OpenAI says it plans to halt the usage of one among its ChatGPT voices after some customers stated it sounded like Scarlett Johansson, who famously voiced a fictional, and on the time futuristic, AI assistant within the 2013 movie Her.
In a publish on the social media platform X Monday, OpenAI stated it is “working to pause” Sky — the title of one among 5 voices that ChatGPT customers can selected to talk with. The firm stated it had “heard questions” about how it selects the lifelike audio choices obtainable for its flagship synthetic intelligence chatbot, significantly Sky, and wished to handle them.
OpenAI was additionally fast to debunk the web’s theories about Johansson in an accompanying weblog publish detailing how ChatGPT’s voices have been chosen.
“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,” the corporate wrote. It stated it couldn’t share the title of its voice actors for privateness causes.
But Johansson issued a press release Monday saying that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had approached her in September asking her if she would lend her voice to the system, saying he felt it can be “comforting to people” not comfortable with the know-how. She stated she declined the supply.
“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” Johansson stated.
She stated OpenAI “reluctantly” agreed to take down the Sky voice after she employed legal professionals who wrote Altman letters asking in regards to the course of by which the corporate got here up with the voice.
San Francisco-based OpenAI didn’t remark additional on why it nonetheless determined to pause Sky’s use.
OpenAI first rolled out voice capabilities for ChatGPT, which included the 5 completely different voices, in September, permitting customers to interact in back-to-forth dialog with the AI assistant. “Voice Mode” was initially simply obtainable to paid subscribers, however in November, OpenAI introduced that the characteristic would turn out to be free for all customers with the cell app.
Apple is dealing with main backlash over its new iPad Pro advert that many artists and creatives say represents synthetic intelligence’s destruction of artistic industries.
And ChatGPT’s interactions have gotten an increasing number of refined. Last week, OpenAI stated the most recent replace to its generative AI mannequin can mimic human cadences in its verbal responses and might even attempt to detect folks’s moods.
OpenAI says the latest mannequin, dubbed GPT-4o, works quicker than earlier variations and might purpose throughout textual content, audio and video in actual time. In an indication throughout OpenAI’s May 13 announcement, the AI bot chatted in actual time, including emotion — particularly “more drama” — to its voice as requested. It additionally took a stab at extrapolating an individual’s emotional state by a selfie video of their face, aided in language translations, step-by-step math issues and extra.
GPT-4o, quick for “omni,” is not extensively obtainable but. It will progressively make its solution to choose customers within the coming weeks and months. The mannequin’s textual content and picture capabilities have already begun rolling out, and is about to achieve even some of these that use ChatGPT’s free tier — however the brand new voice mode will simply be obtainable for paid subscribers of ChatGPT Plus.
From giving recommendation and analyzing graphs to guiding somebody by a math equation and even cracking a joke, the brand new mannequin of ChatGPT, known as GPT-4o, is touted as having real-time responses in pure human tone.
While most have but to get their fingers on these newly introduced options, the capabilities have conjured up much more comparisons to the Spike Jonze’s dystopian romance Her, which follows an introverted man (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with an AI-operating system (Johansson), resulting in many issues.
Altman appeared to faucet into this, too — merely posting the phrase “her” on the social media platform X the day of GPT-4o’s unveiling.
Many reacting to the mannequin’s demos final week additionally discovered some of the interactions struck a surprisingly flirtatious tone. In one video posted by OpenAI, a female-voiced ChatGPT compliments an organization worker on “rocking an OpenAI hoodie,” for instance, and in one other the chatbot says “oh stop it, you’re making me blush” after being advised that it’s wonderful.
That’s sparked some dialog on the gendered methods critics say tech firms have lengthy used to develop and interact with voice assistants, relationship again far earlier than the most recent wave of generative AI superior the capabilities of AI chatbots. In 2019, the United Nations’ tradition and science group pointed to “hardwired subservience” constructed into default female-voiced assistants (like Apple’s Siri to Amazon’s Alexa), even when confronted with sexist insults and harassment.
“This is clearly programmed to feed dudes’ egos,” The Daily Show senior correspondent Desi Lydic stated of GPT-4o in a phase final week. “You can really tell that a man built this tech.”