Scarlett Johansson has accused OpenAI of stealing her voice for GPT-4o. Johansson claims that OpenAI’s “Sky” voice is “eerily similar” to her own and that she was approached by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to voice the system but declined.

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Unsurprisingly, OpenAI has denied the allegations, stating that the “Sky” voice belongs to a different professional actress. However, the company has agreed to pause the use of the “Sky” voice while it addresses questions about how it selects its AI voices.

Unsatisfied with OpenAI’s response, Johansson has hired legal counsel to investigate the matter and has written two letters to Altman and OpenAI requesting details on how the “Sky” voice was created.

This case will be interesting to watch. In a traditional copyright case, if you can prove intent, you almost always win. This case may be different.

Did OpenAI clone ScarJo’s voice? Was the voice they created simply inspired by her character in the movie “Her?” Is it just a lilting female voice that happens to be reminiscent of ScarJo’s? Does the fact that Sam Altman contacted ScarJo and offered her the gig prove intent? If so, does the work product trade on ScarJo’s NIL rights or other rights? Do copyright laws even apply here?

Ultimately, the outcome of this case may set precedent for the relatively new field of deepfakes and cloning.

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