WHEN SCARLETT JOHANSSON signed up to voice an artificial-intelligence programme in Spike Jonze’s 2013 sci-fi romance Her, she may not have expected life to imitate art just over a decade later. In May, the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI, released the latest model of their chatbot with an AI-generated voice that sounded suspiciously similar to Johansson’s. Sure enough, the actor soon released a statement revealing that the company had approached her to provide the voice for the chatbot, which she had declined, twice. Johansson said she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” when ChatGPT 4.0 released their ‘Sky’ chatbot with a voice “eerily similar” to hers. Johansson has called in the lawyers; OpenAI, which denies the allegations, has paused the Sky chatbot.
It’s all part of an increasingly prevalent trend of ‘audio deepfake’ technology replicating voices with frightening accuracy. Sometimes that can be used ethically: many actors are seizing the potential for the technology to secure — or extend — their legacy. James Earl Jones has given permission to a voice-cloning company to continue his iconic Darth Vader voice long into the future (pray they do not alter it further). Val Kilmer — who lost his ability to speak after throat-cancer treatment — worked with an AI voice company to provide his single line of dialogue in Top Gun: Maverick. Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, used AI to recreate the voices of fellow talk-show hosts on the Strike Force Five podcast, to their bafflement and bemusement.
Scarlett Johansson has sought legal counsel;