Sam Altman is Sam Altman-ing again, which is to say he’s being an obnoxious tech CEO and forgetting that not everyone in the world treats the inhabitants of Silicon Valley like untouchable gods. This time, he’s made the mistake of pissing off one of the most famous celebrities on earth, and someone who doesn’t shy away from litigation.



Altman’s OpenAI recently released a new voice option for ChatGPT named “Sky,” a voice that users noted sounded suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson. In response to people pointing this out, OpenAI quickly announced that it would be “pausing” the use of Sky while they work to address people’s questions about how the voice was developed.



Johansson, through her lawyers and publicist, issued a statement in response, and it’s pretty damning. In her statement, she details how Altman reached out to inquire about hiring Johansson to voice ChatGPT. After much consideration, Johansson declined, which is why she was surprised when nine months later, Sky was released, with her friends and family noting how much it sounded like her.


To top it all off, Altman played up the connection, tweeting nothing but the word “her” after the demo was released; a tweet many, including Johansson, took to be a reference to the 2013 Spike Jonze movie in which Johansson voiced a chat system named Samantha. In addition, two days prior to the release, Altman reached out again to ask if Johansson would reconsider, but before she could respond, the demo had been released.


After Johansson hired legal counsel, OpenAI took “Sky” down, but all of this is incredibly creepy — underscoring why actor’s rights to their own likenesses in the face of increased use of A.I. in the industry was one of the key focuses of 2023’s SAG-AFTRA strikes, with many members feeling that the new contract fails to go far enough to ensure actors maintain the rights to their own faces and voices.



If all that weren’t bad enough, Michael Che made Mr. Scarlett Johansson, Colin Jost, deliver a joke about the entire saga on the last Saturday Night Live episode of this current season, during the pair’s annual Joke Swap. Jost joked, “ChatGPT has released a new voice assistant feature inspired by Scarlett Johansson’s A.I. character in Her, which I’ve never bothered to watch, because without that body, what’s the point of listening?”


If only Sam Altman agreed, then maybe he wouldn’t have tried so hard to use Johansson’s voice.