Sam Altman might like the movie “Her” a little too much. When his company, OpenAI, debuted its GPT-4o model last week, onlookers noted that Sky, the voice assistant shown in its launch announcement, sounded a lot like Scarlett Johansson. And if you’re a bit hazy on the details of that Spike Jonze movie from 2013, Johansson voices the AI assistant that Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with.
If Altman was trying to play off the similarities between Sky and Scarlett as a coincidence, he didn’t do a great job. After the product launch announcement, he posted the word “her” on X. But on Monday, OpenAI decided to just scrap Sky’s voice to avoid conflict.
Then we learned that this wasn’t OpenAI being proactive. There’s more to the story. As it turns out, Altman did approach Johansson to be the voice of GPT-4o, and she did consider it. But she ultimately decided not to reprise her role as a flirtatious AI. When the voice of Sky came out, Johansson sought out legal counsel to navigate the situation with OpenAI.
“He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI,” Johansson said in a statement . “He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.”
Johansson got her way, since the Sky voice is no longer. But it’s still a bit weird that Altman tried to recreate “Her” – did we watch the same movie?