OpenAI pulls ChatGPT voice after Scarlett Johansson says it copied her from 'Her'

OpenAI paused use of “Sky,” one of five voices available in ChatGPT’s voice mode, after actress Scarlett Johansson issued a statement saying it sounded “eerily similar” to her own voice and that she had declined an approach from OpenAI to license it.

Johansson said Sam Altman had contacted her in September 2023 asking her to voice ChatGPT, arguing her voice could help bridge the gap between technology companies and creative professionals and would be “comforting” to users; she turned the offer down for personal reasons. When ChatGPT’s new voice mode launched the following May with a voice her own friends, family and news outlets reportedly could not distinguish from hers, she said she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” — particularly because, days before the launch, Altman had posted the single word “her” on social media, a reference she read as pointed given the film Her, in which Johansson voiced an AI assistant. She said she retained lawyers and asked OpenAI to detail the exact process by which Sky’s voice was developed.

OpenAI disputed that Sky was built to imitate Johansson. In a statement published the day before it paused the voice, the company said each of its five voices came from a five-month casting process involving more than 400 professional actors, that Sky’s actress was cast before OpenAI had approached Johansson at all, and that the resemblance was coincidental rather than intentional. It did not name the actress, citing her privacy. It paused the voice regardless, saying it wanted to be respectful of Johansson’s concerns.

The dispute became a widely cited example of a gap in existing law: publicity-rights statutes generally protect a person’s name, image or literal voice recording, not a synthetic voice that merely sounds similar, leaving Johansson with an uncertain legal claim even if her account of events was accepted at face value.