Marvel Star Reveals Shocking Role She Turned Down
Hollywood and Marvel star Scarlett Johansson revealed she turned down a job that would require her to voice the ChatGPT 4.0 system.
The 39-year-old actress was first approached Last Year by OpenAI’s billionaire CEO, Sam Altman. In an interview with the New York Times, the “Black Widow” star revealed her reasons for turning down the gig to voice OpenAI’s chatbot. She said, “I just felt it went against my core values.”
Johansson recalled declining the billionaire CEO, saying, “No, thank you, not for me,” after he asked her to consider licensing her voice twice. The actress Altman contacted a second time through her Agent, adding that she declined his offer both times.
After hearing the demo released for a voice OpenAI named “Sky,” the actress, who was “shocked” and “angered,” released a statement accusing Mr. Altman of using a voice that “sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” despite her refusals.
Johanssen says Mr. Altman, who took to the social media platform, ‘X’ on the day the demo was released and tweeted “Her,” insinuating the similarity was intentional and a reference to the 2013 movie in which the actress voiced Samantha, a virtual assistant chat system who forms an intimate relationship with her introverted owner.
Johannssen hired a legal team “who wrote two letters to Mr. Altman and OpenAI, setting out what they had done and asking them to detail the exact process” for how it came up with the voice named “Sky” and to stop using it.
The artificial intelligence company OpenAI suspended the release of the voice in its products “out of respect to Ms. Johansson.” The company said in a blog post, “The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”
Johanssen, known for her long-standing run as a Marvel Hero, says billionaire CEO Sam Altman would make a good Marvel villain.