Altman himself may like the movie “Her” a little too much. When his company, OpenAI, unveiled its GPT-4o model last week, observers noticed that Sky, the voice assistant shown in the launch announcement, sounded a lot like Scarlett Johansson. And in case you don’t remember the details of Spike Jonze’s 2013 film, Johansson voiced the AI assistant that Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with.
If Altman was trying to exploit the similarities between Sky and Scarlett as a coincidence, he didn’t do a very good job. After announcing the product launch, he he put the word “her” with an X. But on Monday, OpenAI he decided to simply get rid of Sky’s voice to avoid conflict.
Then we learned that this wasn’t a matter of OpenAI being proactive. It was more than that. As it turns out, Altman actually approached Johansson about voicing GPT-4o, and she considered it. Ultimately, though, she decided not to reprise her role as the flirtatious AI. When Sky’s voice came up, Johansson turned to a lawyer to handle the situation at OpenAI.
“He told me that he felt that by voicing my opinion on the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creators and help consumers feel comfortable with the seismic changes affecting humans and artificial intelligence,” Johansson said in a statement. “He said he thought my voice would be comforting to people.”
Johansson had her way because Sky’s voice no longer exists. But it’s still a little weird that Altman tried to recreate “Her” – were we watching the same movie?