiar engaging voice bot.

rlt 2y ago

I don’t think that’s quite right. OpenAI first demoed and launched the “Sky” voice in November last year. The new demo doesn’t appear to have a new voice. I doubt it would take them long to prepare a new voice, and who’s to say they wouldn’t delay the announcements for a ScarJo voice? A charitable interpretation of the “her” tweet would be a comparison to the conversational and AI capabilities of the product, not the voice specifically, but it’s certainly not a good look.

GaggiX 2y ago
I believe that "Sky" voice was first released in September last year and according to the blog post released by OpenAI they were working with "Sky" voice actress months before even contacting Scarlett Johansson for the first time.

nox101 2y ago

To each their own. I personally didn't get Scarlett Johansson vibes from the voice on the GPT-4o demo (https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/ https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/) even though I'm a huge fan of hers (loved Her, loved Jojo Rabbit, even loved Lucy, and many many others) and have watched those and others multiple times. I'd even say I have a bit of a celebrity crush. To me it's about as close to her voice as saying "It's a woman's voice". Not to say all women sound alike but the sound I heard from that video above could maybe best be described and "generic peppy female American spokesperson voice" Even listening to it now with the suggestion that it might sound like her I don't personally hear Scarlett Johansson's voice from the demo. There may be some damming proof where they find they sampled her specifically but saying they negotiated and didn't come to an agreement is not proof that it's supposed to be her voice. Again, to me it just sounds like a generic voice. I've used the the version before GPT-4o and I never got the vibe it was Scarlett Johansson. I did get the "Her" vibe but only because I was talking to a computer with a female voice and it was easy to imagine that something like "Her" was in the near future. I also imagined or wished that it was Majel Barrett from ST:TNG, if only because the computer on ST:TNG gave short and useful answers where as ChatGPT always gives long-winded repetitive annoying answers

hipjiveguy 2y ago
200%. I listened to both, and don't think it was "her" enough.
GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
OpenAI confirmed it by removing the voice immediately after Johansson's lawyers reached out
- nox101 2y ago
  That's not confirmation. That's called prudence.
  - wasteduniverse 2y ago
    Ask to use Alice's likeness in my product, get declined. Ask again. Debut product, users say "this sounds a lot like Alice". The day my product releases, I make a public statement referencing a movie Alice starred in. When Alice asks how I made my product, I delete all access to the product. How else am I supposed to interpret this?

dontupvoteme 2y ago

Could they have made it look less like Midler vs Ford? "Midler was asked to sing a famous song of hers for the commercial and refused. Subsequently, the company hired a voice-impersonator of Midler and carried on with using the song for the commercial, since it had been approved by the copyright-holder. Midler's image and likeness were not used in the commercial but many claimed the voice used sounded impeccably like Midler's." As a casual mostly observer of AI, even I was aware of this precedent

OkGoDoIt 2y ago
What was the result of that? Did Ford or Midler end up winning?
- bradchris 2y ago
  Midler won, it’s a cornerstone case in protecting image/likeness. In tech we’re used to IP law. In entertainment, there is unsurprisingly a whole area of case law on image and likeness. Tech will need to understand this—and the areas of domain specific case law in many, many other fields—if AI is really to be adopted by the entire world.

gdilla 2y ago

Well, if any one had doubts Altman is the classic mold of fuck-it-we-know-better-than-anyone tech bro, this is your proof.

krick 2y ago

The funniest thing to me is the very fact that they wanted this voice so much that they though it was worth the hassle (so obvious in hindsight). I mean, I get it, the movie reference was welcome by their auditory (which is kinda cringey on it's own, to be honest, but ok, that's just reality). But it's not even a very pleasant voice, I remember people chuckling at the choice of Johansson's voice for the role back then. It was clearly a choice dictated by the fact that she is famous. It was marketing, the movie producers needed her name, not the voice. And OpenAI couldn't even use the name. It all just seems so silly now. …Unless, of course, all this scandal isn't also a part of marketing campaign.