OpenAI Pauses ChatGPT’s Sky Voice After the GPT-4o Demo

OpenAI paused Sky five days after showing it off

OpenAI demonstrated its GPT-4o voice mode on May 13, 2024, using a voice called Sky. Commentators and Scarlett Johansson's own representatives said it sounded close to her performance as the AI assistant in the 2013 film Her. On May 19, OpenAI published a post titled "How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen" saying, "Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky's voice in our products." [1]

The post said Sky's voice belonged to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice, and that the five ChatGPT voice profiles then available were selected from more than 400 casting submissions from actors. OpenAI declined to name the actors, citing their privacy, and said CEO Sam Altman had reached out to Johansson before the launch to offer her the role. [1][3]

Johansson said she had already turned the part down twice

Johansson released a statement to reporters on May 20 saying Altman had approached her about voicing the assistant nine months before the GPT-4o demo and that she declined, in her words, "after much consideration and for personal reasons." She said he approached her representatives again two days before the demo, and that she still had not responded when the product launched with a voice she called "eerily similar to mine." [2]

She said she was "shocked, angered and in disbelief" that Altman would pursue a voice her closest friends and news outlets could not distinguish from her own, and that she had retained legal counsel and sent OpenAI two letters asking how Sky's voice was developed. Her statement tied the episode to broader questions about deepfakes and the right to one's own likeness, and called for legislation on the point. [2]

What OpenAI and Johansson each said, without a resolution on the record

Atlas interpretation: The two accounts agree Altman contacted Johansson about voicing the assistant and that she turned him down. They disagree on what that history implies about Sky: OpenAI's post frames the casting of a different actress as settled before any outreach to Johansson, while her statement frames the timing and the result as, in her account, hard to read as coincidence. Neither side's underlying casting records or correspondence entered the public record alongside these statements. [1][2]