Source: AFP
OpenAI chief Sam Altman issued a public apology Tuesday to Scarlett Johansson after the movie star said she was “shocked” by a new synthetic voice released by the maker of ChatGPT that sounds “strangely similar” to her.
The subject is “Sky,” one of several voices that OpenAI unveiled last week with the release of its high-performance and even more human-like AI technology GPT-4o.
In a demo, Sky was sometimes flirtatious and funny, able to seamlessly jump from one topic to another, unlike most existing chatbots.
The technology — and the sound of the voice — quickly drew similarities to the Johansson-voiced AI character in the 2013 film “Her.”
Altman previously pointed to the Spike Jonze-directed film — a cautionary tale about the future where a man falls in love with an AI chatbot — as an inspiration for where he’d like AI interactions to go.
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He fueled speculation last week with a one-word post on X, formerly Twitter, saying “her”.
Johansson expressed her outrage at the new voice, saying in a statement that she was “shocked, angry and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would go after a voice that sounded so eerily similar to my own that my closest friends and the news agencies could not tell. difference.”
She said Altman had offered in September to hire her to work with OpenAI to create a synthetic voice, saying it could give people comfort when dealing with artificial intelligence.
OpenAI told X on Monday that it was working to “pause” Sky, with a company blogpost explaining that “Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson, but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural voice speech”.
In a statement shared Tuesday with AFP, Altman said the company “placed the voice actor behind the voice of Sky before any contact with Ms. Johansson.”
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“Out of respect for Ms Johansson, we have stopped using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry for Ms Johansson that we did not communicate better.”
The risk group was disbanded
The company, in its blogpost, explained that it worked with professional voice actors on synthetic voices it named Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.
It began working to select the voice actors in early 2023, “carefully considering each voice’s unique personality and their appeal to a global audience.”
Some of the characteristics sought were “a voice that feels timeless” and “an approachable voice that inspires confidence,” the company said.
The final five actors were flown to San Francisco for recording in June and July, he said, with their voices released on ChatGPT on September 25, 2023.
“To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents,” OpenAI said.
“We believe that AI voices should not intentionally imitate a celebrity’s distinctive voice.”
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So far in the AI frenzy, most tech giants have been reluctant to over-humanize chatbots.
Microsoft vice-president Yusuf Mehdi told AFP that his company, which has a partnership with OpenAI, tried to make sure the artificial intelligence was not a “he or she” but rather a “single entity”.
“It shouldn’t be human. It shouldn’t breathe. You should be able to…understand that it’s artificial intelligence,” he said.
Just a few days ago OpenAI said it disbanded a team dedicated to mitigating the long-term risks of artificial intelligence.
OpenAI began disbanding the so-called “superalignment” group weeks ago, integrating members into other projects and research.
Company co-founder Ilya Sutskever and superalignment team co-leader Jan Leike announced their departure from the San Francisco-based company last week.
Source: AFP