OpenAl is sticking to its story that it never intended to copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice when seeking an actor for ChatGPT’s “Sky” voice mode.
This all “feels personal," the voice actress said, "being that it’s just my natural voice and I’ve never been compared to her by the people who do know me closely.”
This comes at a time when many studios are otherwise intrigued by the idea of using AI for things like digital effects but remain, after a long history of avoiding copyright conflicts, hesitant to connect with any company potentially viewed as stealing artists’ work without consent, Reuters reported.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that they scrapped the hired actor’s voice completely. I’m inclined to think they supplemented the training data with Johansson’s long career.
OpenAI has not been very open about where they source anything and there’s more evidence than not that they’ve used copyrighted material in the past.
But why do that? They’re already paying someone they can have her say everything they need.
They’re paying her for plausible deniability. They tried multiple times to get Johansson to agree to allow her voice to be used, including two days before they released it. They’re covering their ass.