ChatGPT voice pulled after users said it sounded too similar to Scarlett Johansson

OpenAI announced ChatGPT-4o earlier this month to enable natural human-computer interaction via voice. However, the startup has since paused one of the AI model’s voices, because it sounds too similar to actor Scarlett Johansson.

OpenAI said in an X post that it is working to pause the use of the Sky voice from ChatGPT after users said that it sounded too much like Scarlett Johansson. Sky is one of the five available voices of ChatGPT-4o.

“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,” wrote the company, directing users to a blog post on its official site.

OpenAI explained in the blog post that it “worked closely with the voice acting industry” to cast ChatGPT’s voices. The startup claims Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to “a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.” OpenAI didn’t reveal the voice actor’s name, citing privacy reasons.

Scarlett Johansson played a fictional virtual assistant in the movie Her, about a man who falls in love with an AI system. Much like the assistant in the movie, ChatGPT-4o accepts any combination of text, audio, image, and video as input and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs.

OpenAI seems to have taken inspiration from the film. Even Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, referenced this when he made a one-word post on X, writing “her.”

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Scarlett Johansson hasn’t commented on the issue yet. The actor previously filed a lawsuit against an AI-powered advertising agency, Lisa, that used her name and likeness in an online advertisement without permission.

Even though OpenAI has paused using the Sky voice for ChatGPT, you can still chat with it in four other voices— Breeze, Cove, Ember, and Juniper.