ChatGPT creator OpenAI is working on temporarily silencing an artificial voice that sounds quite similar to that of actress Scarlett Johansson, AFP reports.
In a blog post, the company said the "Sky" voice in question is based on the natural voice of another professional actress and is not meant to sound like Johansson.
"We believe that AI voices should not intentionally mimic characteristics of a celebrity," OpenAI said in the post. "Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson."
The company explained that it has worked with professional voice actors it has named Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.
Sky came under the spotlight last week when OpenAI released a more productive and even more human-like version of the technology - GPT-4o.
In a demo, the new version of Sky was much more human-like than previous iterations, and at times even flirty, fun, and able to seamlessly move from one topic to another, unlike most existing chatbots.
Several observers noted the resemblance to Johansson, whose voice played the central character in the film Her, a cautionary tale about the future in which a man falls in love with a chatbot with artificial intelligence.
On the day of the demo, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted a single X-word: "Her."
OpenAI said it was working to address the misconception just days after confirming it had disbanded a team dedicated to reducing the long-term dangers of artificial intelligence.
OpenAI began disbanding the so-called "superalignment" group weeks ago, integrating its members into other projects and research.
The company's co-founder Ilya Sutskever and the co-leader of the "superalignment" team, Jan Leike, announced their departure from the ChatGPT creator last week. /BGNES
