For Sky, the actor did not attempt the character to have any particular voice, according to the clips that ‘The Post’ analyzed.
Contrary to the media hype that pointed out the uncanny similarity between Sky’s dialect and that of the Hollywood actress, Scarparro, OpenAI chose the actor of her voice months before it was contacted by Sam Altman, the head of the company, Washington Post revealed. The publication explained that the flier OpenAI released the year before sought to hire voice actors who have pleasant, friendly and attractive tones. OpenAI reportedly just said that the voice actors must be between 25 and 45 years old, must not be a part of a union, and it was not telling everyone that it wanted the next Scarlett Johansson. lawsuit filed by Scarlett Johansson whom the company was accused of basing its Sky voice assistant on her image without her consent.
However, Sky’s voice’s agent commented on the situation stating that, Sky never discussed Johansson or the film; Her, with their artists. It also seemed that OpenAI didn’t manipulate the actor’s recordings to sound like Johansson because her natural voice resembled Sky’s especially according to clips that The Post listened The Post listened to a recording of Johansson’s initial voice test for Alba. This is according to an interview that OpenAI product manager, Joanne Jang who explained that the company chose actors who wanted to be involved in AI. She responded by saying that the shooting decisions regarding the AI voices project were made solely by Mira Murati, the Chief Technology Officer of the company, and that Altman merely had only farthermost involvement in this process.
Jang also shared this with the publication, stating that in her version of Sky, the character did not resemble Johansson. Sky’s actress said to The Post via the help of her agent that she just used her real voice and she was never said by the people close to her about ‘the resemblance’ with Johansson. However, in a voice statement gained by Newtechmania and submitted by Johansson’s team, she mentioned how astounded she was that OpenAI went for a voice that was almost like hers to the extent that even her closest friends and news outlets could not differentiate between her original voice and the fake one after she had refused Altman’s offer to lend her voice to ChatGPT.
Johansson stated that Altman first emailed her in September 2023 with the opportunity to join and contacted her again only again only two days before the company launched GPT-4o to persuade her to change her mind. Sky has been one of ChatGPT’s voices since September but GPT-4o allowed it to be more alive and often able to talk with users on more of a human level. The fact that its functions resembled her voice even more after OpenAI presented the new large language model was not ideal with Altman tweeting “her” which further made some of the interactions between the model and those people apparently rude while it invited more comparisons to the AI virtual assistant Johansson voiced in the movie. Instead, the voice of the actress Sky, which was created by OpenAI, was temporarily removed from the technology that uses AI to mimic voice “out of respect” for the actress’s concerns, it added in a disclaimer in its blog. The actor, however, explained that the company ceased employing Sky only once she retained legal representation from a lawyer wrote to Altman as well as the company requesting an account.
her
— Sam Altman (@sama) May 13, 2024
If you’re unsure if Sky really sounds like Johansson, there is a video below, which let us remind you, can be considered NSFW, so watch for yourself and decide. It is a video that consists of Johansson reading a statement in response to the voice assistants; the video was uploaded on YouTube by Victor Mochere. The comments regarding the voice mimic are mixed; some commented that it indeed sounds like her if she would be robotic, while others believe that the voice sounds like Rashida Jones.