LW - Do Not Mess With Scarlett Johansson by Zvi

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Do Not Mess With Scarlett Johansson, published by Zvi on May 22, 2024 on LessWrong.
I repeat. Do not mess with Scarlett Johansson.
You would think her movies, and her suit against Disney, would make this obvious.
Apparently not so.
Andrej Karpathy (co-founder OpenAI, departed earlier), May 14: The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson. You all thought it was math or something.
You see, there was this voice they created for GPT-4o, called 'Sky.'
People noticed it sounded suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson, who voiced the AI in the movie Her, which Sam Altman says is his favorite movie of all time, which he says inspired OpenAI 'more than a little bit,' and then he tweeted "Her" on its own right before the GPT-4o presentation, and which was the comparison point for many people reviewing the GPT-4o debut?
Quite the Coincidence
I mean, surely that couldn't have been intentional.
Oh, no.
Kylie Robison: I asked Mira Mutari about Scarlett Johansson-type voice in today's demo of GPT-4o. She clarified it's not designed to mimic her, and said someone in the audience asked this exact same question!
Kylie Robison in Verge (May 13): Title: ChatGPT will be able to talk to you like Scarlett Johansson in Her.
OpenAI reports on how it created and selected its five selected GPT-4o voices.
OpenAI: We support the creative community and worked closely with the voice acting industry to ensure we took the right steps to cast ChatGPT's voices. Each actor receives compensation above top-of-market rates, and this will continue for as long as their voices are used in our products.
We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice - Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.
…
Looking ahead, you can expect even more options as we plan to introduce additional voices in ChatGPT to better match the diverse interests and preferences of users.
Jessica Taylor: My "Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
OpenAI: We've heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky. We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them.
Variety: Altman said in an interview last year that "Her" is his favorite movie.
Variety: OpenAI Suspends ChatGPT Voice That Sounds Like Scarlett Johansson in 'Her': AI 'Should Not Deliberately Mimic a Celebrity's Distinctive Voice.'
[WSJ had similar duplicative coverage.]
Flowers from the Future: That's why we can't have nice things. People bore me.
Again: Do not mess with Scarlett Johansson. She is Black Widow. She sued Disney.
Several hours after compiling the above, I was happy to report that they did indeed mess with Scarlett Johansson.
She is pissed.
Bobby Allen (NPR): Scarlett Johansson says she is 'shocked, angered' over new ChatGPT voice.
…
Johansson's legal team has sent OpenAI two letters asking the company to detail the process by which it developed a voice the tech company dubbed "Sky," Johansson's publicist told NPR in a revelation that has not been previously reported.
NPR then published her statement, which follows.
Scarlett Johansson's Statement
Scarlett Johansson: Last September, I received an offer from Sam Altman, who wanted to hire me to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system. He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and Al. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people.
After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends,...