ChatGPT has entered the voice arena and when OpenAI revealed the new ChatGPT 4o (O for Omni) earlier this month, everybody was reminded about the 2013 movie Her. It wasn’t just because the movie showed us the future of AI chatbots and how personal the technology could become with humans.
But people also felt that the demo ChatGPT 4o voice sounded a lot like Scarlett Johansson from the same movie. OpenAI has even talked about its process to select the voice artists who have helped the company develop the voice – Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.
No More Sky For ChatGPT 4o
The sky voice option on ChatGPT 4o is now being disabled by OpenAI, because it also seems to have agreed with the public and noticed the uncanny resemblance in Sky’s voice with the Hollywood actress.
In its defence, the company says, it doesn’t want AI voices to deliberately mimic a celebrity’s voice, and assures that Sky is not imitating Johansson’s voice. In fact, OpenAI, in this post titled, ‘How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen’, says the voice belongs to a different professional actress without disclosing her name to protect their privacy. OpenAI also points out the method and ingredients it looked out for while getting the voices selected and recorded.
It has worked with independent as well as award-winning casting directors and producers to get the voices working. The company was able to finalise 14 list of actors which was eventually cut down to five, including the Johansson-sounding Sky voice. We still don’t know if Sky will be replaced or edited to sound different but for now, OpenAI plans to offer the new voice mode in alpha to the ChatGPT plus users who get access to the ChatGPT 4o version.
Voice imitations are unlikely to be OpenAI’s biggest concerns about the technology over the years. But it is possible the company doesn’t want to entertain unwanted legal tussles, something it has already faced because of the supposed copyright infringement cases for its usage of data.
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