There is a moment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when Black Widow became a hero to every fan. This happens at the beginning of 2012 Avengers: She is tied to a chair. Agent Coulson is calling. The unremarkable military commander who interrogated her hands her a phone. Coulson explains that SHIELD needs to get her out of the battlefield. She kicks the questioner in the shinhe breaks the chair she’s tied to, kills three guys, grabs her by her high heels and leaves.
Avengers it grossed $1.5 billion worldwide and catapulted almost everyone to superstardom, even actors who were already renowned. Scarlett Johnasson’s Black Widow – an Avenger with no wealth or superpowers beyond her Red Room training – was one of the last to get her own movie or show. Black Widow was released simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ in the summer of 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic still made some people wary of the multiplex. Johansson sued Disney for breach of contract, claiming that a streaming release would hurt the film’s box office potential.
Johansson and Disney finally resolved their suit. The terms were not disclosed, but as a result, Johansson proved that she is not afraid to defend the value of her work – whether to Disney, which has already paid her $20 million for a film she made, or to OpenAI, which she threatened this week took legal action via the up-to-date ChatGPT conversational interface. The actor says the computer’s voice, dubbed Sky, sounds “so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets couldn’t tell the difference.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says Sky was “never intended to resemble” Johansson’s voice. Lawyers say he may have a case if he continues.
Following Johansson’s dismissal from OpenAI, public opinion largely sided with her. Or rather, he is trying to take a side other than Altman. In X and news reports, searchers have noticed that OpenAI’s activities he gave the company his hand; that, according to Johansson’s statement, by asking the actress to commit and then taking similar actions even though she refused, Altman “showing us who he really is” Within hours, Johansson became the avatar of the resistance, this generation’s Ned Ludd. Anyone who has ever wondered whether artificial intelligence read their tweets or watched their video has a champion.
“In a way, we are all Scarlett Johansson” – Kyle Chayka – wrote in “The New Yorker”.“waiting to confront an uncanny reflection of ourselves that has been created without our permission and from which we will derive no benefit.”
Few ironies are more bittersweet than this. The reason why Johansson’s voice is desirable for an AI assistant is because she played it in a Spike Jonze movie Her. As my colleague Brian Barrett pointed out last week, the desire to repeat this experience is a gross misreading of the film, but the fact remains that both tech savvy and those who live according to their whims (i.e. everyone else) have a parasocial relationship with Johansson , because she has a set of skills that AI simply cannot learn. Now those who have found joy in her work identify with her in a completely up-to-date way Because could face the intrusion of artificial intelligence more publicly than all the lawsuits brought by artists and writers.