ChatGPT’s voice features have been live on its mobile apps for nearly eight months already. Now, OpenAI says it will temporarily disable one of the five available voices, Sky, after Scarlett Johansson’s husband Colin Jost made a joke on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend about ChatGPT’s voice being “inspired” by her AI character in the movie “Her.” Johansson notably lent her voice to Spike Jonze’s 2013 film with Joaquin Phoenix, where she played an AI named Samantha with whom Phoenix’s character falls in love.
“We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky. We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them,” OpenAI said in a post early Monday morning. At time of writing Monday morning, however, the Sky voice is still available on ChatGPT’s iOS app for full conversations.
OpenAI also published a blog post stating that its five synthetic voices for ChatGPT were made with the help of professional actors who were paid for their work. “Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice,” OpenAI’s post states. “To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”
Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote that ChatGPT’s upcoming features “feels like AI from the movies.” While the startup says it wasn’t inspired by Johansson’s voice, it did work with Hollywood casting directors to find voices that feel “timeless,” “warm, engaging,” “natural,” and “easy to listen to.”
While OpenAI hasn’t revealed who voices Sky, the Microsoft-backed startup says it’s continued to work with its existing voice actors for “audio research” and to create its new upcoming voice mode for its newest model, ChatGPT-4o. According to a pop-up message on ChatGPT’s iOS app, the new GPT-4o voice mode will launch in alpha “in the coming weeks” for those with Plus subscriptions.
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PCMag has reached out to Johansson’s reps for comment.
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