OpenAI pulls Scarlett Johansson soundalike voice from ChatGPT

OpenAI has pulled the Sky voice from ChatGPT’s voice feature after users said that it sounded too much like actress Scarlett Johansson.

Users who selected Sky on ChatGPT on Monday were redirected to another voice, called Juniper. The company said that the voice, one of five available on ChatGPT, was from an actress and was not chosen to be an “imitation” of Johansson, according to a blog post. Johansson played a fictional virtual assistant in the film Her, about a man who falls in love with an AI system.

The voices are also part of OpenAI’s updated GPT-4o, which debuted earlier this month and can reply to verbal questions from users with an audio response.